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| SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan |
Remember the tape recording of Dave Regan’s recent conference call with Kaiser Permanente workers? That’s the one where Regan famously said
that SEIU-UHW is giving great “representation” to its members because workers
get a paycheck every two weeks.
Well, Regan’s statement has generated tons of outraged emails
from Kaiser’s workers. One of the most interesting messages comes from an SEIU-UHW
insider who was totally stunned by Regan’s claim that “grievances are at an
all-time low.”
“It’s a total lie,” says the reader, who sent proof of Regan's lies! (see below)
First... here’s what Regan said on the conference
call:
We all know Kaiser is big enough that there’s always some problem, there’s always some supervisor, there’s always some facility where something shouldn’t have happened a certain way the day before, the week before, the month before. Whatever. And we’re all aware of that. And I want everyone to just bear in mind we are solving more problems, resolving more grievances, and doing more of that. It’s at an all-time low. But representation is also about what’s in your paycheck. And every one of our 45,000 members gets paid every couple of weeks by Kaiser. And that’s representation, too.
So… are grievances at “an all-time low”? Not by a long shot.
Tasty’s reader sent a log of all the grievances that SEIU-UHW’s members have filed
against Kaiser during the past nine months. How many? 1,003.
Check out the list, which is posted below. (Tasty included only the first letter of workers' last names to preserve their confidentiality.)
Of the 1,003 grievances that workers filed during the past
nine months, 239 were filed for “wrongful termination”! That’s 239 wrongful
terminations in nine months! No wonder SEIU-UHW’s shop stewards are reporting
that “Kaiser is firing more people than they ever have.”
Incredible, right?
And think about this. If Regan is willing to tell such
out-and-out lies to the union’s shop stewards, imagine what he’s saying to the general
membership!
Meanwhile, as far as the grievances that were filed by Kaiser workers, many workers report that SEIU-UHW simply refuses to help them.
Perhaps the most famous case is is the one that landed SEIU-UHW's officials in federal court. At Kaiser South San Francisco Medical Center, SEIU-UHW refused to help a worker after she was wrongfully terminated for blowing the whistle on her manager, who was snorting crystal meth in the hospital's Admitting Department. Instead of trying to get the worker’s job back, SEIU-UHW simply
dropped the worker's grievance.
That’s why the worker sued SEIU-UHW in federal court
(the case is ongoing). You can read copies of the worker’s lawsuit here
and the judge’s interim ruling here.
The court records have lots of details about SEIU-UHW’s failure to lift a
finger to defend this worker against a meth-snorting supervisor.
So what's at an all-time low? It looks like it's Regan's integrity.
