Hospital Workers Deliver Loss to SEIU-UHW during Sweetheart C.H.A. Election

Here's some breaking news.

Remember Dave Regan’s sweetheart deal with the California Hospital Association?

That’s the deal where hospital executives welcome SEIU-UHW into their hospitals to unionize up to 60,000 workers. In exchange, SEIU-UHW gives political favors to the Bosses and commits to force workers into pre-negotiated labor contracts with cheap wages and benefits.

Well, last night, the workers at a Southern California hospital rejected SEIU-UHW in one of the first elections run under the CHA deal... and despite the fact that hospital execs gave SEIU- UHW every possible advantage! The final tally at Mission Hospital, a 552-bed hospital in Orange County, was...

SEIU-UHW: 329

No Union: 409

What kind of help did execs give to SEIU-UHW?

SEIU-UHW got complete access to the hospital's break rooms and conference rooms to try to convince workers to vote for SEIU. A list of every employee’s home address and telephone number. An order from hospital execs to every manager and supervisor that prohibited them from saying anything negative about SEIU-UHW. 

In addition, hospital execs agreed to a rush-job scheduling of the election so that no other unions would be able to get on the NLRB ballot.

That left SEIU-UHW as the only union on the ballot… but SEIU-UHW still lost!

Sources say workers are overjoyed to get rid of the SEIU-UHW organizers, who they affectionately called "the purple clowns." Apparently, workers were literally tripping over purple organizers camped out in their break rooms, knocking on the front doors at night, phoning them relentlessly, and stalking them in hospital parking lots and the cafeteria.

SEIU mailer from Mission

Quite a story, right?

Well, here's the kicker.

On Monday, the NLRB counted the ballots in a separate union election initiated by workers at Redwood Memorial Hospital, who petitioned to join NUHW. 

Interestingly, the hospital is owned by the same company that owns Mission Hospital -- that is, St. Joseph Health System.

At Redwood Memorial, however, there was no sweetheart deal... and the Boss fought workers’ efforts to join NUHW. Nevertheless, on Monday workers voted by more than a three-to-one margin to join NUHW!

That's not all. This is the fourth hospital owned by St. Joseph Health System to vote to join NUHW.

Apparently, this rising wave of support for NUHW has caused some serious heart palpitations for St. Joseph's execs. So the company’s top execs decided to invite SEIU-UHW into their remaining non-union hospitals in hopes that the purple company union will blocking workers from joining NUHW.

This isn’t a new tactic. In the 1960s and 1970s, agricultural growers invited the Teamsters into their fields to keep the United Farm Workers out.

This is what SEIU’s Dave Regan calls "strategic collaboration" with the Boss, as he did in this recent TV interview with NBC news!

PS. Sources report that the SEIU-UHW organizers on the Mission Hospital campaign have become increasingly suspicious about Regan’s deal with the California Hospital Association (CHA). During the campaign, workers repeatedly asked the organizers about the sweetheart deal, the pre-negotiated contracts, etc… but Regan refuses to show the agreement to staffers or even the union's elected Executive Board. When they were asked about the CHA deal, SEIU-UHW organizers were instructed to recite a couple of canned talking points and then redirect the conversation towards a different topic.

Video: SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Defends Backroom Deals with Hospital Corporations

SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan

Here's a remarkable video that offers new insight into SEIU-UHW’s secret deals with hospital corporations.

It's also a dramatic warning to workers at St. Joseph Health System and other companies where SEIU-UHW is now trying to unionize workers under a sweetheart deal with the California Hospital Association.

Elsewhere on this blogsite, Tasty has documented SEIU-UHW’s multiple backroom deals with hospital corporations including Dignity Health, Daughters of Charity Health System, Kaiser Permanente, and Sutter Health.

These deals have allowed the companies to pocket billions of dollars in profits by eliminating hospital workers' pensions, slashing health benefits, cutting staffing levels, freezing wages, and undermining patient care. For example, SEIU-UHW’s cuts have already allowed Kaiser and Dignity to save more than $2 billion, according to corporate financial statements. SEIU-UHW has even violated its own constitution and blatantly lied to its members in its rush to force benefit cuts down workers' throats.

The deals show that SEIU-UHW and its president, Dave Regan, are firmly in the bosses’ pocket.

And here's the latest:  Regan has now admitted as much on TV!

Check out the following excerpt from Regan’s five-minute TV interview with Los Angeles’s KNBC TV in September 2014.

During the interview, Regan admits that SEIU-UHW is not interested in fighting employers on behalf of workers and their patients. According to Regan, SEIU-UHW only pursues "collaboration" and "teamwork" with corporations. The era of "adversarial relationships" between workers and corporations is gone, says Regan.

During the interview, Regan presents a stump speech he regularly uses to try to convince workers to accept cuts to their wages and benefits. It's the same speech that bosses routinely deliver during "employee forums" inside hospital auditoriums.

Below is an excerpt from the interview along with Tasty's analysis (the full interview is available here).

The excerpt opens with the beginning of the interview and then cuts to a section where Regan introduces his stump speech by declaring that the labor movement is dying and will not survive unless it "does things very differently."

Quite incredible, right? 

First, Regan says there’s no longer a need for "adversarial relationships" between workers and companies because we no longer live in a society where "we have employers and we have workers." Hmmm.

Did Tasty miss something? 

Last time Tasty checked, giant employers are not only running our economy, they’ve gotten richer than at any time since the 1930s. And they’re waging an aggressive war to take more money from workers' pockets so they can deposit it in their bulging bank accounts. 

This doesn't quite sound like a new "team-based" and "collaborative" economy where bosses are sharing their billions with workers. You gotta wonder what the low-waged workers at Wal-Mart, McDonald's and the Fight for Fifteen companies would say about Regan’s statement that "employers" and "workers" no longer exist.

Next, Regan rolls out an age-old corporate scare tactic... and even spices it up with an extra dose of xenophobia. According to Regan, healthcare workers must accept lower wages and benefits because “the industries we work inside of have to be healthy. Because if they're not, workers' jobs will be moved to India, to China, to Latin America…”

Gimme a break.

The only way that U.S. hospital workers' jobs can be moved overseas is if hospital patients themselves are exported to India, China, and Latin America.

In addition, Regan falsely implies that hospital corporations are hurting for monty -- that hospitals will soon be padlocking their doors and relocating to distant continents.

What's the truth?

Hospitals are making giant profits. At Kaiser, profits are up 40% compared to the prior year and the company has pocketed $14.5 billion in profits since 2009. In 2014, Dignity Health reported an 8.5% profit margin (far higher than the previous year) thanks to a multi-year wage freeze for 15,000 workers negotiated by Regan.

Regan's speech is so lame, it's laughable.

Check out this excerpt. Take special note of Regan's hand motions, which seem to say "I’m spouting some serious bullsh*t and hope you don't actually notice."

The bottom line?

SEIU-UHW's Regan has climbed so far into bed with hospital executives that he's become the Boss’s chief spokesperson. The Boss pulls the puppet strings and Regan's mouth moves.

He's a snake-oil salesmen who’ll sell you out in a second, even as the Boss laughs all the way to the bank.

Here's a transcript of a portion of Regan's interview:

Regan: The culture of unionism is failing. And I think now what most people in this global economy… the economy is very different today than it was 30 years ago or 50 years ago or 70 years ago when the modern labor movement really was born. Then, it was a manufacturing society and this whole notion of “We have employers and we have workers” -- you know, that was accepted. The truth is we live in a society in a world right now where the way you succeed is through collaboration, through teamwork. And frankly, I think unions have to figure out, how do we advocate for the economic interests of our members and workers generally at the same time that we recognize that the industries we work inside of themselves have to be healthy. Because if they're not, the jobs will be moved to India, to China, to Latin America and we have to move beyond that outdated “us versus them” mentality. And I think we have to think about strategic collaboration as the way where workers will gain more through that than through the outdated mode that you describe.