Top SEIU-UHW Staffer, Leon Chow, Departs amidst Reported Connections to Man Convicted of 162 Criminal Counts

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow -- a top staffer for Dave Regan whose brief political career exploded in flames in 2012 -- is getting attention for his alleged connections to an ex-con recently found guilty of more than 150 criminal counts following a multi-year FBI probe.

Chow is no longer employed by SEIU-UHW, where he was paid approximately $120,000 per year.

According to an article in the SF Weekly, Chow has connections to Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow (no relation), who on January 8 was found guilty on 162 counts of racketeering, murder, money-laundering, and dealing in stolen liquor and cigarettes.

During a sentencing hearing in March, Shrimp Boy will face a mandatory life term, according to the Los Angeles Times ("Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow found guilty of 162 counts in massive corruption case," 1-8-16). The FBI investigation involved raids that detained more than 20 people including former State Senator Leland Yee.

What's Leon Chow’s connection to Shrimp Boy?

According to the SF Weekly, Chow is an "associate" of Shrimp Boy.

Shrimp Boy, after completing an earlier jail term, rose to the top of a Chinatown fraternal organization called the Ghee Kung Tong group, which was attempting to manage a night market in San Francisco's Chinatown with city funding.

Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow

When city officials "balked at handing over the market to a shady character like [Shrimp Boy] Chow," says the Weekly, "Shrimp Boy had an associate who did take over the market — a Chinatown advocate and union organizer named Leon Chow."

According to the Weekly, "Chow secured a permit for the night market in 2010 on behalf of his union, Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West (why home healthcare workers were interested is still unclear, but the union accepted a $5,000 check from Pius Lee to do it)."

The article, entitled "Shrimp Boy Associate Is Helping Julie Christensen," continues:

[Leon Chow’s] tenure with the market was brief: the night market ran for a full season in 2010 but for only two Saturdays in 2011 before closing. Chow, too, would soon drop off the scene. He mounted a brief campaign for city supervisor in 2012, running against incumbent progressive John Avalos in the Excelsior District. That effort ended after it was revealed that Chow lived in Walnut Creek, not the Excelsior; having committed the same offense that landed disgraced former Supervisor Ed Jew in federal prison (lying about his residence on a voter registration form) it seemed Chow's political career was over.

(Fyi -- Leon Chow’s earlier brushes with the law are detailed in various posts.)

Last fall, SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow reappeared in Chinatown to work on behalf of a business-dominated association attempting to elect a business-friendly candidate, Julie Christensen, to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors.

San Francisco's progressives -- including most of its labor unions -- backed candidate Aaron Peskin, who won the November 2015 election.

The business-dominated association -- called the "San Francisco Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth" -- was founded by Regan after he parachuted into California in 2009. Regan teamed up with leaders of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to create the Alliance, which has attempted to exert a rightward pull on the city's politics.

San Francisco Chamber of Commerce

Regan -- who’s made his name as the Boss's best friend at the bargaining table -- has extended his alliance with corporate CEOs to the terrain of electoral politics by forming such political alliances. Regan's Alliance includes multiple business associations and other conservative elements of the labor movement, such as the Police Officers Association.

Last year, SEIU-UHW and Regan’s so-called "business-labor alliance" threw their full support behind AirBnB and real estate developers, who campaigned aggressively against a pair of affordable housing and anti-gentrification ballot measures that were championed by neighborhood groups, tenants and progressives.

Where's Leon now?

Stay tuned!

Explosive Tape-Recording: SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Describes His Effort to Ink Secret Pact with the California Hospital Association

A source has provided a tape-recording of a stunning internal conference call that SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan conducted on October 30, 2013. Below, Tasty has posted a tape-recording of key excerpts.

During the call, Regan describes his efforts to negotiate a secret unionization pact, including sweet-heart labor contracts, with the California Hospital Association. Headed by Duane Dauner, the CHA is the Chamber of Commerce of California’s hospital industry and is run by the state’s largest hospital corporations.

Here's some of what Regan says during the conference call:

As everyone on this call knows, a little over 2 ½ years ago we began a process with the California Hospital Association. It led to the signing of an initial strategic agreement between UHW and the industry. It foreshadowed a desire on our part to create an entirely new relationship with hospitals in California to ultimately end up in a place where we could have as many as 100,000 non-union workers with the opportunity to join our union without the employers campaigning against it, an innovative contract agreement, and potentially a multi-employer agreement across the state of California.

Regan says the purpose of his secret negotiations is to “build a new relationship, a new model, a new paradigm for unionization in the California hospital industry.”

Interestingly, Regan’s “new model” is so sketchy that attorneys have been forced to conduct a lengthy legal analysis to see if the "new model" violates anti-trust laws, according to Regan.

Regan also describes how SEIU-UHW and the CHA hired a “top-flight management consulting firm” to show the Bosses that there’s a “business case” for allowing SEIU-UHW to unionize hospital workers under sweet-heart contracts.

Both we and the Hospital Association jointly hired a top-flight management consulting firm to really try to do the analysis… I’m happy to report that one of the things we’ve accomplished is that we have demonstrated with validation from a group that is very highly regarded by the industry itself that the union can, in fact, function as a strategic partner.

Later in the recording, Regan reports that the industry’s execs have not accepted his proposed deal, so Regan is planning to use the threat of expensive statewide ballot initiatives to pressure the Bosses to ink a deal with him. The ballot initiatives, says Regan, are designed to cost the hospital industry “billions” of dollars.

We said to the industry that if, by the end of October, we did not have an agreement that we felt like we could take back to our members, then we were gonna be prepared to go and file for title and summary with the Attorney General of the State of California and to introduce a series of potential ballot measures into the process that could ultimately lead to them being on the ballot in November of 2014.

Here’s the recording (fyi, you will have to boost the volume on your computer to hear it).

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Sells Out SEIU Local 1021, Pimps for Kaiser Permanente

Tasty hears that Dave Regan’s latest atrocity has many observers shaking their heads in disgust.  

Here’s what happened.

In California, SEIU Local 1021 represents thousands of public-sector employees who work for the City of San Francisco, the city’s courts, city college, etc. Most of these workers get their health insurance from Kaiser Permanente, which is trying to boost the cost of their health insurance by $15 million a year.

San Francisco’s elected officials and the city's workers are fighting back. According to an analysis by city officials that’s cited in this Los Angeles Times article, “nonprofit” Kaiser HMO made a 15% profit margin from the City employees’ business during the past two years. That’s $87 million in profits.

Meanwhile, “nonprofit” Kaiser has pocketed more than $9.5 billion in company-wide profits since 2009.

That’s why elected officials and labor unions demanded that Kaiser lower its proposed rate hike on San Francisco’s workers. The city’s unions -- including SEIU Local 1021, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees, Union of American Physicians and Dentists/AFSCME -- even formed a coalition to fight Kaiser’s rate hike. Check out one of their leaflets below, entitled “Kaiser: Stop Draining San Francisco Tax Dollars,” which bears SEIU Local 1021’s logo.

Here’s where SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan enters our story.

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

Did “Wall Street” Dave rush to the side of workers and taxpayers in order to fight the disgusting profiteering by the nation’s largest HMO? Not by a long shot.

According to multiple sources, Regan recently appeared at San Francisco’s city hall with a team of Kaiser’s executives and conducted a round of lobbying visits to push elected officials to approve Kaiser’s full rate hike.  

According to several sources, Regan even tried to enter the office of John Avalos, one of the most progressive members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Last year, Regan teamed up with the Chamber of Commerce to try to unseat Avalos by fielding one of Regan’s staffers -- Leon Chow -- as a candidate against Avalos. That is… until Chow crashed and burned in spectacular fashion after evidence surfaced that he violated multiple election laws!

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow

So… when Regan recently walked into Avalos’s office, Avalos reportedly told Regan to get out. At which point Regan began jabbing his finger at Avalos’s chest in “old school” fashion before “Wall Street” Dave and the Kaiser suits beat a hasty retreat.

Regan and his business-suited buddies then continued to lobby other elected officials to approve Kaiser’s multi-million-dollar rate hikes.

Quite a story, right?

Remember that famous labor song that says, “Which side are you on?”

Well… what does it mean when a top SEIU official shows more solidarity for a multi-billion-dollar HMO than for SEIU’s own members -- not to mention workers in general?

At a time when lots of people are asking well-deserved questions about the future of the U.S. labor movement, this recent episode speaks volumes.

Notably, Regan’s vision of company-dominated unionism is shared by the top leaders of SEIU, one of the nation’s largest unions. In fact, Tasty’s sources say SEIU President Mary Kay Henry hasn’t voiced the slightest opposition to Regan selling out San Francisco’s workers in favor of a giant HMO. 

Here's SEIU Local 1021's leaflet on Kaiser's price-gouging:

   Leaflet by SEIU Local 1021 about Kaiser Permanente's Price-Gouging of San Francisco's Workers: July 2013

CEO: SEIU's Dave Regan is My BFF

Dave Regan: In the Boss's Pocket

What do the bosses think about SEIU’s Dave Regan?

Check out the Sacramento Business Journal’s interview with Duane Dauner, head of the Chamber of Commerce for California’s hospital industry. 

Dauner is the CEO of the California Hospital Association (CHA), whose members include multi-billion-dollar corporations like Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, Dignity Health, HCA, Tenet Healthcare and Prime Healthcare Services.

So what does Dauner think of Regan?  Basically, he’s head over heals for “Wall Street Dave.” 

Why? 

Since 2009, Regan has given up hundreds of millions of dollars of concessions to the state’s hospital corporations, including eliminating workers’ defined-benefit pension plans, slashing their health insurance, subcontracting workers’ jobs, imposing invasive corporate wellness programs on workers, laying off thousands of caregivers, imposing wage freezes, etc.

And Regan has done all of this even though hospital corporations are making mega-profits. For example, since 2009, Kaiser Permanente has pocketed $8.2 billion in profits. And Sutter Health has taken home $1.6 billion in profits in just the past two years.

Last summer, Regan even teamed up with the CHA in a disgraceful, back-door attempt to reverse California’s safe-staffing laws -- a top priority for the industry’s bosses.

No wonder Daune is happy as a pig in sh*t ever since Andy Stern appointed Regan to take over SEIU-UHW!  

Here’s an excerpt from the Business Journal article where Dauner attacks NUHW and CNA for drawing a “line in the sand” and praises SEIU for “working with us." Check out the CNA's response at the end!

No more lines in the sand, says Duane Dauner, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association. If unions are going to make a comeback in America, they’ll have to work with business owners to solve problems together…

Dauner distinguishes between friends and foes. The California Nurses Association and the National Union of Healthcare Workers are in one camp.

Duane Dauner, CEO of CHA

"They look at management and employers as the enemy, Dauner said. "They draw a line in the sand. Anything management does, they are against. It's just 'Give us more and more.'"

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and Dave Regan, the local union's president, are in another camp.

"With SEIU, their leadership understands we can’t continue down the track we are on," Dauner said. "They are working with us and we are trying to work with them on health care policy and high-road labor relations."

This includes a joint effort to improve the health status of employees while addressing the cost drivers in health care through a multifaceted "Let's Get Healthy California" campaign.

"We have to look at this much more globally," Dauner said. "That's what we are trying to do with SEIU, while CNA has its own agenda."

No lie, countered CNA spokesman Chuck Idelson, dismissing SEIU's Regan as "effectively, an employee of CHA."

Ouch!!

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow Must File Campaign Financial Report on Monday

On Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle printed more news about Leon Chow’s decision to pull the ripcord on his political campaign following the publication of an article describing Chow's apparent election fraud. 

Chow, who serves on SEIU-UHW's Executive Committee, was running for a seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors. His campaign was backed by SEIU-UHW and the Chamber of Commerce.

According to the Chronicle, it won't be so easy for Chow and his puppet-masters, including SEIU's Dave Regan, to sweep their ugly mess under a rug. Here’s an excerpt from the article: 

Ending the campaign isn't as easy as sending an e-mail. Chow, who began raising money for his race in May, has to file his campaign financial statement for the first six months of the year with the city Ethics Commission by midnight Monday. He also can't close his campaign until he disposes of any remaining campaign cash and makes a final financial report.

Chow also may be facing legal problems. It is against the law to vote at an address where you don't live and business addresses don't count.

And here’s another excerpt from the article:

Plagued by growing questions about just where he lives, union organizer Leon Chow has dropped his effort to unseat Supervisor John Avalos in November.

The decision wasn't a surprise. After a San Francisco Appeal story this month revealed that Chow had been registered to vote at the office of his former Chinatown nonprofit agency from 2004 to 2008 and had listed a Walnut Creek condominium as his official residence in 2009 court papers, his campaign ground to a halt. Chow has canceled his campaign kickoff event and shut down his Chow for Supervisor website. Although he had not officially filed his campaign papers, Chow sent a brief e-mail to the city elections office, saying he would not run for the District 11 seat in the Outer Mission/Excelsior neighborhood and asking to have his name removed from the department's list of potential candidates. While Chow has denied any wrongdoing, he hasn't said why he decided to end his campaign. Calls and e-mails to Chow have not been returned.

Here’s the full article in the San Francisco Chronicle. 

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow Calls it Quits

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow

Yesterday, Leon Chow’s political career reached its final, fiery conclusion when Chow -- a top official at SEIU-UHW -- officially withdrew from the race for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors amid allegations of election fraud.

The development was reported by the San Francisco Appeal -- which initially broke the story on Chow’s apparent felony violations of election laws -- and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Here’s an excerpt from the San Francisco Appeal:

Union organizer Leon Chow, whose ties to residences outside of the district may constitute voter fraud, has withdrawn his candidacy for District 11 supervisor. In a brief e-mail sent to the Department of Elections on Monday, Chow offered no explanation for the withdrawal of his candidacy…

Chamber of Commerce CEO Steve Falk, with whom Chow serves as co-chairs of the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth, also did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

Chow’s candidacy had enjoyed months of planning, preparation and funding by Dave Regan’s SEIU-UHW and the Chamber of Commerce. In the end, however, it plummeted to earth in a spectacular explosion only 15 days after Tasty first published this post.

Here’s how the San Francisco Bay Guardian described it:

[Reporter Chris Roberts] dropped a journalistic bomb on Chow's ambitions a couple weeks ago when he unearthed documents indicating that Chow actually lived in Walnut Creek and that he was registered to vote at Chinatown business address – both in violation of election law…

 And the San Francisco Appeal cited Tasty in its coverage of the story:

According to self-described "labor union related gossip site" Stern Burger with Fries, Avalos is reportedly an enemy of SEIU-UHW honcho Dave Regan, who, according to Stern Burger, helped push Chow to run for office against him. Avalos is a member of the Board's progressive wing and was runner-up to Mayor Ed Lee in last year's mayoral election.

So what’s next? 

Well, one chapter of our story may be finished, but other chapters remain to be written! 

First, Chow will likely face a criminal investigation for apparent election fraud and other felonies. One source tells Tasty that the San Francisco City Attorney’s office has already begun examining Chow’s case.  

Secondly, more shoes will drop in the near future! Soon, Tasty plans to describe additional details -- revealed by inside sources at SEIU -- that implicate top SEIU officials in a variety of additional criminal wrongdoing that’s connected to Chow’s case.

Stay tuned!