Check out the following op-ed by NUHW’s Sal Rosselli regarding
Dave Regan’s recently
announced "partnership deal" with the California Hospital Association. Rosselli
hits the nail on the head!
Payers and Providers
The SEIU-UHW Sold Out To Hospitals
Its New Pact
with the CHA Undermines Trade Unionism
By Sal Rosselli
May 8, 2014
Earlier this week, SEIU-UHW and the California Hospital
Association announced a three-year "partnership" — a sweetheart deal
in which the union has sold out its members to curry favor with employers. The
employers, in turn, will allow SEIU to unionize more workers, but under terms
favorable to the employers. It's a vicious cycle of corruption that undermines
healthcare workers' livelihoods, compromises their ability to advocate for
their patients, and dispenses with the core principles upon which trade
unionism is based.
In a vague summary of the deal and in an evasive performance
during a conference call with journalists, SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan and
CHA President C. Duane Dauner tried to convince the public that SEIU scuttled
two threatened ballot initiatives — one that would have capped CEO compensation
and another that would have limited how much hospitals can charge consumers —
merely for the opportunity to work with CHA to increase Medicaid payments to
hospitals.
Regan and Dauner proclaimed their agreement as
"visionary" — but we're not allowed to see it. They claim it embraces
"transparency" — but the details will be kept secret.
Fortunately, the secret is out. According to a May 2 story
in the Wall Street Journal, which obtained documents pertaining to the deal
during the negotiation process, CHA will let SEIU immediately begin organizing
as many as 60,000 California healthcare workers without interference from the
employers and with full access to to workplaces. In return, SEIU would force
those workers into pre-negotiated contracts that ban strikes, keep wages low
and benefits to a minimum, and restrict the workers' right to criticize the
employer or report healthcare violations that endanger patients.
Finally, SEIU agreed to drop as much as $40 million of
worker dues into an "advocacy fund" that hospital CEOs will use to
promote a state ballot initiative to increase by $6 billion the payments
Medicaid makes to hospitals. SEIU says this money will eventually trickle down
to workers, but don't count on it. The initiative is two years away at best,
and any funds it brings in will surely get funneled to the already fat profit
margins enjoyed by healthcare corporations and the obscene executive
compensation packages that have become commonplace in the industry.
And once that process is complete, CHA will then allow SEIU
to organize thousands more workers and force them, too, into pre-negotiated
contracts.
It's a racket. It's a con game. And the workers are the
mark. If it wasn't clear before, it's perfectly clear now: SEIU is a company
union. In exchange for adding more members to its rolls and more member dues to
its coffers, SEIU is betraying its own members by undermining the livelihoods,
health benefits, and working conditions of hundreds of thousands of California
healthcare workers.
This deal is just the latest evidence that SEIU has
abandoned the fundamental principles of trade unionism — principles that we at
the National Union of Healthcare Workers hold dear: democracy, patient
advocacy, and commitment to worker representation.
SEIU has drastically reduced its worker representation,
curtailed members' participation in their own affairs, and eliminated the
union's watchdog role on behalf of patients by embracing a "code of
conduct."
Moving forward, SEIU will quietly collect dues, but will do
little to raise questions. Regan says he wants to keep everything
"positive." But it's important to have checks and balances in a
quality healthcare system — workers need a voice, and patients need an
advocate. The unfortunate reality of the SEIU-CHA deal is that the union has
gone to bed with the employer, leaving workers with nothing more than a false
positive.
