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| SEIU-UHW's Bruce Harland |
Here are more
e-mails exchanged by SEIU-UHW and
the California Hospital Association (CHA)
during the course of their arm-breaking legal battles.
In the first
e-mail, a CHA attorney -- Curt Kirshner
of the Jones Day law firm -- reports
that the CHA "has filed three arbitration complaints against UHW which
should be scheduled for hearings."
According to the CHA, SEIU-UHW violated three separate provisions of a secret gag clause that prohibit SEIU-UHW from suing hospital corporations, supporting legislation
that's "adverse to the interests of the hospital industry," and saying
"derogatory" things about hospital corporations and their bosses. The gag clause was signed by SEIU-UHW's President, Dave Regan.
Regan's gag
clause is so far-reaching that SEIU-UHW apparently violated the
no-derogatory-comments rule when it called CHA CEO Duane Dauner a "saboteur."
The second
e-mail is a response from SEIU-UHW's hack attorney, Bruce
Harland, who works at the Weinberg, Rogers
and Rosenfeld law firm. In 2014, Harland worked hand-in-hand with Regan to write the secret
deal with the CHA -- aka the "Code of Conduct" -- including its gag clause.
In this
e-mail, Harland
acknowledges that SEIU-UHW is bound by the deal's gag clause and arbitration clause. He also
makes a final, pathetic plea to the hospital bosses to cough up 30,000 non-union
workers to SEIU-UHW.
In so doing,
Harland reaffirms the "centerpiece" of Regan's dirty deal with
hospital bosses: a "money-for-members" quid
pro quo in which Regan agreed to deliver $6 billion in public Medicaid
funds to hospital CEOs in exchange for the right to unionize up to 60,000
California hospital workers without employer opposition.
Here's an
excerpt from Harland's e-mail. A full copy of the two e-mails is below.
Second, with respect to the first two complaints filed by CHA, UHW is willing to arbitrate these disputes, under the Code of Conduct, so long as CHA and the hospital signatories meet the obligations that they are required to satisfy, under the Code of Conduct, by January 1, 2016. These obligations require, among other things, that "[b]y "January 1, 2016, various hospitals and health systems in California execute a conditional agreement providing access rights to the Union at acute care hospitals in California for at least 30,000 (30,000) non-union, non-supervisory employees." Sec. D(2) If the hospitals or health systems fail to execute such agreements, then "the Union shall be released from all further obligations under this Agreement..." Id . CHA has already announced to CEOs that it will not satisfy this obligation, and Mr. Dauner has expressed to UHW’s President that the likelihood of CHA and the signatory hospitals executing such an agreement is "highly remote." In addition, despite the Union's best efforts, CHA and the signatory hospitals have failed to agree to a conditional access agreement.
