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| Dave Regan: "I love the Boss and the Boss loves me" |
Dignity Healthcare workers’ "bullshit meters" are jumping off the charts in the wake of SEIU-UHW
officials’ recent announcement that they “won” a great new labor contract at Dignity.
Here’s what’s
happening:
Dignity
Healthcare employs approximately 14,000
SEIU-UHW members across California. It’s the union’s second-largest employer after
Kaiser Permanente.
Soon after SEIU’s trusteeship in 2009, trustee Dave
Regan began negotiating massive benefit cuts and pay freezes for Dignity workers.
In 2010, Regan and his lieutenant Hal
Ruddick famously eliminated workers’ defined-benefit pension plan and
then lied
to workers about the cuts. The truth was later revealed when Dignity's quarterly financial statement detailed how the company pocketed a $217
million windfall due to SEIU-UHW’s cuts.
In 2012,
Regan allowed Dignity to freeze
SEIU-UHW members’ wages and implement more benefit cuts... even though the
company was making massive profits.
Last year,
SEIU-UHW officials accepted even more cuts -- this time to Dignity workers’
health benefits.
Then, at the
beginning of 2016, SEIU-UHW returned to the bargaining table to negotiate pay
increases for its members. Instead, Dignity demanded even more cuts from Regan!
“Why not?,”
Dignity execs undoubtedly said to themselves. "Regan is the gift that keeps on giving."
This year’s negotiations,
which were supposed to conclude by April, dragged on as Dignity execs demanded a growing
list of concessions.
Here’s how SEIU-UHW
recently described Dignity's proposed cuts to the press:
- Wage freeze;
- “Slashing” workers’ already-reduced retirement benefits by “up to 25%;”
- Subcontracting SEIU-UHW members’ jobs
And here’s what
one SEIU-UHW member at Dignity told the Long
Beach Signal Tribune and the Long
Beach Press-Telegraph earlier this month:
According to a media release from the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), Dignity Health has proposed to reduce retirement benefits up to 25 percent and desires to outsource jobs to companies that offer low wages…
[SEIU-UHW member] Jay Villarreal himself said that he was one of the protestors stationed outside the hospital with a bullhorn. The 53-year-old from the Long Beach area has already personally felt the sting of a wage freeze. Villarreal said he has not had a raise in four years.
“And the way the contract is being stated by Dignity Health, I won’t see one for an additional three years…enough is enough really,” Villarreal concluded with a snicker. “Seven years!”
So what did
SEIU-UHW do in the face of Dignity’s demands? Strike?
Nope.
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| Hal Ruddick |
Since Regan
parachuted into California in 2009, SEIU-UHW has conducted virtually zero
strikes.
Why?
In September
of 2014, Regan famously told NBC news that strikes are “outdated.” Instead, he prefers a bold new strategy of “collaboration” with the Boss for “win-win” solutions. That’s the approach that Regan calls “21st Century
unionism.”
Hmmm.
Ya
gotta wonder what Dignity workers feel about the last seven years of Regan’s “collaboration” with their multi-millionaire boss. Doesn't sound too "win-win" for workers, right?
Two weeks ago, SEIU-UHW
officials suddenly announced they’d finally “won” a wonderful
new contract for Dignity workers without any strikes or fight. Here's how they announced it on SEIU-UHW's website:
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| August 16, 2016 |
Next,
SEIU-UHW officials announced they refuse to provide a copy of their wonderful tentative
agreement to Dignity workers in advance of workers’ ratification vote.
SEIU-UHW will only provide a single copy inside the voting room on the day of
the voting.
Must be a wonderful agreement, right?
SEIU-UHW’s triumphant pronouncement of “We won!” is like déjà vu all
over again for Dignity workers.
Back in
2010, here’s what SEIU-UHW officials told the membership after they agreed to
eliminate workers’ defined-benefit pension plan:
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| 2010 |
