Here it is.
It's a recording of an internal conference call that took place just hours after Dave Regan and
Duane Dauner (the CEO of the California Hospital Association) publicly
announced their "visionary" partnership deal… while famously
refusing to disclose any details to journalists or the public.
During the conference call -- which took place on May 6, 2014 and lasts 50 minutes -- Regan works hard to sell the deal to SEIU-UHW's staffers.
He makes only passing reference to the undemocratic
terms of his dirty deal -- such as pre-negotiated contracts with cheap wages and benefits, a gag clause that blocks workers from
criticizing hospital corporations, a ban on strikes, etc. In fact, Regan has refused to provide a copy of
the deal to SEIU-UHW’s own Executive Board, say Tasty's sources.
However, enough details emerge from the leaked recording to
allow us to comprehend the raw terms of Regan’s “money-for-workers” deal with hospital
CEOs.
The deal works as follows:
Regan will use SEIU’s political influence -- along with $20
million of workers’ dues money -- to try to boost taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments to hospitals by $6 billion a year. In exchange, the hospitals will let SEIU "unionize"
up to 60,000 workers without opposition as long as Regan keeps workers' wages
and benefits artificially low and bans workers from striking.
Furthermore, Regan has signed a "Code of
Conduct" that gags SEIU-UHW’s members from criticizing hospital
corporations and bans workers from reporting patient-care violations to government
agencies.
On the recording, here’s how Regan describes the long reach of the "Code of Conduct" between
SEIU-UHW and the hospital industry:
The Code of Conduct requires that in all of our interactions -- whether they're in the public realm, in the realm of advocacy, in the realm of media relations or press relations or political work as well as in the realm of non-union workers deciding whether or not to join our union -- we will eliminate and prohibit all negative campaigning.
Meanwhile, here's how Regan describes his deal to trade billions of dollars of Medicaid money for workers:
If we are successful in solving the Medi-Cal Program's shortfall by November of 2016, we will then have an agreement with the industry whereby we will get physical access to another set of institutions employing at least 30,000 non-union workers…
Regan calls the Medicaid money “a big prize” (Medicaid is
called “Medi-Cal” in California):
There is a big prize on the horizon called "reforming Medi-Cal” that's worth $6 billion. (at 26:35 minutes on the tape)
Elsewhere, he describes the terms of the deal this way:
...organizing rights premised on success in fixing the political problem.
So what's driving this pay-to-play deal?
The Democrats control both houses of California’s legislature as well as the governor's office. So... hospital CEOs have hired SEIU to serve as a Trojan Horse or political errand boy that will attempt to snatch billions of taxpayer-funded dollars to fatten the bosses’ bottom lines... while screwing workers along the way.
It's classic SEIU.
Here’s the full tape:
