This week, Dave
Regan trotted out an interesting “spin” on his ballot initiative gamble.
Regan’s mathematically-challenged
spin goes something like this:
Regan has
spent $20 million of SEIU-UHW members’ money on a statewide ballot initiative
targeting the dialysis industry. Meanwhile, two multinational dialysis
companies have spent a combined $105 million to oppose the initiative. Even if
Regan’s initiative loses at the ballot box, Dave says he’s still a winner
because the other side was forced to spend more money.
A recent
article entitled “Healthcare
Workers’ Union Counts Dialysis Victory in Dollars Spent against It” (CalMatters, October 21, 2018) begins
this way:
Win or lose, Dave Regan, the healthcare worker union leader who is pushing an initiative to regulate dialysis clinic profits, is getting some satisfaction at the huge sums being spent by the dialysis industry, $105 million and counting.
“In a weird kind of way, we must be doing something right,” Regan said, referring to the spending.
So why is
Dave’s spin “mathematically challenged”?
Dave forgot
to mention some important details.
For example,
$105 million is barely a drop in the bucket for these mammoth companies. Their combined
annual revenues are $51 billion, with annual combined profits totaling $4
billion. $105 million represents less than 0.2% of the companies’ annual
revenues. It’s like a few pennies to them.
Meanwhile,
Dave spent $20 million of SEIU-UHW members’ money, which represents about 20%
of the union’s annual budget. Ouch!
Imagine if
you gambled 20% of your organization’s annual budget… and you lost.
No wonder
Dave is test-driving some spin… especially now that the election is less than
two weeks away. Publicly, Regan says his union’s own polling indicates the initiative will win, according to a press
release issued by SEIU-UHW this week.
Meanwhile, Regan’s
$20 million gamble appears to have come at the expense of the union’s basic
day-to-day work – such as bargaining good contracts and representing workers on
the job. In recent months, two separate groups of SEIU-UHW members formally requested
elections to decertify SEIU-UHW and go non-union, according to NLRB records.
The two groups are USC Verdugo Hills
Hospital (a 158-bed hospital in Glendale, Calif.) and Santa Rosa Community Health (an outpatient clinic system with 12
campuses and 500 staff in the San Francisco Bay Area). Regan has instructed his
attorneys to stall the elections as long as possible.
Like Dave
said: “In a weird kind of way, we must be doing something right.”
