A source has provided a tape-recording of a stunning
internal conference call that SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan conducted on October 30, 2013. Below, Tasty has posted a tape-recording of key excerpts.
During the call, Regan describes his efforts to negotiate a
secret unionization pact, including sweet-heart labor contracts, with the California Hospital Association. Headed by Duane Dauner, the CHA is
the Chamber of Commerce of California’s hospital industry and is run by
the state’s largest hospital corporations.
Here's some of what Regan says during the conference call:
As everyone on this call knows, a little over 2 ½ years ago we began a process with the California Hospital Association. It led to the signing of an initial strategic agreement between UHW and the industry. It foreshadowed a desire on our part to create an entirely new relationship with hospitals in California to ultimately end up in a place where we could have as many as 100,000 non-union workers with the opportunity to join our union without the employers campaigning against it, an innovative contract agreement, and potentially a multi-employer agreement across the state of California.
Regan says the purpose of his secret negotiations
is to “build a new relationship, a new model, a new paradigm for unionization
in the California hospital industry.”
Interestingly, Regan’s “new model” is so sketchy that attorneys have been forced to conduct a lengthy legal analysis to see if the "new model" violates anti-trust laws,
according to Regan.
Regan also describes how SEIU-UHW and the CHA hired a “top-flight
management consulting firm” to show the Bosses that there’s a “business case”
for allowing SEIU-UHW to unionize hospital workers under sweet-heart contracts.
Both we and the Hospital Association jointly hired a top-flight management consulting firm to really try to do the analysis… I’m happy to report that one of the things we’ve accomplished is that we have demonstrated with validation from a group that is very highly regarded by the industry itself that the union can, in fact, function as a strategic partner.
Later in the recording, Regan reports that the industry’s execs
have not accepted his proposed deal, so Regan is planning to use the threat
of expensive statewide ballot initiatives to pressure the Bosses to
ink a deal with him. The ballot initiatives, says
Regan, are designed to cost the hospital industry “billions” of dollars.
We said to the industry that if, by the end of October, we did not have an agreement that we felt like we could take back to our members, then we were gonna be prepared to go and file for title and summary with the Attorney General of the State of California and to introduce a series of potential ballot measures into the process that could ultimately lead to them being on the ballot in November of 2014.
Here’s the recording (fyi, you will have to boost the volume on your computer to hear it).
