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| SEIU's Dave Regan |
Check out Dave Regan’s
latest act of dishonesty.
Earlier this week, SEIU-UHW mailed a leaflet (see below) to
thousands of union members employed at more than 30 Dignity
Health hospitals in California.
The leaflet says that Dignity plans to shut
down an Education Fund that pays for career-ladder training courses for SEIU-UHW’s
members. The fund lets workers to train for higher-paid jobs.
Here’s an excerpt from the leaflet:
Here’s an excerpt from the leaflet:
Our SEIU-UHW Joint Employer Education Fund has provided training and recertification – helping both employees and Dignity Health. Yet, Dignity isn’t agreeing to continue this program. Unless Dignity management agrees to continue funding, Dignity Health employees will no longer be eligible for Education Fund programs as of January 1, 2014.
Sounds terrible.
So what’s the real story?
Well, it turns out that SEIU-UHW's leaflet has carefully omitted a few,
uh, minor details. Like the fact that Regan and his sidekick Hal
Ruddick actually AGREED to let Dignity shut down the Education Fund!
Below, Tasty has posted a copy of the agreement that Regan and Ruddick signed
during their sell-out contract negotiations with Dignity in June of 2012 which allows Dignity to shut down the training fund. Here’s
an excerpt:
Article 4, Education Fund
The current Education Fund shall continue through December 2013… Thereafter… the Employer shall have no additional funding obligations for either fund... In the event no [alternative funding sources] are available, participation in the Joint Fund shall sunset unless otherwise agreed in the reopener. (emphasis added)
Regan, rather than coming clean about his deal to shutter the training fund, is trying to channel workers' anger away from SEIU-UHW's headquarters.
Quite disgraceful.
The Education Fund, which was set up by Sal Rosselli’s team during the decade
before SEIU’s trusteeship, had successfully steered millions of Dignity/CHW’s
dollars into training programs for workers.
Not any more.
The elimination of the training fund is just the latest in a string of devastating cuts that Regan has accepted from Dignity’s fatcat bosses since "Wall Street" Dave parachuted into California in 2009.
In 2010, Regan and Ruddick lied
to Dignity’s workers while they eliminated 14,000 workers' defined-benefit pension plan and
replaced it with a 401(k)-like plan, thereby saving hundreds of millions of dollars for Dignity's bosses.
And in 2012, Regan allowed Dignity to freeze
SEIU-UHW members’ wages and implement more benefit cuts... even though the company
was making massive profits.
The stunning scale of Regan’s sell-out deals now stands in even sharper relief since the California Nurses Association negotiated
a recent contract for its 12,000 members at Dignity -- without any of the cuts, wage freezes or concessions that Regan swallows like so many drinks at his favorite bar.
Here are the documents.
Here are the documents.
