Regan, who
has already spent upwards of $6
million of SEIU-UHW’s funds on a
California initiative targeting kidney dialysis clinics, was hoping the
dialysis industry would agree to a special unionization deal in exchange for Regan
dropping his initiative off the ballot.
That didn’t
happen.
Yesterday was
the last chance for Regan and other initiative sponsors to withdraw their
ballot initiatives in advance of California’s statewide elections in November.
What does
this mean?
Regan’s
initiative is headed to the November ballot… and he’ll now have to spend millions
more to battle for Californians’ votes during the next three months.
The price
tag could be steep. California is a hugely expensive electoral battleground due
to its massive population of 40 million residents and its high-cost media markets.
His
opponent, the dialysis industry, has plenty of cash. Their campaign is bankrolled
by DaVita and Fresenius, which reported a combined $3.9 billion in profits during
2016, according to SEIU-UHW.
As soon as
yesterday’s deadline passed, the dialysis industry put out a press release with
this headline:
Coalition of doctors, nurses, patients, caregivers vows to defeat the Dangerous Dialysis Proposition that puts dialysis patients’ lives at risk; Deeply-flawed initiative will be on the November 2018 California ballot.
What’s the
takeaway from yesterday’s developments?
Regan played
a multi-million-dollar game of chicken with the dialysis industry, spending $6
million to get his dialysis initiative on the ballot and to run threatening TV,
radio and print ads across the US. And he lost.
At this
point, it’s unclear how he could possibly squeeze a victory from this situation.
Even if his initiative wins at the ballot box in November, it will reportedly
impose substantial economic costs on the dialysis industry and will not move
SEIU-UHW anywhere closer to a unionization deal with DaVita and Fresenius.
These developments
underscore both the riskiness and costliness of Regan’s ballot-initiative
strategy.
They also
spell possible political problems for Regan, decided to double down on
ballot initiatives in 2018. This year, he introduced no fewer than ten ballot
initiatives, more
than any year before. He did this despite the fact that during the past
seven years, he spent more than $30 million of SEIU-UHW’s budget on 20+ ballot
initiatives, all of which were unsuccessful in producing unionization
victories.
If Regan’s ballot-initiative
strategy crashes and burns in 2018, will the union’s members and Executive
Board hold him accountable?
And will he end his addiction to ballot initiatives
and instead invest the union’s tens of millions of dollars into aggressive
contract fights, contract enforcement and worker organizing campaigns?
Stay tuned.
