NUHW Takes Fight to SEIU's Corporate Bunkmates

As SEIU-UHW dives deeper under the covers with its pinstriped patrons, the folks over at NUHW are waging an interesting battle against SEIU’s favorite bedmate, Kaiser Permanente.

Two of the members of Kaiser’s Board of Directors -- Christine Cassel and Jenny Ming -- resigned their positions after NUHW exposed their six-figure conflicts of interest. Today, only 13 people remain on the corruption-tainted board, including Phil “Brazil Butt” Marineau.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Telles -- another board member -- is under fire for ignoring Kaiser’s mental health crisis and for her connection to the ongoing scandal at General Motors, where she also serves on the Board of Directors.

Apparently, “Six-Figure Cynthia” is none too popular these days after turning a blind eye to Kaiser’s suicides and GM’s fatal ignition switches… while all the while pocketing a half-million dollars a year from the two mega-corporations.

Check out this website -- www.DearCynthiaTelles.com -- which features letters to Telles from Kaiser’s patients and mental health clinicians. The letters are jaw-dropping. Here's an excerpt from one by a Kaiser clinician:

Most of the patients I see have life-altering diagnoses such as Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Major Depression. They struggle with suicidality, medication compliance, substance abuse, daily hallucinations, hopelessness, and lack of social or familial support… Most clinics are significantly understaffed, forcing patients to wait on average 4 to 8 weeks for their follow-up appointments. Can you imagine sitting with a patient who is in emotional pain, has finally come to you for support, perhaps disclosing a history of traumatic sexual abuse for the first time, doing your best to build an alliance with them and give them hope, only to then tell them, “I’ll see you in 6 weeks?”

And here's a letter from one of Kaiser's patients:

I have been a patient of KP Psychiatry Department at three KP locations… For many of us, initially asking for mental health treatment is an incredible hurdle. Often the choice to leap or die is made by the glimmer of hope that someone will be on the other side ready to help. I chose to leap. Two years later I thought I made the wrong decision. I was not alone… It was obvious the therapists were overloaded… My condition worsened and I switched medications. Nothing seemed to work. After three years, I gave up.

Meanwhile, NUHW’s mental health clinicians continue to take Kaiser to task by launching departmental strikes, filing lawsuits, and winning a $4 million fine from government investigators for Kaiser’s severe mental health violations, which appear to be identical to the scandal rocking the VA hospitals. 

NUHW’s efforts have been joined by patients, who've filed a class-action lawsuit against Kaiser for illegally depriving patients of mental health care. 

Stay tuned!

Kaiser’s Phil Marineau is Nuts about Brazilian Butts

Kaiser's Phil Marineau: "I love Brazil Butt"

Remember Phil Marineau?

He's the guy on Kaiser Permanente’s board of directors who recently said "I gotta go to the head” when workers asked him about Kaiser's repeated patient-care violations and its demands for benefit cuts from workers even though Kaiser is making billions in profits.

Why does Marineau spend so much time in “the head?” It turns out he’s developed a keen interest in butts… and, er, Brazilian butts in particular.

Marineau is the former CEO of Pepsi. After making billions of dollars by selling sugar-packed sodas to the public, he's now making a buck from the public’s rapidly expanding waist lines… by hawking weight-loss schemes!

And that's not all. Like many fancy-pants capitalists, Marineau is apparently just a two-bit huckster in a three-piece suit.

The folks over at UNITE HERE, who represent Kaiser’s workers in Hawaii, recently launched a website that outs the nefarious business scam perpetrated by Marineau and his buddies at a New York private equity firm.

The scam works like this.

Marineau’s latest business venture -- Beach Body, LLC -- is a fitness-product company that sells exercise DVDs, nutritional supplements and work-out equipment including P90X, Insanity, and Brazil Butt Lift.

Brazil Butt Lift’s website features tons of photos of women’s butts along with classy appeals to readers like these:

“Booty Makeover Guide”

"Holy Hottie! Get me that booty!”

“Want to get a supermodel sexy booty in just 60 days?"

“My butt lifted an inch and I ended up losing 20 pounds." (WTF??)

The centerpiece of Beach Body’s scam is a “Multi-Level Marketing” scheme. Basically, Beach Body signs up regular people to serve as so-called "Coaches" who sell the company’s products for a commission. These “Coaches,” who are considered “independent contractors,” sign a 14-page contract filled with tons of hidden charges, fees, taxes, etc that drain money out of each unsuspecting Coach’s pocket as quickly as s/he can sell product.

from Brazil Butt Lift's website. Phil is one classy dude.

According to UNITE HERE’s website, more than half of the “Coaches” don’t make a penny from selling the company’s products! But Beach Body makes wads of cash, of course.

It's a perfect business model for Marineau and his money-grubbing pals over at LNK Partners, a New York private equity firm where Marineau is a partner.

That is… until UNITE HERE outed all of the details behind Marineau’s Brazil Butt scam!

Here's a link to UNITE HERE’s website:  http://www.beachbodybummer.org/

SEIU-UHW Caught in the Act of "Partnering" with Kaiser at Fancy Hotel

The W Hotel in San Francisco

It looks like the folks over at NUHW caught SEIU-UHW and Kaiser Permanente in the act of "partnering" at a fancy hotel in downtown San Francisco.

Here’s what happened.

Ten days ago, NUHW activists made an unannounced visit to the “W Hotel,” a luxury hotel with a spa, restaurant, two bars and panoramic views of the San Francisco skyline.

At the hotel, Kaiser's turbo-paid Board of Directors was meeting with an army of business-suited Kaiser execs and SEIU officials. 

Among those in attendance was SEIU-UHW’s Hal “Mr. Giveback” Ruddick, who took over John August’s spot atop the "Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.”

NUHW's visit caught the Kaiser board members by surprise. Apparently, the time and location of Kaiser's board meetings are tightly held secrets. Kaiser's board meets just six times a year in fancy hotels in cities across the US. Each board member is paid more than $200,000 a year to attend the six meetings. Quite a tough gig for the 15 fatcats who sit on the board of “nonprofit” Kaiser. 

Readers may recall that NUHW recently exposed massive financial conflicts of interest, which bounced one member, Christine Cassel, off the board and into national headlines.

Check out the video below to see how Phil Marineau, a Kaiser board member and former CEO of Pepsi and Levi Strauss, responded when NUHW activists tried to talk with him inside a lobby of the W Hotel about the crisis gripping Kaiser’s mental health services.

Soon thereafter, the NUHW activists were reportedly surrounded by Kaiser’s plainclothes security guards who pushed them out of the building -- prompting NUHW to file a police report against Kaiser.