Today, SEIU-UHW’s
Dave Regan suffered a thumping defeat when the California Attorney General approved
the sale of six hospitals owned by the Daughters
of Charity Health System to Prime
Healthcare. The AG rejected SEIU-UHW’s bid to transfer the hospitals to Blue Wolf Capital Partners, a private
equity firm in New York City.
For many months, Regan has waged an all-out effort to block
the sale to Prime after that company refused to sign Regan's sweetheart
unionization deal with the California
Hospital Association. During a tape-recorded SEIU
conference call last May, Regan famously announced he would wage a campaign
to bring Prime "to heel,” according to the Los
Angeles Times.
Last fall, Regan launched an expensive political, PR, and "Astroturf”
campaign to block Prime from buying the hospitals. The campaign included buying TV ads and busing hundreds of purple-shirted homecare
workers from three counties away to fill the chairs in the Attorney General's public
hearings that were intended to gather input from the local community.
Regan was forced to bus in the homecare workers because his position was wildly unpopular among
SEIU-UHW’s 1,600 members at the six hospitals. Without the sale, the hospitals
would likely go bankrupt and put the 1,600 workers’ jobs and pensions in jeopardy.
Midway through the process, workers also learned that Regan had
secretly signed a backroom deal with Blue Wolf Capital to cut
workers' pay and benefits by 15% if Blue Wolf got ahold of the hospitals.
When the Attorney General finally conducted hearings
on the proposed sale, SEIU-UHW’s own members stood at the microphone and voiced
their opposition to Regan. They also delivered
petitions signed by more than half of SEIU-UHW’s members opposing Regan's position.
At O'Connor Hospital in San Jose, Calif. nearly half of SEIU-UHW’s shop stewards resigned their
positions to protest Regan's decision to ignore the membership and their livelihoods.
Below, check out a 30-second video of a former SEIU-UHW Chief Shop Steward
who describes how SEIU used its members as "pawns" in its own
political game. He says: “I'm ashamed to say that I'm an SEIU member because
they're not looking out for their own members.”
That's not all.
After losing the support of his own members,
Regan also lost the support of other SEIU unions in California. For example,
both SEIU Local 121 and SEIU Local 87 publicly supported the sale of the hospitals to Prime, and formally opposed Regan's position.
Here's the video:
