SEIU-UHW has suffered yet another
embarrassing legal judgment for failing to back its own members.
Earlier this
week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ordered SEIU-UHW
officials to stand trial for denying basic union representation to one of its
members, which caused her to lose her job of more than 20 years.
Elsewhere on
this blog, Tasty has catalogued countless
instances of SEIU-UHW’s backroom deals with hospital bosses and its failure
to defend workers’ rights on the job.
In fact, so
many SEIU-UHW members complained that SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan -- who deploys disinformation and deception as regular
tools against his union’s members -- attempted to quiet workers’ criticism by
creating a so-called “Department of Representational Excellence.”
So what
happened in the latest case?
According to
court records, Starla Rollins worked
as a Ward Clerk at a Dignity Health’s Community
Hospital of San Bernardino for over 20 years. In 2012, Dignity executives
implemented a “reduction in force” and tried to lay off a number of workers
including Rollins.
 |
| Starla Rollins |
When Rollins
asked SEIU-UHW to enforce a seniority agreement that should have allowed her to
continue working at the hospital, SEIU-UHW refused. When Rollins prepared a
grievance against the hospital, SEIU-UHW ignored it.
So… Rollins tragically lost her job of 20+
years.
Rollins,
however, is not one to give up.
She sued
both her employer and SEIU-UHW for failing to honor the seniority agreement. As far as SEIU-UHW, she sued the union for failing to fulfill its “duty of
fair representation” to provide basic representational services to union
members.
After
Rollins filed her suit, Regan spent massive amounts of money on lawyers, including on hack attorney Bruce
Harland, to try to knock Rollins' lawsuit out of court.
Earlier this
week, however, the Court of Appeals handed Rollins a giant victory.
The court
ruled: “We conclude that… the Hospital has breached the Seniority Agreement and
the CBA, and that triable issues of fact exist as to whether the Union breached
its duty of fair representation.”
In other words, the court has ordered
SEIU-UHW officials to now stand trial in front of a jury over allegations that
they failed to provide basic representational support to Rollins.
 |
| Bruce Harland, SEIU-UHW attorney |
In the
ruling, the panel of three judges slams SEIU-UHW officials for failing to
defend Rollins. They write: “First, the Union never seriously considered Rollins’s
rights under the Seniority Agreement.”
Second,
after she was laid off, SEIU-UHW only pretended to help Rollins by lumping her
into a group grievance that had nothing to do with her situation and was
completely unsuccessful in restoring her job.
Third, when Rollins
filed her own grievance against the hospital, SEIU-UHW officials refused to
process her grievance for bogus reasons.
In the decision, the judges go on to trash Marcus Hatcher, SEIU-UHW’s so-called “Director of Representational Excellence.”
Here’s a quote from the ruling:
The Union's Director of Representational Excellence, Marcus Hatcher, claimed to have reviewed the Seniority Agreement. But he asserted that the Seniority Agreement was "not relevant to the MOU" and unenforceable because "it can't supersede a contract." There are two problems with Hatcher's reasoning…
The judges then
execute a take-down on Hatcher.
Congratulations
to Starla Rollins!
Here’s a
link to a Bloomberg
article on the Rollins case. And immediately below is a copy of the judges' ruling issued
October 26, 2016.
