Friday, November 17, 2017

Sources Describe Fallout at SEIU-UHW over Sexual Misconduct Scandal


According to Tasty’s sources, here’s what’s happening inside SEIU-UHW following this week's firing of Marcus Hatcher, a top union official, over his alleged affairs with three members of the union’s Executive Board:

SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan held an “emergency conference call” with Executive Board members who work at Kaiser Permanente. During the call, Regan described the circumstances surrounding Hatcher’s firing. 

Until just days ago, Hatcher was the director of SEIU-UHW’s Kaiser Division and also served on the union’s Executive Committee.

Yesterday, following the publication of Tasty’s blog post about Hatcher’s firing, Regan convened a meeting of top union staffers and members of the Executive Committee. Sources describe the meeting, which included discussion of the sexual misconduct and “the overall culture” inside SEIU-UHW, as “intense and emotional.”

During the meeting, rank-and-file members of the Executive Committee suggested that the union hire a third-party expert to conduct an independent investigation into these issues. Top union staffers reportedly said they “take these problems seriously,” but the Executive Committee’s rank-and-file members left the meeting feeling concerned that “this is all lip service” in response to the current bad PR and “that no real investigation will take place.”

Interestingly, sources also report that a second staffer, Mindy Sturge, was fired this week soon after Marcus Hatcher got axed. Sturge, a longtime manager at the union, currently works as a “Coordinator III” in the Organizing Department and formerly served as an Assistant Director in the Hospital Division. At this point, it’s unclear why she was fired, although the timing of her firing is raising eyebrows inside SEIU-UHW.