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| Dave Regan and Duane Dauner |
Here's the latest news -- including a new article in the
Wall Street Journal -- about Dave Regan’s
ongoing
attempt to cut a sweetheart "partnership" deal with the California Hospital Association (CHA).
During recent days, SEIU-UHW’s
Regan has been in active discussions with the CHA, headed by CEO Duane
Dauner, about a possible partnership deal. According to the WSJ and
Tasty's sources, the following are some of the specifics under discussion:
Hospital CEOs would allow Regan to unionize 50,000
California hospital workers, without any employer opposition, in exchange for
Regan’s agreement to force the workers into cheap, pre-negotiated contracts
with low wages and benefits along with a lengthy ban on strikes.
Furthermore, Regan has agreed to sweeten the bosses’ pot by
depositing $40 million of SEIU-UHW members’ dues money into an “advocacy fund”
that the CEOs would use to promote a California ballot initiative to boost
taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments to hospitals by billions of dollars a year.
Regan’s goal, of course, is to cement SEIU-UHW’s role as
nothing less than the boss’s union. Here’s how Regan describes it to the WSJ:
Dave Regan, president of the SEIU's United Healthcare Workers West,… said Friday that the union has been talking with the hospital association for more than two years to… "create a totally different paradigm for the way unions and employers deal with each other."
If implemented, Regan’s cheap, pre-negotiated contracts for
the 50,000 workers would sharply undercut the standards of already-unionized
workers -- including SEIU-UHW’s own members -- and would accelerate the downward
spiral of concessionary bargaining that Regan launched after the Purple Palace seized control of
SEIU-UHW in 2009.
Since parachuting into the Golden State, Regan has slashed
health benefits and eliminated the defined-benefit pensions for tens of
thousands of workers at Dignity
Health, the Daughters
of Charity Health System, and other companies.
At Kaiser Permanente, Regan has slashed the retiree
health benefits for 43,000 SEIU-UHW members and has reportedly signed a
secret side letter to eliminate workers' pensions and cut their health
benefits.
If Regan succeeds in banning 50,000 newly organized workers
from striking, he’ll handcuff them into cheap contracts that’ll cut the legs
out from underneath from already-unionized workers. Only an idiot -- or someone who's completely sold out to the CEOs -- would commit such a blunder.
Here’s the full article from the Wall Street Journal.
Wall Street
Journal
SEIU, California Hospitals in Talks
on Cooperative Deal
Health-Care Union Could Boost Its
Ranks, Support Medicaid-Payment Ballot Initiative
By MELANIE TROTTMAN and CHRIS MAHER
May 2, 2014 8:40 p.m. ET
The nation's biggest health-care union and the California
hospital industry are in talks on a deal that could allow the union to boost
its ranks by thousands with the cooperation of management, according to
documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
As part of the continuing negotiations, the Service
Employees International Union and the California Hospital Association also
would jointly support a ballot initiative to increase Medicaid payments to
hospitals by as much as $6 billion a year, the documents show.
The latest talks came after the SEIU threatened late last
year to push ballot measures far less palatable to hospitals ?including capping
executive pay and limiting how much hospitals could charge consumers. Under a
union proposal made to the association last week, the labor giant would
withdraw support for those initiatives in exchange for hospitals providing SEIU
access to employees during an organizing drive of tens of thousands of workers,
the documents show.
The SEIU has been trying to negotiate an agreement for
several years in which California hospitals agree to cooperate in part with an
organization drive. So-called neutrality agreements are a common tactic in
labor. In many such agreements, employers allow access to employees and stand aside
during organizing. In turn, unions halt negative public campaigns or back
political issues favored by employers.
Business groups say the deals violate labor laws, which
prohibit employers from giving a "thing of value" to a union, and
courts have been divided on the issue. The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard a
challenge to the legality of such deals but dismissed it in December.
The 1.9 million-member SEIU is one of the few unions to
increase its ranks amid years of declining union membership nationwide. The
SEIU represents about 90,000 of California's 400,000 hospital workers, in about
a quarter of the state's 430 hospitals, according to the union.
The documents reviewed by the Journal show that on April 25,
the SEIU's United Healthcare Workers West local in California proposed a
three-year deal that would give the union access to as many as 60,000 nonunion
employees. The union also proposed a $100 million joint "advocacy
fund" with the hospital association that would be used in part to support
a 2016 ballot initiative. The measure would direct the state to cover what the
hospital association says are shortfalls in payments to hospitals from
Medi-Cal, the state Medicaid system.
In a counteroffer authorized by the hospital association
board on April 28, the industry offered a five-year deal providing access to as
many as 50,000 workers and offered to pay $60 million to the advocacy fund. The
union would contribute $40 million under that proposal.
Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokeswoman for the hospital association,
said the documents generally outlined what has been discussed but declined to
comment on specifics. She said talks were likely to continue through the
weekend.
"SEIU is looking for some kind of access to nonunion
workers," she said. "As of today, the hospitals' ability to provide
the scale that SEIU is seeking—we're not there."
The hospital association said California hospitals lose
nearly $6 billion a year treating Medi-Cal patients.
Dave Regan, president of the SEIU's United Healthcare
Workers West, which says it has 150,000 health-care workers as members, said
Friday that the union has been talking with the hospital association for more
than two years to find strategies to reduce health-care costs, improve the
state's Medicaid system and "create a totally different paradigm for the
way unions and employers deal with each other."
"We have been exchanging proposals," he said
Friday. "We continue in discussions and we expect to continue talking
today and perhaps over the weekend," he added.
Mr. Regan said finding a smoother-than-typical path to union
organizing is part of the union's agenda, though he said the union isn't
seeking a deal that would forbid the association from "respectfully"
suggesting to workers that they shouldn't join the union. "We're not going
to disparage each other," he said. "We never said to the hospitals
that you can't give your point of view, and they've never said to us that
they're beyond criticism." Mr. Regan said the agreement being sought is
something other than a so-called "neutrality" deal.
"We're talking about working together on a scale that
is unprecedented for unions and employers," he said.
