Newspaper: Calif. Legislator Filed Complaint against Dave Regan over Barroom Clash

The largest newspaper in California’s capital city has published an article confirming Tasty’s report about a barroom confrontation involving SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan that reportedly injured California Assemblymember Richard Bloom.

Last night -- just ten hours after Tasty posted an account of the incident -- the Sacramento Bee published an article confirming the report and offering new details. (Alexei Koseff, “A union president shoved him at a Sacramento fundraiser, lawmaker reports,” Sacramento Bee, August 21, 2016)

Here are some excerpts:

A California lawmaker reported to the Legislature earlier this month that he was shoved by a health care union president at a downtown Sacramento restaurant.

The confrontation between Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, and Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, occurred on Aug. 8 at Lucca Restaurant and Bar, where the two were attending separate events for the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and California Forward.

Bloom’s office declined to discuss the incident but confirmed that Bloom reported it to the Assembly Rules Committee.

According to the Bee, Regan began arguing with Andrew Crutchfield, director of the political advocacy group Govern for California, who was attending the event organized by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.

A few people from both parties came over to break up the dispute. Bloom got between Regan and Crutchfield, Sen. Ben Allen said, and that’s when Regan pushed him out of the way…

“From the short period of time that I witnessed the altercation, Mr. Regan appeared belligerent,” Allen said.

[SEIU-UHW staffer Steve] Trossman said Regan “maybe had a glass of wine” that night. He was not kicked out of the restaurant, Trossman said...

“I really don’t think alcohol was a factor in this,” Trossman said. “Dave is very passionate about workers…”

Sen. Ben Allen is a Democrat from Santa Monica, Calif. and serves as the Chair of the Senate Education Committee.

Regan's barroom clash was the top item in CALmatters

So, why did Regan -- who reportedly has a history of engaging in alcohol-fueled fights -- get “belligerent” and require lawmakers from both houses of California’s legislature to stop him from getting into a fistfight inside a Sacramento restaurant and bar?

According to Trossman, Regan tried to fight Crutchfield because Crutchfield was “gloating” about the US Supreme Court’s anti-union Janus decision and was criticizing unions.

Now… even if Crutchfield is the biggest rightwing anti-union ideologue in the nation, is it smart or strategic for a union leader to try to punch him during the middle of two political events attended by dozens of California legislators?

In the Sacramento Bee, Trossman tries to argue that Regan was not at fault because he was “provoked” or manipulated by Crutchfield into trying to punch him.

Hmmm, that’s a great message. 

If it’s so damn easy to manipulate Regan into doing stupid sh*t, isn’t Trossman basically saying Dave is a dumbass?

After all, rank-and-file union leaders face provocations at their worksites all the time from aggressive supervisors, anti-union bosses, etc. They manage to keep their cool. Why can’t Dave?

Thirdly, if Dave is gonna do something stupid, he should at least try to hit the guy he’s arguing with… and not an innocent bystander who happens to be a state legislator.

At the end of today, it's obvious that Regan can’t keep his cool. Remember, he’s the one who assaulted a process server who was simply trying to deliver legal papers to his house, according to court documents.

It seems like Regan’s handlers should keep him away from public events. And process servers. And union staff members. After all, who knows when someone will next set Regan off like a fistful of nitroglycerin?

Here’s a link to the full story in the Sacramento Bee:  “A union president shoved him at a Sacramento fundraiser, lawmaker reports.”

SEIU-UHW Spends $14M on Ballot Initiatives in 14 Months

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

While tens of thousands of teachers are striking and winning in multiple states, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan is pursuing a very different approach to building the labor movement.

Since 2009 (when Regan was appointed the union’s trustee), SEIU-UHW has conducted virtually no strikes whatsoever despite being one of the largest unions in California.

Instead of organizing workers, Regan has diverted tens of millions of dollars from SEIU-UHW’s budget into ballot initiatives. In 2017, he spent approximately $10 million of SEIU-UHW’s budget on ballot initiatives -- about 10% of the union’s budget. In 2018, he’s on track to spend even more.

What’s Regan trying to do?

Basically, he’s hoping he can use the threat of ballot initiatives to pressure healthcare companies into deals with him. That’s what he tried to do (unsuccessfully) with the California Hospital Association.

This year, he’s trying to put nine initiatives on the California ballot. Two of them target DaVita, a kidney dialysis company where SEIU-UHW’s organizing efforts were unsuccessful, according to NLRB records.

Another initiative targets Watsonville Community Hospital, where SEIU-UHW has been unsuccessful in negotiating a contract for its members. Other initiatives target Stanford Health Care, where SEIU-UHW was unsuccessful in organizing workers at one of Stanford’s hospitals. And there are others.

Will Regan’s ballot initiatives be successful?

So far, none of his 20+ ballot initiatives has succeeded during the past seven years. That is… they haven’t led SEIU-UHW to organize a single worker. And that’s after Regan spent approximately $30 million on these initiatives. Not a record to write home about.

 

A DaVita dialysis clinic

How much is Regan spending on his 2018 ballot initiatives?

Beaucoup bucks.

In 2017, he spent approximately $10 million, according to SEIU-UHW’s DOL Form LM-2.

For example, he paid $1.2 million to a company to collect voters’ signatures to qualify initiatives for the ballot (Kimball Petition Management). He paid more than a half million dollars to polling firms to survey voters about his initiatives (ALG Research and Fairbanks Maslin Maullin Metz & Associates, Inc.). He spent another half million on lawyers, advertising firms, media agents, consultants and travel.

Regan gave the biggest chunk of change ($7.3 million) to a spinoff organization he created called “The Fairness Project.” The organization, which is headed by SEIU-UHW staffer Steve Trossman (he’s the organization’s “President”), not only supports ballot initiatives in California but also tries to spread their use in other states by funding various initiatives. According to the organization’s website, it has backed ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage, expand Medicaid, and establish laws around paid sick time in a dozen states.

The website, however, doesn’t say whether “The Fairness Project” is also funding Regan’s ballot initiatives against the dialysis industry in Arizona and Ohio, which Regan filed recently in an apparent effort to intensify his pressure on DaVita.

After spending roughly $10 million in 2017, Regan spent millions more during the first few of months of 2018. In February, for example, SEIU-UHW paid $3.5 million to buy TV, newspaper and online ads in California, Washington DC, Colorado and Massachusetts targeting DaVita and Fresenius (another kidney dialysis company), according to a press release issued by SEIU-UHW.

And things are about to get much more expensive.

Earlier this month, SEIU-UHW submitted 600,000 signatures to the state, and is now waiting to hear whether its kidney dialysis initiatives have qualified for the November 2018 ballot.

In response, DaVita and Fresenius have begun airing TV and online ads attacking SEIU-UHW and its ballot initiatives. They also launched a website called www.UHWinitiativeabuse.com

 

Image from dialysis industry's ad against SEIU-UHW

Of course, it’s possible the corporations will get nervous and decide to try to cut some kind of deal with Regan to get the initiatives off the ballot.

It’s also possible these deep-pocketed corporate giants will decide to go toe-to-toe with Regan at the ballot box. The companies have lots of money -- $3.9 billion in combined profits in 2016, according to SEIU-UHW. This would force Regan to spend tens of millions on a costly campaign to try to win the vote. California, the most populous state in the nation, is notoriously expensive when it comes to elections -- tens of millions of voters spread across some of the most expensive media markets in the nation.

Aside from its costliness and lack of success, a larger problem with Regan’s approach is it turns unions into a kind of Political Action Committee (PAC) run by technocrats and consultants rather than well-organized, worker-led organizations capable of exerting their power on the shop floor to get a fair share from corporations. Most observers agree we need to build the latter kind of union, not Regan’s PAC version.

For example, imagine if Regan had spent $30 million on actually organizing workers instead of funding failed ballot initiatives?

Labor leaders like Regan, when they don’t have the ability or will to lead workers to fight, often look for crutches… like ballot initiatives. In this case, Regan’s crutch appears to have become his entire strategy.

Source: SEIU Officials Secretly Funded Tyrone Freeman's Legal Defense for Crimes against SEIU's Own Members

“What ever happened to Tyrone Freeman?,” asks a reader

In late 2013, Freeman -- a close ally of SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern -- was sentenced to a 33-month term at a federal prison in Yankton, South Dakota. 

According to a reliable source, Freeman was eventually released from Yankton and transferred to a halfway house in Long Beach, Calif. 

Tasty’s source provided answers to some of the long-standing mysteries surrounding Freeman’s criminal trial:

• Who was the secret financier who funded Freeman’s multi-million dollar legal defense?

• Why didn’t Freeman rat out the higher-up SEIU officials -- including Andy Stern and Eliseo Medina -- who were implicated in the crimes for which Freeman was convicted?

Before Tasty offers up the source’s answers, here’s some quick background:

After Freeman was indicted, a team of million-dollar attorneys from Mayer Brown LLP -- a global law firm with offices in New York, DC, London, Paris, Beijing, Dubai, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, etc -- parachuted into California to defend him.

They included Kelly Kramer, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP who leads the firm’s “White Collar Defense and Compliance Team” and has personally defended former members of the US Congress. According to Super Lawyers, he’s one of the top white-collar defense lawyers in DC.

 

Kelly Kramer, Mayer Brown LLP

After Freeman was convicted, Mayer Brown LLP filed an appeal with the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, and parachuted two more attorneys from the East Coast to try to get Freeman out of jail.

They included Dan Himmelfarb, a partner in the firm’s DC offices, who specializes in appeals and has “filed more than 200 merits and petition-stage briefs in the US Supreme Court and has argued… 12 cases in the US Supreme Court...,” according to the firm's website. Before joining the firm, Himmelfarb was an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York and an Assistant to the US Solicitor General.

In other words, these guys charge beaucoup bucks -- likely $2,000-$3,000 an hour.

Who paid for these attorneys?

It sure wasn’t Freeman.

After all, when Freeman's wife appeared in court during Freeman's criminal trial, she was assigned a Public Defender because she couldn’t afford a private attorney.

So who paid Freeman’s legal bills?

 

Dan Himmelfarb, Mayer Brown LLP

Here’s what Tasty’s source says:

When Freeman was first indicted on multiple criminal charges, a clutch of nervous SEIU officials met with him to discuss his options.

Option #1: Freeman could try to beat the rap by pointing the finger at the higher-up SEIU officials who were apparently complicit in the crimes.

‘But don’t do that,’ argued the SEIU officials. ‘We’ll offer you a better option: SEIU will hire you the best attorneys in the whole damn country and we guarantee you’ll never see a day of jail time. But you can't implicate any of us.’

Of course, we all know that Freeman chose Option #2. And that’s why, during the trial, he never ratted out the SEIU higher-ups who, after all, were paying for his lawyers.

In the end, SEIU officials didn’t come through with their end of the deal -- their fancy attorneys didn’t keep Freeman out of jail.

Freeman has gotta feel burnt by his SEIU handlers, right?

Which leads Tasty to wonder whether SEIU officials might now be slipping him some hush money, given that Freeman has stayed silent even after getting out of jail.

Although Tasty’s source has provided answers to some of the long-standing mysteries, others remain unanswered:

Andy Stern, SEIU

• How much money did SEIU officials pay for Freeman’s defense and appeal?

• After the Los Angeles Times outed Freeman's corruption scandal, SEIU officials publicly condemned Freeman for stealing from low-paid SEIU members. Why did SEIU officials turn around and secretly fund his criminal defense for crimes committed against SEIU's own members? Isn't this proof that SEIU higher-ups are implicated in Freeman's crimes? After all, why else would they have funded his defense against stealing money from SEIU members?

• Who authorized SEIU's payments to Freeman's attorneys? What role did Andy Stern, Anna Burger and Mary Kay Henry play?

• Will Freeman tell his story to the public?

• Or is SEIU currently paying hush money to keep Freeman silent?

Dave Regan: "I want a higher salary than the presidents of the Steelworkers and UAW"

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

Should SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan earn more than the international presidents of the United Auto Workers at the United Steel Workers?

Doesn’t make sense, right?

After all, Leo Gerard (USW) and Dennis Williams (UAW) lead international unions with four to six times as many members as Regan’s local union in California. In 2016, the UAW had 415,963 members while the USW had 548,033.

Nonetheless, that didn’t stop “Wall Street” Dave Regan from pocketing a higher salary in 2016, according to the unions’ DOL Forms LM-2.

In fact, SEIU-UHW’s second-highest paid official, Dave Kieffer, also earned more than the USW’s Gerard and the UAW’s Williams.

Here’s a rundown of their pay, according to Forms LM-2:

Dave Regan, SEIU-UHW President:  $224,706

Dave Kieffer, SEIU-UHW Director of Governmental Relations:  $210,909

Leo Gerard, International President of United Steelworkers:  $207,289

Dennis Williams, International President of United Auto Workers:  $184,159

SEIU-UHW's David Kieffer

A quick glance through SEIU-UHW’s recently filed disclosure report reveals that ten SEIU-UHW officials pocketed more than $150,000 during 2016. The list is below.

And take a look at their job descriptions.

Is it really necessary for one local union to have a Director of Governmental Relations, a Director of Public Affairs, a Director of Healthcare Policy and Advocacy, and a Political Director -- all earning more than $150K a year?

• Dave Regan, President:  $224,706
• Dave Kieffer, Director of Governmental Relations:  $210,909
• Kathy Ochoa, Director of Healthcare Policy and Advocacy:  $179,572
• Stan Lyles, Vice President:  $176,230
• Steve Trossman, Director of Public Affairs:  $170,494
• David Miller, Assistant to the President for Strategic Campaigns:   $168,974
• Myriam Escamilla, Hospital Division Director:   $162,415
• Greg Pullman, Chief of Staff:  $153,980
• Chokri Bensaid, Kaiser Division Director:  $152,860
• Cass Gualvez, Organizing Director:   $152,521
• Arianna Jimenez, Political Director:   $152,227

Glad there are unions like NUHW, whose constitution speaks volumes about the union's democratic values by prohibiting the union's president from earning more than the highest-paid rank-and-file member.

SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry Removes President of SEIU Local 99

In early December, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry removed SEIU Local 99 President Barbara Torres from office and suspended her membership in SEIU for four years, according to notices distributed to union members and also available online. Henry also removed a second officer, Executive Board member Jacqueline Brown, and appointed Eliseo Medina to serve as a “monitor” of Local 99.  

Based in Los Angeles, SEIU Local 99 represents 25,000 public school workers.

According to SEIU, the actions came after “a thorough investigation and hearing by SEIU International” that reportedly was prompted by charges against union officials.

In October, SEIU’s International Executive Board held two days of hearings in Las Vegas to investigate separate charges filed against the top leaders of SEIU Local 1107, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Local 1107 represents approximately 9000 workers in Nevada.

Eliseo Medina’s assignment to Local 99 is his second such gig in a handful of months. In August, Henry appointed Medina as the “trustee” of SEIU Local 73 after she imposed a trusteeship on the Chicago-based union, which represents 25,000 public-sector workers in Illinois and northwestern Indiana.

Medina addressing Local number 73 members in Chicago

Readers may recall that Local 99 has a troubled history of scandals and corruption by its top officials.

In 2004, Andy Stern appointed Bill Lloyd as the trustee of Local 99.

Lloyd, who subsequently took on the job of Local 99's Executive Director, pocketed no fewer than three separate paychecks from SEIU totaling $224,000 a year along with multiple perks including an eight-year-long, SEIU-paid hotel room at the Wilshire Grande Hotel.

Lloyd is also known for his infamous sexual affair with Local 99’s then-president, Janett Humphries, at the same time that she was embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from the union's members. In 2006, Humprhies pleaded guilty in federal court to four counts of embezzlement and one count of conspiracy.

Steve Trossman -- who reportedly covered up Tyrone Freeman’s million-dollar theft from SEIU members for years -- also did damage control for Lloyd. Trossman now works for Dave Regan as SEIU-UHW’s "Communications Director."

In 2012, Lloyd silently disappeared from his job as the Executive Director of Local 99.

Max Arias currently serves as Local 99’s Executive Director. Arias, a former staffer at SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana, parachuted into California in 2009 as part of SEIU’s trusteeship of SEIU-UHW. Arias was initially assigned to nursing homes, where workers reported about his disrespectful attitude towards workers.

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Misfires (AGAIN) on Ballot Initiative

Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW, has committed another embarrassing ballot-initiative blunder.

In February of 2016, soon after his secret partnership with the California Hospital Association (CHA) exploded in flames, Regan filed a ballot initiative in Arizona designed to cap hospital executives’ salaries. Regan hoped the initiative would pressure several large multi-state hospital companies to convince CHA's Duane Dauner to ink another deal with him.

The Arizona initiative, “The Hospital Executive Compensation Act,” is virtually identical to a ballot measure Regan has filed repeatedly and unsuccessfully in California.

Beginning early in 2016, Regan spent massive amounts of SEIU-UHW members’ dues money to hire paid circulators to collect 281,000 signatures from Arizona voters to qualify the measure for the ballot.

However, Regan apparently forgot to make sure the signature-gatherers were actually legally qualified to collect signatures. D’OH!!

Under Arizona law, paid signature-gatherers must register with the Secretary of State’s office and provide an Arizona address.

This summer, when Regan triumphantly filed his 281,000 signatures with state officials, the ballot measure’s opponents quickly noticed that many signature-gatherers had not complied with state law. They sued SEIU-UHW in Maricopa County Superior Court to disqualify the signatures and thereby invalidate the initiative.

In August, just one day before a judge was set to hear the lawsuit, Regan threw in the towel and withdrew his initiative.

In news articles, including this one in the Arizona Capitol Times (“Backers of Hospital Exec Pay Cap Initiative Dropping Effort,” August 15, 2016), opponents celebrated Regan’s formidable f*ck-up. They said SEIU-UHW’s decision to withdraw the initiative “proves that the concerns about the validity of petition signatures were valid.”

 

Dave "Signature Man" Regan

This, of course, is not Regan’s first multi-million dollar mistake.

In June, a Sacramento Superior Court Judge ordered Regan to withdraw a nearly identical initiative from next Tuesday’s California ballot because it violated a gag clause that Regan himself secretly signed with the California Hospital Association. 

Regan's gag clause -- which he refused to show to SEIU-UHW's Executive Board -- prohibited the union from “raising concerns about… executive compensation in health care” and blocked SEIU-UHW from supporting any legislation, initiative, or regulatory action "adverse to the California hospital industry."

In late June, Regan was forced to dump his California initiative after having spent at least $5 million of SEIU-UHW members’ dues to collect voters’ signatures.

In 2012, Regan was forced to withdraw yet another ballot initiative after the Los Angeles Times discovered that Regan had inserted hidden loopholes in the initiative’s legal language designed to exempt two giant hospital corporations -- which control 25% of California’s hospitals -- from the new requirements.

And earlier this year, Dishonest Dave snatched TV headlines by allegedly assaulting a process server trying to deliver legal records to Regan’s home on behalf of the California Hospital Association.

How does the saying go about the gang that can’t shoot straight?

Maybe SEIU-UHW members should ask Dave to refund all the money he’s pissed down the drain via his f*ck-ups, sell-outs and failures, which now tallies more than $30 million by Tasty’s count.

Here’s another question. Why is Regan still collecting a paycheck? After all, would your boss keep you on the job if you repeatedly screwed up at a cost of millions and millions of dollars?

BREAKING: Judge Confirms Arbitrator’s Decision Requiring SEIU-UHW to Withdraw California Ballot Initiative

Sacramento County Superior Court

This afternoon, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge confirmed an arbitrator’s June 6th decision that orders SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan to withdraw a statewide ballot initiative by June 30 or face tens of millions of dollars in fines, according to court records and sources who attended the hearing.

Judge David Brown announced his decision at the end of a hearing during which attorneys from SEIU-UHW and the California Hospital Association (CHA) argued their positions.

Yesterday, the judge issued a tentative ruling on the matter, according to the Los Angeles Times (John Myers, “Sacramento Judge Moves to Cancel a November Ballot Initiative Limiting Salaries of Hospital CEOs,” June 23, 2016).

SEIU-UHW’s spokesperson Steve Trossman told the Times that SEIU-UHW “will decide next week whether to appeal the judge's ruling or allow the initiative to be scrapped.”

The Superior Court judge’s ruling represents a massive defeat for Regan.

In 2014, Regan leapt into bed with hospital CEOs to forge a secret deal that sold out workers, patients, and the public. Regan triumphantly called the sell-out deal a “visionary” agreement that would transform U.S. labor relations and the healthcare industry.  Yeah right.

By late 2015, Regan found himself with nothing to show for his sordid act of lovemaking with the fatcat CEOs.

So, in November of 2015, Regan decided to file a statewide ballot initiative targetING his CEO pals and their multi-million-dollar salaries. Unfortunately, Regan forgot about the far-reaching gag clause that he’d written and signed… and which specifically blocks him from filing such a ballot initiative. 

Doh!

Regan must now carefully contemplate his next chess move after flawlessly steering SEIU-UHW into a tight-ass corner with no way out. 

Thanks to Regan, SEIU-UHW’s members are trapped in a no-win situation where they will watch as somewhere between $5 million and $50 million of their dues money is unceremoniously flushed down the toilet.

Way to go, Dave!

Stay tuned for Dave’s next Einstein move.

SEIU-UHW's Membership Plummets by 40%, While Profits Skyrocket

Last week, SEIU-UHW sent its annual "LM-2" report to the U.S. Department of Labor with details about its membership, finances, and staff salaries.

Here’s what jumps out from a quick read.

SEIU-UHW’s total membership plummeted sharply during 2015, with the union losing 52,000 members – or almost 40% of its membership. SEIU-UHW’s membership declined from 140,886 to 88,694 members by the end of 2015.

That's because last June, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry and the SEIU International Executive Board ordered SEIU-UHW to transfer more than 50,000 long-term care members to Los Angeles-based SEIU Local 2015, headed by Henry's ally Laphonza Butler.

Despite this dramatic decline in membership, however, SEIU-UHW is rolling in the dough thanks to a dues increase that SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan pushed onto the union's members. The increase has left workers paying as much as $144 in union dues per month.

So how much money did SEIU-UHW make last year?

The union reported a profit of $16.6 million – which translates into a profit margin of more than 14%. To put that into perspective, it’s higher than Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola.

For-profit unionism? How "21st century," right?

What does SEIU-UHW do with the profits?

According to last week's filing, Regan is stockpiling massive amounts of cash in the union's bank account. SEIU-UHW's "cash" jumped from $34.8 million on January 1, 2015 to $51.4 million by the end of the year, according to financial disclosures. See an excerpt below from the union's 2015 LM-2 form.

SEIU-UHW's DOL Form LM-2 for 2015

Meanwhile, a number of SEIU-UHW officials are cashing in on the gravy train.

In 2015, Regan pocketed a $30,000 pay increase that boosted his annual pay by 14% to $243,734.

Regan's "Deputy Chief of Staff," Triana Silton, got a $30,000 pay increase that boosted her take-home pay to $132,052.

Other over-paid officials at SEIU-UHW include...

Dave Kieffer (Director of Government Relations): $204,345

Steve Trossman (Director of Public Affairs): $173,029

Myriam Escamilla (Hospital Division Director): $175,260

David Miller (Special Assistant to the President): $166,340

Why do SEIU-UHW's staff and officers earn so much? 

Unlike unions like the National Union of Healthcare Workers, SEIU-UHW doesn't have a constitution that blocks the union's president and staff from earning more than the union's members.

Stay tuned. More to follow.

Source: Leak of Dave Regan's Attack Memo Came from Inside SEIU-UHW

Here's the latest info on SEIU's transfer of California long-term care workers to SEIU Local 2015.

Remember Dave Regan's piece called "Who’s Gonna Bell the Cat? The Tyranny of the Majority: Ethics and Values in SEIU?”? That's the memo that slams Mary Kay Henry and was "leaked" to the press.

Well, here's an interesting development.

Tasty's sources have revealed the identity of the "leaker." 

Who is it?

Dave Regan!

According to Tasty's sources, Regan penned the piece with Steve Trossman (SEIU-UHW's Communications Director) and then told Trossman to leak it to the press. Trossman approached his crew of "go-to" reporters (those who reliably publish SEIU-UHW's materials), including Chris Rauber at the San Francisco Business Times and Tracy Seipel at the San Jose Mercury News. Rauber, of course, wrote this story.

Trossman: Cover-ups and Leaks

What's the significance?

Well, it's notable that Regan is now using "leaks" of internal SEIU information as a "weapon" in his self-described "war" against Mary Kay Henry and SEIU. This represents an escalation that’ll inevitably sharpen tensions.

Additionally, it means we can expect that more "leaks" will follow from Regan... and that he'll deploy similar quote-and-dagger tactics against Henry.

Secondly, Tasty has learned that Mary Kay Henry was prepared to trustee SEIU-UHW if Regan had refused to transfer UHW's 65,000 long-term care workers. In fact, the staff of multiple California SEIU local unions were on "24-hour-a-day standby" to receive orders from SEIU to carry out the seizure of SEIU-UHW’s offices.

Finally, here's the latest news about SEIU Local 2015, the new statewide union.

According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, Mary Kay Henry has named Laphonza Butler -- the current president of SEIU Local 6434 -- as the "provisional president" of SEIU Local 2015.

On June 22, Butler changed her Facebook profile picture to feature one of herself standing alongside Henry.

The Bee also reports:

“Along with Butler, the new statewide local will be led by Arnulfo De La Cruz, Kim Evon, Robert Li, and April Verrett, SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry said Tuesday.”

Notably, each of the newly merged unions (Local 6434, Local 521, and SEIU-UHW) will have a representative among SEIU Local 2015’s top five staff people... except for SEIU-UHW! 

Of course, this is another sign that Henry is actively marginalizing Regan and SEIU-UHW. 

 

Butler's new FB profile picture

Here's some background on the five staffers whom Henry has appointed to run SEIU Local 2015:

Laphonza Butler (2014 pay of $165,952) is the president of SEIU Local 6434, serves on SEIU's International Executive Board, is the president of the SEIU California State Council, and is a close ally of Mary Kay Henry.

Kim Evon (2014 pay of $131,503) is currently the Secretary-Treasurer at Local 6434 and also serves on the board of the SEIU California State Council.

Robert Li (2014 pay of $94,579) is a staff member of SEIU Local 521, where his job title is "Director II," according to the US Department of Labor.

April Verrett (2014 pay of $127,931) is the Executive Vice President of “SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana-Missouri-Kansas,” a union of 64,000 workers whose name grows longer with every SEIU merger. She’s been a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board since she was placed on Mary Kay Henry's slate of IEB candidates in 2012. She’s also on the board of the SEIU Illinois State Council.

As far as Arnulfo de la Cruz, this appears to refer to Arnulfo "Bobby" de la Cruz (2014 pay of $124,223), a longtime SEIU staffer who's been on the Purple Palace’s payroll as an "Assistant Area Director" in California.  De la Cruz’s son is also named “Arnulfo de la Cruz” and works for SEIU as the "National Director" for immigration reform.

SEIU International Executive Board Member Embezzled $500K, Audit Finds

SEIU IEB Member Dana Cope

Here’s the latest on the corruption scandal that nabbed another member of SEIU’s International Executive Board (IEB).

In February, Tasty reported that Dana Cope, an SEIU IEB member and the Executive Director of SEIU’s State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC), stepped down after a North Carolina district attorney requested a criminal investigation into his alleged financial corruption.

At the time, SEANC swore that Cope was clean as a whistle… and that it had done “a thorough review and found no misappropriation of funds or improprieties by Cope,” according to the Raleigh News and Observer. SEIU even sent a crew of its top officials to the newspaper's offices and told them not to publish an article detailing evidence of Cope's corruption.

Days later, when Cope resigned his job, SEANC -- also known as "SEIU Local 2008" -- handed Cope a $148,000 severance package.

That's what happened two months ago.

Two weeks ago, investigators released the summary findings of an outside audit into Cope's spending practices. Auditors found that Cope’s corruption is far worse than was initially uncovered by the local newspaper. In fact, Cope “racked up nearly a half-million dollars in unjustified spending and credit card transactions” during just 28 months, according to the audit.

Auditors reportedly were unable to do a lengthier review of Cope’s spending because he shredded documents and removed a computer hard drive from the union’s office. 

According to the newly released audit, Cope…

• spent $14,708 of SEANC’s funds to take his wife and sons on a trip to China.

• used $31,345 to pay for his private flying lessons.

• used SEANC credit cards for $404,948 in purchases that were undocumented or had no SEANC purpose.

• falsified records to conceal his embezzlement of union members' money.

In addition, the newspaper obtained records that show Cope used a SEANC credit card last fall for purchases from “a luxury tour company, a North Hills art gallery, a Texas purveyor of upscale Western wear and a London clothier.”

Oh, and Cope also used union members’ money to pay for eye-brow waxing.

Referring to the union's members who work for state government, an observer said it's going to be tough for SEIU “to explain a $57 eyebrow wax at European Wax Center to a guy driving a dump truck at DOT.”  

 

SEIU's Dave Kieffer

The State Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation into Cope and SEIU. “It is hard to imagine how some of these expenditures benefited state employees or fit into the mission of the organization,” said the local District Attorney.

It's important to note that Cope’s corruption scandal was first uncovered by a union member who criticized an SEIU money-making scheme engineered by Cope, whereby union members purchase computers and other consumer electronics by paycheck deduction at elevated prices.

In an earlier post, Tasty revealed an internal SEIU memo that reports that SEANC’s "primary function" is "selling insurance." The memo notes that SEANC’s staff consists of 14 insurance salespeople… and only 3 union representatives for its 55,000 members. So much for fighting for workers.

SEIU’s latest corruption scandals will be familiar territory for readers who followed the scandal involving other members of SEIU’s IEB, Tyrone Freeman and Rickman Jackson, along with a cover-up engineered by Steve Trossman, Dave Kieffer and other top SEIU officials, according to sworn testimony by a top SEIU staffer.

Andy Stern

After the Los Angeles Times revealed corruption scandals involving Freeman and Jackson, SEIU’s Andy Stern published a column in the Times announcing SEIU’s "bold" new initiative to stop corruption by its officials. In 2008, Stern wrote that SEIU would quickly become “organized labor's ethical gold standard.”

Here's some of what Stern wrote in the Los Angeles Times.

At the SEIU, we will not tolerate any actions that put the interests of our members at risk, and we will respond to credible allegations wherever they occur. Period. …We are calling on every SEIU local across the country to immediately adopt a standard code of ethics -- guidelines the International Union adopted several years ago -- that protects the interests of members… In addition, we have established a commission on ethics… When we come out on the other side of this, we want the SEIU to represent organized labor's ethical gold standard. At the SEIU, we are committed to leading a reform movement within labor. That means setting the highest standards of honesty and integrity.

SEIU's Steve Trossman

“Ethical goal standard”?

Why then have three members of SEIU's own International Executive Board -- its highest decision-making body -- gone down in massive corruption scandals in recent years?

And why are two top SEIU officials -- Dave Kieffer and Steve Trossman -- still earning six-figure paychecks from SEIU after waging a cover-up of Freeman’s multi-million dollar corruption scandal?

And why is Rickman Jackson, who stole more than $30,000 from SEIU's members, still on SEIU's payroll?

“Ethical goal standard”?