This week, Kaiser Permanente finally revealed how
it’s going to deal with its now fractured “partnership” unions.
On Monday,
Kaiser’s executives gathered about 100 representatives from nearly all of its
unions in a ballroom at the downtown Marriott Hotel in Oakland, Calif. In
attendance were leaders from both of the partnership groups including SEIU-UHW’s
Dave Regan, AFSCME’s Denise Duncan, Pete
diCicco, Walter Allen, and Hal
Ruddick.
Kaiser’s executives
-- including Greg Adams, Dennis Dabney, Jim Pruitt and Chuck
Columbus -- announced they will not bargain with either the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions or
SEIU-UHW this year.
Kaiser,
however, will begin negotiating in the weeks ahead with the newly formed Alliance of Health Care Unions for
contracts covering most of the Alliance’s members. Kaiser says it’ll negotiate with
the Alliance unions at a single bargaining table, although it plans to sign separate
labor contracts with each Alliance union rather than a single “national
agreement.”
When will
Kaiser bargain with SEIU-UHW?
Not until next
year, when SEIU-UHW’s local union contract expires.
So why is
Kaiser bargaining first with the Alliance unions?
According to
Kaiser, it’s scheduling bargaining according to the expiration dates of each
union’s so-called “local agreement.” (Note: In addition to a single “national
agreement,” each partnership union also bargains a “local agreement” that covers
issues specific to that particular part of Kaiser’s workforce.)
It turns out
that most of the Alliance unions’ “local agreements” expire in 2018. Meanwhile,
virtually all of the Coalition unions’ local agreements don’t expire until
2019.
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| Dave Regan |
Kaiser’s
announcement on Monday represents a big setback for Regan, who attended the Marriott
meeting with Greg Pullman (Regan's Chief of Staff), Bruce Harland (Regan’s hack attorney),
and several others.
Why?
The Alliance
unions will go to the bargaining table first… before Regan and the other
Coalition unions. This will allow the Alliance to set a pattern as far as
wages, benefits and working conditions that Kaiser will undoubtedly ask
SEIU-UHW to follow.
That’s precisely
the opposite
outcome from what Regan has been trying to achieve.
Since at
least 2017, he made multiple attempts to seize control of the Coalition so he’d
have greater power over this year’s national bargaining.
Now, as a
result of overplaying his hand and expertly exploding
the partnership unions into pieces, national bargaining has been canceled
and Regan -- along with SEIU-UHW’s members -- have been relegated to the back seat.
In addition,
Regan has successfully destroyed the unity among Kaiser’s 29 partnership
unions. This will likely allow Kaiser to drive further wedges between them.
How did
Reagan react to Kaiser’s announcement on Monday?
One hint
comes from the red-hot rhetoric that SEIU-UHW used in an update to its members after
the meeting. Here’s an excerpt:
Kaiser said they will refuse to negotiate a new National Agreement, leaving each union to bargain their own local agreement… The level of arrogance and contempt from Kaiser leadership in the meeting was palpable. There is no Partnership in Kaiser’s mind… Kaiser’s idea of “Partnership” is more like a Dictatorship. SEIU-UHW and our Coalition allies will not stand for this.
