New Contract Confirms It. Dave Regan Sold Out SEIU-UHW's Members at Dignity Health

Recent developments at Dignity Health have thousands of SEIU-UHW's members screaming, "WE GOT SOLD OUT!"

Here’s what's happening.

One year ago, Dave Regan and Hal Ruddick negotiated a pay freeze and massive benefit cuts for SEIU-UHW’s 14,000 members at Dignity Health.

During the negotiations, Regan allowed Dignity’s execs to:

• Freeze SEIU-UHW members’ pay
• Make additional cuts to workers’ stripped-down retirement benefits
• Cut healthcare coverage for workers’ dependents
• Stop making contributions to workers’ training fund
• Create a system of two-tiered retirement benefits at Dignity’s hospitals in San Francisco that’ll force newly hired workers into cheaper benefits, and
• Implement an invasive wellness program.

And get this. Regan accepted these cuts even though Dignity had just pocketed $1.4 billion in profits, For workers, it was clear as day that Duplicitous Dave had once again bedded down with their Boss.

Now, they have proof that's even more convincing than a used condom.

Earlier this month, the California Nurses Association announced it negotiated a new four-year contract covering 12,000 RNs at the same Dignity hospitals where SEIU-UHW’s members work.

No pay freeze for CNA's members! Instead, they won a 9% pay increase on top of the 2-3% increase that RNs got earlier this year.

Plus, the CNA didn’t accept any of Regan’s benefit cuts... and they even created a new benefit to cover on-the-job injuries that the CNA calls “the first in the nation for a major hospital system."

Here's an excerpt from the CNA's announcement, with an apparent dig at SEIU:

Registered nurses at one of the nation’s largest hospital systems, Dignity Health, have reached a major new tentative collective bargaining contract covering some 12,000 RNs at 28 Dignity hospitals in California and Nevada that nurses say is a sharp break from a concessionary spiral so prevalent among many employers in healthcare and other sectors.

At its center, the agreement guarantees no reduction in health coverage, expands guaranteed pensions and retiree health benefits, and establishes a dramatic new “RN Accident Prevention Program” program that NNU says is the first in the nation by a major hospital system that provides unprecedented supplemental insurance protection for nurses injured in workplace violence or by needle stick accidents...

Over the four years of the agreement, RNs will receive additional pay hikes of 9 percent, on top of a 2 or 3 percent pay increase (depending on location) earlier this year that is already in effect.

All the hospitals, including the Las Vegas St. Rose Dominican facilities, will now be a part of one master unit, with local bargaining maintained for individual facilities, with a system-wide RN bargaining council to work to further assure quality patient care and RN standards in all Dignity hospitals.

Tasty would love to be a fly on the wall when Regan makes his next visit to a Dignity hospital. Of course, don't expect that to happen any time soon. After all, Dave is soo busy dining with his buddy Duane Dauner at the California Hospital Association... how could he possibly find time to visit 14,000 Dignity workers who pay a fat portion of Dave's $300,000-a-year salary!