SEIU-UHW: More Krookin’ at Kaiser Ratification Votes

Tasty hears that SEIU-UHW officials have pulled another head-spinning scam out of their purple bag of tricks. Here’s what’s happening:

At Kaiser Permanente’s hospitals in California, SEIU-UHW has been holding “ratification votes” on a proposed three-year contract recently negotiated by John August and Dave Regan. Remarkably, workers at more than a dozen facilities have voted down the proposed deal despite the fact that SEIU’s vote is a far cry from democratic and transparent.

Now that the voting is supposed to conclude, it’s clear that SEIU-UHW officials are unhappy with the results. What to do? They’ve simply added more days of voting at multiple facilities in hopes of changing the outcome! 

For example, readers report they’ve extended the voting at Kaiser Baldwin Park Medical Center, Kaiser Modesto Medical Center, Kaiser Walnut Creek Medical Center and others. At some facilities, Regan has reportedly added as many as four additional days of voting.

It’s equivalent to doing the following at a baseball game:  the Purple Team is unhappy with the score after 9 innings. So they change the rules and add 5 more innings in hopes they’ll end up on top by the end of the 14^th inning. And if they don’t, Tasty will bet dollars to donuts that they’ll pull another trick from their bag.

So what’s happening as Regan prepares for extra innings?  Readers report that SEIU has assigned more staffers and “Lost-Timers” to patrol the floors of Kaiser’s facilities so they can target workers to vote for SEIU’s deal.

At Kaiser Baldwin Park, workers literally stumbled across “extra-inning” voting in a Kaiser conference room. SEIU-UHW staffers had somehow forgotten to post an announcement about the extra balloting.

Finally, speaking of SEIU’s tentative agreement, a worker sent along interesting information about SEIU’s proposed “Partnership Tax,” which would make SEIU-UHW members pay a 9-cents-an-hour tax for every hour they work. The tax would be on top of workers’ regular union dues. If approved, SEIU-UHW would collect an additional $6 million a year from Kaiser’s 43,000 workers through the Partnership Tax.

So how would this $6 million be spent? According to SEIU-UHW’s summary of the tentative agreement, the tax would pay for things like training Kaiser managers on the union’s contract and “conferences on the Labor Management Partnership.” 

Gimme a break! Kaiser is making $7 billion in profits, but workers gotta pay for the training of Kaiser’s managers and supervisors? And what about these “partnership conferences”?  Do they include junkets like this one at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel and Spa where SEIU’s hand-picked favorites revel in steam rooms and poolside bars?

Here’s the excerpt from SEIU-UHW’s summary about the Partnership Tax. (Click on image to enlarge)

Dave Regan Deploys "Old School" Tactics against SEIU-UHW Shop Steward

Tasty hears that SEIU's Dave Regan is relying on some decidedly old-school tactics to implement his so-called “21st century unionism” at Kaiser Permanente. How old-school? Well, think "13 century"… including inquisitions, excommunications and run-of-the-mill collusion with the Boss. 

Here's what happening:

As workers at additional Kaiser facilities vote down SEIU's tentative agreements with Kaiser, Regan and Co. appear to be getting increasingly nervous about the votes. SEIU-UHW has intensified its "vote yes" campaign of mailers and leaflets to the union's 43,000 members at Kaiser. And last week, Regan retaliated against an SEIU-UHW shop steward who had the gall to vote "no" on the ratification vote. Apparently, the steward never got the purple memo that forbids her from actually voting her conscience or disagreeing with Dave and his “old school friends.”  

Here are the details.

In the run-up to the ratification vote at a Kaiser facility in Contra Costa County (east of San Francisco), an SEIU-UHW shop steward forwarded to some of her co-workers an email that advocated a "no" vote. When another SEIU-UHW shop steward got a copy of the email, she sent it to SEIU officials who quickly launched a witch hunt against the steward.

As workers at the steward’s facility showed up to vote, SEIU staffers questioned each of them about their communications with the shop steward. "Did she email you? Did she tell you to vote 'no'?" Union officials summarily stripped the worker of her position as a shop steward (which, b/t/w, is supposed to be an elected position).

Later, the excommunicated steward sent a text message to the SEIU-UHW steward who’d ratted her out to SEIU officials. The message apparently said something like: "How could you do this? We've known each other for so many years. I hope you have trouble sleeping at night."

Juan Castillo

Well, SEIU officials seized on the message as a pretext for their next old-school tactic. An SEIU-UHW Field Rep named Juan Castillo ran to Kaiser’s Human Resources officials and claimed that the excommunicated steward was threatening fellow employees.

Kaiser officials leapt to action in support of their “labor partner.” Company officials actually suspended the excommunicated steward pending an investigation! That’s right. Kaiser suspended her from her job without first doing an investigation.

Can you imagine? This is the same Kaiser management that refused to lift a finger against an SEIU-UHW Field Rep named Tiffany Ford after she made death threats against several Kaiser workers inside Kaiser Baldwin Park Medical Center. In fact, Kaiser refused to take action against Ford even after three separate Superior Court judges issued restraining orders against the Field Rep due to her death threats. Hypocrisy much, Kaiser Permanente?

Meanwhile, these latest developments point to growing nervousness inside the Purple Palace. After all, when SEIU officials unleash witch hunts and trumped-up charges against the union's own Shop Stewards, things can’t look too good from where they sit.

SEIU's Electric Slide towards Failure

"Mission failure."  That's what Kaiser Permanente workers are calling it. Check out this video, taken earlier today, of SEIU-UHW's so-called "rally" at Kaiser Walnut Creek Medical Center. How many workers actually attended the lunchtime rally? Here's a hint:  more than 1,500 SEIU-UHW members actually work at this Northern California hospital.

Well... errr... see if you can count more than 15 people in this video, taken during the middle of workers' lunch break. (You can see the video better if you enlarge it by clicking on the rectangular symbol in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen below. When you're done, click the symbol in the same right-hand corner to return to the blog.) 

And it gets worse. It turns out that Regan and Co. carefully scheduled the rally for the same day as the daylong meeting of SEIU's steward council at the hospital. Even though SEIU's shop stewards were released from their jobs and were paid by Kaiser to attend the rally, only a handful of them actually showed up. Ouch.
 
In related news, a reader from Southern California sent along this photo from today's SEIU rally at Kaiser Anaheim Medical Center. Check it out. As far as Tasty can see, the rally had fewer attendees than a hot tub party hosted by Steve Matthews and Dave Regan!

Meanwhile, workers from Kaiser Baldwin Park Medical Center sent along news from yesterday's SEIU rally in front of their hospital. Workers who support NUHW decided to attend the rally... and they far outnumbered SEIU's staffers and supporters. In fact, Tasty hears that NUHW supporters got their purple co-workers to join them in chants against Kaiser like, "No cuts, no two tier."

Tasty bets that Dave Regan and John August were squirming in their seats at this display of 19th-century unionism!

Way to go, Kaiser workers!