What happened at last
month’s meeting of SEIU’s International Executive Board (IEB) in Puerto
Rico?
According to Tasty's sources, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry backed the transfer of
SEIU-UHW’s homecare workers to SEIU Local 6434, which currently represents homecare and nursing home workers in California.
Tasty hears that when the news first reached him, SEIU-UHW President
Dave Regan lost control of his
bowels.
Why?
First of all, it's well known that Regan is plotting to seize
Mary Kay Henry’s position at the Purple Palace. A transfer of homecare workers
means Regan will lose the "delegated votes" of these 60,000 homecare
members during future elections inside SEIU. (In SEIU, rank-and-file union
members don't get to vote for SEIU’s president and International
Executive Board -- instead, members' votes are assigned or "delegated"
to local SEIU officials, who then cast the votes of tens of thousands of rank-and-file
workers.)
Secondly, a transfer of the homecare workers means less dues
money for "Wall Street" Dave.
Thirdly, it changes the political equation inside SEIU-UHW.
Regan has relied on the votes of homecare workers to win SEIU-UHW’s internal elections.
Without their votes, he’ll become more vulnerable to challengers.
So what’s Dave gonna do?
His first move appears to be to stall Mary Kay Henry’s
plan. He reportedly requested that Henry put the transfer on hold for six months because, says Regan, the loss of the public-sector homecare workers will somehow diminish the "bargaining
strength" of SEIU-UHW’s Kaiser workers, who are set to begin negotiations for a
new contract in April.
Not exactly a persuasive argument, right? It's especially
lame because SEIU-UHW’s upcoming contract negotiations with Kaiser Permanente are so tightly rigged that SEIU officials have already
calendared the precise day in June when they will stand arm-in-arm with Kaiser execs and announce an "historic contract settlement." In fact, Regan and Kaiser’s executives have
already scheduled the exact dates for SEIU-UHW workers' contract ratification votes. (More on
this in a future post.)
What will happen if Regan resists the transfer of the
homecare workers?
Tasty hopes that Mary Kay Henry and the IEB are busily preparing the legal papers to impose an emergency trusteeship on Regan. Of course,
once the trusteeship is implemented, Mary Kay Henry can simply ignore the order
to transfer the homecare workers for, uhh, at least a decade.
Remember, this is SEIU… where workers are pawns on a purple Monopoly
board that’s shamelessly used by SEIU officials to pursue their personal quests for
power, fame and money.
