Friday, October 11, 2019

Controversy Brews over Allegations of a Stealth “Partnership Tax” by SEIU-UHW


Controversy is still brewing over SEIU-UHW’s tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente. Membership votes to ratify the agreement are underway and will continue next week.

What’s the controversy?

As Tasty reported earlier, SEIU-UHW president Dave Regan was pushing to impose a new 25-cents-per-hour-worked “partnership tax” on SEIU-UHW’s members at Kaiser. All of the tax revenues -- approximately $26 million per year – would have helped fund a new training academy controlled by Regan, which his internal critics called a “slush fund.”

In response to workers’ criticism of the new “partnership tax,” Regan pulled a “switcheroo” on SEIU-UHW’s members, according to internal critics.

In the final version of the tentative agreement, Regan removed the partnership tax and allegedly replaced it with a stealth funding mechanism that nonetheless requires SEIU-UHW members to foot the bill. According to critics, Regan agreed to have SEIU-UHW members forgo 2% in wage increases offered by Kaiser so those funds could instead be steered into Regan’s training fund. Tasty doesn’t have access to sufficient information to independently corroborate these allegations.

See more details in the leaflet below, which comes from John Duff, a retired Kaiser worker who formerly served on SEIU-UHW’s Executive Board.