According to an
internal source, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan will soon withdraw the
California ballot initiative he recently
filed against Kaiser Permanente.
There’s no official
confirmation of the withdrawal yet, but Tasty’s internal sources say
it’s coming.
Last week, top officials
from the labor-management partnership unions convened
in Washington DC for a closed-door meeting with Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson.
At a pre-meeting, some union leaders reportedly discussed the idea of tossing
SEIU-UHW out of the labor-management partnership. Kaiser earlier barred
SEIU-UHW from participating in the partnership’s 2018 national bargaining.
Meanwhile, last week
Kaiser mounted a direct-mail
campaign targeting SEIU-UHW’s members with news that Regan’s initiative --
which could place a cap Kaiser’s future revenues -- would undermine the HMO’s
ability to fund SEIU-UHW members’ pensions and other benefits.
Regan’s withdrawal of
the initiative is not a shocker. After all, Regan has a track record of
committing a staggering series of f*uck-ups when it comes to is ballot
initiatives.
In 2016, Regan was
forced to withdraw an Arizona ballot initiative targeting the hospital
industry after hiring paid circulators who collected 281,000 signatures from voters.
Why? Regan apparently forgot to make sure the signature-gatherers were legally
qualified to collect signatures. Whoops!
Also in 2016, Regan
was forced
to drop a California ballot initiative against the California Hospital
Association because it violated a gag clause that Regan himself had earlier
signed as part of his secret deal with hospital executives.
In each withdrawal,
Regan had already spent millions of SEIU-UHW members’ funds on the failed
efforts.
On Monday, Politico’s Victoria Colliver also noted
Regan’s record of misfiring on his million-dollar ballot initiatives.
SEIU-UHW has a history of filing ballot measures that would affect organizations whose workers it represents, or wants to. Most of them never actually get voted on: The union has often dropped them partway through the arduous ballot-qualification process…
The referendum strategy doesn't come cheap. It costs money to file measures, pay people to gather signatures, hire lawyers to review language and fend off challenges, and foot the bill for advertising and other expenses associated with mounting what is basically a political campaign.
The union has spent $21.2 million on ballot measures in California since the 2012 election cycle…
