At SEIU Local 73, Controversy Follows Ballot Count

The results are in from the internal union election at SEIU Local 73 in Chicago. But the controversy is far from over… with allegations of election misconduct filed just days after the ballot count.

Here’s what’s happening:

On October 23rd, the votes were tallied in the mail-in balloting to elect the union’s top officers and 30-member Executive Board. The election came after a two-year trusteeship imposed by SEIU President Mary Kay Henry and a 2017 court battle launched by Local 73 members to bring an end to the trusteeship. SEIU’s trusteeship featured a cast of well-known characters, including Eliseo Medina.

Who won the election?

SEIU’s trustee, Dian Palmer. But by just 375 votes. Until recently, Palmer was the president of SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin. She’s also a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board. She beat out Remzi Jaos, a former staff member at Local 73. He’s part of a slate called “Members leading Members” slate, which pledged to return the union to local control.

As far as the election for Local 73’s Executive Board, the “Members leading Members” slate won eight of 30 seats.

Participation in the election was very low. Only 2,300 ballots were cast from the union’s 25,000 members, who work in the public sector in Illinois and Northwestern Indiana.

Just 6 days after the vote count, the “Members leading Members” slate formally appealed the election. It also plans to file charges with the US Department of Labor over alleged misconduct by SEIU officials during the election, including using the union’s resources to campaign for SEIU’s candidates.

For more details, check out a one-page leaflet from the “Members leading Members” slate as well as the election appeal it filed earlier this week.

   "Members leading Members" Leaflet on SEIU Local 73's Elections: October 2018 by tastysternburger on Scribd

   Election Appeal regarding SEIU Local 73's Officer Elections (10-29-2018) by tastysternburger on Scribd

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Launches “Spin” Offensive on Ballot Initiative

This week, Dave Regan trotted out an interesting “spin” on his ballot initiative gamble.

Regan’s mathematically-challenged spin goes something like this: 

Regan has spent $20 million of SEIU-UHW members’ money on a statewide ballot initiative targeting the dialysis industry. Meanwhile, two multinational dialysis companies have spent a combined $105 million to oppose the initiative. Even if Regan’s initiative loses at the ballot box, Dave says he’s still a winner because the other side was forced to spend more money.

A recent article entitled “Healthcare Workers’ Union Counts Dialysis Victory in Dollars Spent against It” (CalMatters, October 21, 2018) begins this way:

Win or lose, Dave Regan, the healthcare worker union leader who is pushing an initiative to regulate dialysis clinic profits, is getting some satisfaction at the huge sums being spent by the dialysis industry, $105 million and counting.

“In a weird kind of way, we must be doing something right,” Regan said, referring to the spending.

So why is Dave’s spin “mathematically challenged”?

Dave forgot to mention some important details.

For example, $105 million is barely a drop in the bucket for these mammoth companies. Their combined annual revenues are $51 billion, with annual combined profits totaling $4 billion. $105 million represents less than 0.2% of the companies’ annual revenues. It’s like a few pennies to them.

Meanwhile, Dave spent $20 million of SEIU-UHW members’ money, which represents about 20% of the union’s annual budget. Ouch!

Imagine if you gambled 20% of your organization’s annual budget… and you lost.

No wonder Dave is test-driving some spin… especially now that the election is less than two weeks away. Publicly, Regan says his union’s own polling indicates the initiative will win, according to a press release issued by SEIU-UHW this week.

Meanwhile, Regan’s $20 million gamble appears to have come at the expense of the union’s basic day-to-day work – such as bargaining good contracts and representing workers on the job. In recent months, two separate groups of SEIU-UHW members formally requested elections to decertify SEIU-UHW and go non-union, according to NLRB records. 

The two groups are USC Verdugo Hills Hospital (a 158-bed hospital in Glendale, Calif.) and Santa Rosa Community Health (an outpatient clinic system with 12 campuses and 500 staff in the San Francisco Bay Area). Regan has instructed his attorneys to stall the elections as long as possible.

Like Dave said: “In a weird kind of way, we must be doing something right.”

$125 Million Price-Tag on Dave Regan’s California Ballot Initiative

Here’s an update on Dave Regan’s 2018 ballot initiative bonanza:

The ballot initiative campaign with the highest price-tag in California's 2018 midterm elections isn’t about rent control or the gas tax, it’s about kidney dialysis, and specifically, how much profit providers can make from the procedure.

Supporters and opponents of Proposition 8, the “Fair Pricing for Dialysis Act,” have contributed almost $120 million during the 2018 campaign season.

(Samuel Metz, “California's most expensive proposition battle pits kidney dialysis providers against unions,” Palm Springs Desert Sun, Oct. 16, 2018)

In fact, these numbers have grown even higher since the article was published three days ago. According to the California Secretary of State, Regan has pumped $20.4 million into the campaign while opponents have poured $105.6 million into their effort.

Regan launched this statewide ballot initiative after SEIU-UHW was unsuccessful in organizing kidney dialysis workers a couple of years ago. Regan hoped his punitive measure would serve as leverage to force the industry into a backroom unionization deal -- just like Regan tried to do with the California Hospital Association.

Apparently, Regan’s threats weren’t enough.

According to one source, the two sides met in Sacramento to discuss a possible deal just days before the deadline for withdrawing initiatives from the ballot. After 30 minutes, however, the meeting reportedly ended when Regan stormed out of the room.

That’s what led to the full-on fight we’re now witnessing at the ballot box… with Regan’s billionaire opponents pouring five times as much money into their campaign as Regan.

At this point, it’s impossible for SEIU-UHW to finagle any sort of deal from the industry as Regan no longer has the ability to remove his initiative from the ballot.

So, SEIU-UHW is left in a no-win position… even as it spends tens of millions of its members’ dollars on a no-win proposition.

Meanwhile, SEIU-UHW’s public image is taking a beating in the press. All of the state’s major newspapers have editorialized against Regan’s initiative including the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, San Diego Union-Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Fresno Bee, La Opinión, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Modesto Bee and Bakersfield Californian.

Many of the newspapers are angry at Regan’s repeated attempts to use the initiative process as a bargaining chip rather than a tool to create better public policy. For example, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat writes:

Proposition 8 is nothing short of an abuse of California’s initiative process, which allows anyone with enough money to put a proposed law on the ballot.

This initiative is designed to punish dialysis clinic operators who have resisted union efforts to organize their employees. Voters shouldn’t play along.

We don’t have a position on whether clinic employees should unionize. However, we’re absolutely certain that voters shouldn’t be asked to judge a regulatory scheme for a specialty medical procedure that literally is a matter of life and death for tens of thousands of California residents suffering from serious kidney disease. That’s a job for the Legislature and the state Department of Public Health Services.

Proposition 8, sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, supposedly is about improving conditions at the 588 licensed dialysis clinics around the state. Yet there is nothing in this initiative about standards of patient care…

This isn’t the first time these unions have used ballot initiatives to try to gain leverage at the bargaining table. But this fight doesn’t belong on the ballot, as voters are in no position to write accounting rules for dialysis clinics.

To date, Regan has gambled tens of millions of dollars of his members’ money on ballot initiatives… without success. This year, he introduced no fewer than 10 initiatives. 

Imagine if he had instead spent $20 million on training rank-and-file organizers, mounting aggressive contract fights, winning improved standards for workers and patients, and launching grass-roots organizing campaigns.

Unfortunately, Regan has little interest in developing rank-and-file leaders and building bottom-up power among his union's members. Why?

It means fewer challenges to his personal power atop the union.

Is SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan On the Take from his Billionaire Buddies?

Here’s the latest from San Francisco, where SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan has joined forces with tech billionaires, real estate titans, and the billionaire CEO of a cryptocurrency company in an effort to defeat pro-worker candidates running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Last month, Regan dumped a quarter million dollars of SEIU-UHW members’ money into a Super PAC associated with tech billionaire Ron Conway. In the past, Conway’s Super PAC has “netted five-figure donations from Facebook, Google, and Airbnb,” according to the SF Weekly.

In recent weeks, Conway’s Super PAC dumped $640,000 into “Independent Expenditure” campaigns aimed at defeating two pro-labor candidates, according to campaign records published by the California Secretary of State. 

One of the targeted candidates is Gordon Mar, the Director of Jobs with Justice San Francisco, which is part of a network of pro-labor nonprofit organizations across the nation. The second is an anti-eviction lawyer who serves on the city's Board of Education.

The avalanche of Super PAC donations from Regan and his corporate buddies has already prompted multiple complaints alleging campaign law violations, according to the SF Weekly.

San Francisco is an especially illuminating stage for Regan to flaunt his love-acts with tech billionaires and plutocrats.

Using data from the US Census Bureau, the city’s Human Services Agency concluded that San Francisco has more income inequality than Rwanda and other sub-Saharan countries. And the Brookings Institute found that San Francisco’s income inequality is growing faster than any other city in the nation.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s housing costs are off the charts. City officials discovered that 42% of the city’s Latinos are living doubled-up with another family in one unit.

So why the f*ck is Regan working with billionaires to attack pro-worker candidates in the city with the highest income inequality in the nation?

Hotel workers striking Marriott in San Francisco

And how can Regan's $250,000 contribution to the Super Pac possibly be in the interest of SEIU-UHW's rank-and-file members?

Perhaps Diamond Dave is on the take.

After all, his timing is impeccable. 

Regan dumped SEIU-UHW’s quarter million dollars into anti-worker campaigns at the same time that thousands of UNITE HERE members are striking Marriott, the largest hotel operator in San Francisco.

So Dave, what kind of secret deal did you make with your billionaire buddies?

We want to know.

Election Begins at SEIU Local 73 Following Two-Year Trusteeship and Court Battle

Remember SEIU’s trusteeship of Local 73 in Chicago, which represents 25,000 public-sector workers in Illinois and Northwestern Indiana?

In August 2016, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry imposed the trusteeship based on the claim that tensions between the local union’s top two officers were disrupting it. She appointed Eliseo Medina, Dian Palmer and Denise Poloyac as trustees.

Eighteen months later, members of Local 73 sued SEIU and asked a federal judge to end the trusteeship and allow Local 73’s members to elect a president and Executive Board. Under federal law, a trusteeship is presumed to be invalid after 18 months.

That lawsuit -- known as Hunter vs SEIU -- was filed in February 2018 in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. This summer, a federal judge held a five-day hearing on the suit.

One month after the hearing concluded, the SEIU trustees announced officer elections. Earlier this week, mail-in ballots were sent to the union’s members and are due back October 23, according to a timeline posted on Local 73’s website.

Remzi Jaos

Initially, SEIU’s elections committee tried to block the opposition slate’s leading candidate from appearing on the ballot. Eventually, they backed down and Remzi Jaos, a candidate of the “Members Leading Members” slate, is on the ballot as a candidate for the president of Local 73. The slate is campaigning on a platform of returning control to local members.

Jaos formerly directed Local 73’s Higher Education Division and before that was a staffer at SEIU Local 1 and the Illinois Nurses Association, according to his bio on the “Members Leading Members” website. See below a photo of the slate’s candidates.

At the top of SEIU’s slate is Dian Palmer, who’s been one of SEIU’s appointed trustees at Local 73. Before that, she was the president of SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin. She’s also a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board.

The “Members Leading Members” slate says SEIU officials changed internal rules to allow Palmer and other SEIU staffers to qualify as candidates for the election. Here’s how they describe it in a leaflet:

In a sneaky move in July, Palmer got the International to waive the 2-year membership requirement for her and the other trustees. This waiver was done before any Local 73 members were notified by the Election Committee that the two-year membership requirement was changed to a six-month membership requirement!

Another SEIU staffer, Jeffrey Howard, is a candidate for the Executive Vice President. Howard, an “Assistant Area Director” for SEIU International, began working on the trusteeship team at the beginning of 2018.

In a September 26th filing in federal court, the plaintiffs in Hunter vs SEIU express additional concerns about the integrity of the voting system and the security of the ballots once they’re sent to an outside agency hired by SEIU to oversee the election. For example, they raise concerns about how "replacement ballots" will be issued and tracked, and how ballots returned as "undeliverable" will be handled and accounted for.

Stay tuned!

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Joins Tech Billionaire to Oppose Pro-Worker Candidates

Tech billionaire Ron Conway

It turns out that Andy Stern is not the only SEIU official who’s working with billionaires to fight pro-worker candidates.

Ten days ago, Dave Regan deposited a quarter million dollars of SEIU-UHW members’ funds into a Super PAC to oppose two pro-worker candidates running for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.

One of the candidates is Gordon Mar, the Executive Director of “Jobs with Justice San Francisco,” a pro-labor organization backed by many unions… including SEIU.

Go figure.

According to campaign records, Regan dropped the $250K into a PAC that’s long been associated with billionaire tech investor Ron Conway, a San Francisco resident who’s been sharply criticized for using his cash to exert outsized influence on San Francisco politics.

Just days after Regan deposited the money into Conway’s PAC (“Progress San Francisco”), the PAC funneled more than $120,000 into two “Independent Expenditure” campaigns to oppose the pro-worker candidates. (The two IEs are “San Franciscans for Change, Supporting Johnson and Trauss for D6 Supervisor 2018” and “Safe and Clean Sunset Coalition, Supporting Ho for D4 Supervisor 2018.”)

 

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

Conway, once dubbed the “Godfather of Silicon Valley,” was an early investor in Google, Facebook and other tech companies. He was the single largest donor to former San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee… dumping $600,000 into an independent expenditure committee to support Lee. After Lee was elected, observers criticized him for taking actions to benefit the companies in which Conway has investments.

When Lee died suddenly in office, Conway threw his support behind London Breed, who defeated two progressives in June 2018 with the help of a half million dollars of Conway’s money, according to campaign records. Breed now sits in the mayor’s office.

Regan, by pouring $250,000 into Conway’s PAC, has joined forces with a gang of SF business titans.

In recent days, a business association representing San Francisco’s 40 largest employers -- the so-called “Committee on Jobs” -- dumped $50,000 into Conway’s PAC. The group’s board is headed by Lloyd Dean, the CEO of Dignity Health, which employs about 13,000 of SEIU-UHW’s members. Conway also serves on the Board of Directors of the “Committee on Jobs.”

Another contributor is Diane Wilsey, the owner and CEO of A. Wilsey Properties Company, a San Francisco-based real estate company. Last week, she dropped $150,000 into Conway’s PAC, according to campaign records. (See below.)

Diane Wilsey -- Dave's pal

Wilsey, the daughter of a US ambassador and the great-granddaughter of the founder of Dow Chemical, inherited $300 million and a real estate company when her husband, a real estate tycoon, died in 2002.

She’s also a socialite who pays special attention to the ballet, the opera and museums, which earned her the title of “San Francisco’s queen of philanthropy” by the New York Times. (Jori Finkel, “For San Francisco’s Queen of Philanthropy, No Quiet Exits,” New York Times, August 1, 2016)

By the way… she loves her pet dogs. She donated thousands of dollars to put her dogs’ names on the walls of a San Francisco museum, where her pure-bred canines are memorialized as generous donors to the museum. 

WTF, right?

And here’s a shocker.

Wilsey reportedly doesn’t have much respect for regular people. 

A former director of San Francisco’s museums told the New York Times: “She can laugh and joke with anyone, even a truck driver. Her failing is that she has not always listened to what people told her if they didn’t have social standing.” (Laura M. Holson, “Dede Wilsey Is the Defiant Socialite,” New York Times, September 24, 2016)

Another former director put it more bluntly: “A lowly staff member does not command her attention. There is a master-servant relationship that gets in the way of things.”

Yo, Dave… she sounds like a f*cking perfect ally for the workers in SEIU-UHW.  Great job.

So who are the two candidates opposed by Regan, Conway, Wilsey, and the other gold-plated execs?

One is Gordon Mar, the Executive Director of “Jobs with Justice San Francisco.” He’s a candidate in District 4 for the Board of Supervisors. The second is Matt Haney, a tenants rights attorney who served as the President of the Board of Education. He’s a candidate in District 6.

 

Diane Wilsey relaxing with her dogs

Mar and Haney have each been endorsed by more than 20 unions, including UNITE HERE, NUHW, CNA, UFCW, Teamsters, the teachers’ union, the San Francisco Labor Council, and SEIU Local 1021. They’ve also been endorsed by groups like the Green Party, the San Francisco Tenants Union, San Francisco Berniecrats, the San Francisco League of Pissed Off Voters, as well as progressive members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Meanwhile, their opponents -- Jessica Ho, Sonja Trauss and Christine Johnson, whom Regan is backing to the tune of $250,000 -- are each endorsed by just two unions.

So why is Regan working with corporate fatcats to oppose pro-worker candidates?

First of all, this isn’t new for Regan. Since Andy Stern appointed him as the trustee of SEIU-UHW, Regan has dramatically reshaped the union’s former political orientation in order to align it with business executives and the right wing of the labor movement.

In 2014, for example, Regan joined billionaire Conway and AirBnB investor Reid Hoffman in backing David Chiu, another corporate Democrat, in his race against David Campos, a progressive candidate for a California Assembly seat in San Francisco.

Secondly, there’s undoubtedly a transactional deal hidden behind Regan’s contribution -- a tit-for-tat exchange in which Regan kicks down $250,000 of SEIU-UHW members’ money in return for some secret benefit to Regan.

From the face of it, it’s difficult to see how SEIU-UHW’s numbers could possibly benefit from defeating pro-worker candidates and replacing them with corporate Democrats beholden to a billionaire tech investor and corporate bosses, including the CEO of Dignity Health.

Leave it to Regan -- a so-called “21^st century thinker” -- to sell out workers in favor of corporate executives.

For more information, see excerpts from campaign filings below. Also, here are links to several articles:

Joe Kukura, “Massive Dark Money Donation Rocks D6 Race,” SF Weekly, September 20, 2018.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, “Mystery backers of Trauss, Johnson drop $100k into D6 race,” San Francisco Examiner, September 20, 2018.

Matier & Ross, “The one-two strategy in SF’s District Six supervisor race gets money behind it,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 24, 2018.

SEIU’s Andy Stern Joins Billionaires, Not Union Members, in Election Campaign

SEIU's Andy Stern

SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern has once again shown his true colors.

In an upcoming election for a seat in California’s legislature, Stern has jumped in on the side of billionaires to back a corporate Democrat who’s challenging a union member supported by progressive organizations, multiple local unions, Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and California-based unions inside SEIU.

The November election pits Jovanka Beckles -- a Teamster, two-term Richmond city councilmember and DSA member -- against Buffy Wicks, a former White House official and Clinton Super PAC director who recently relocated to California and has never held elected office.

According to records from the California Secretary of State, Stern has made two contributions to Wicks this year. When contributing the funds, Stern identified himself as a “consultant” for Grandview, LLC, a corporation founded by Stern soon after he resigned as President of SEIU in April 2010. (See below.)

Incorporation documents confirm Stern’s role in the company (see below). Stern may use the corporation as a vehicle for his consulting gigs with tech companies like Uber and AirBnB. Stern’s company is registered to a Washington, DC apartment -- presumably Stern’s -- which appears to have a “grand view” of the Potomac River.

Jovanka Beckles (left) and Buffy Wicks (right)

The race for the California legislative seat has features similar to recent electoral contests in the US including the one between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Crowley.

During this spring’s primary election, Wicks received $1.2 million from “wealthy donors tied to Lyft, Uber, and Bay Area tech firms, charter school interests, major landlords, a health care industry PAC, and Govern for California, a business-oriented Super PAC created by the board chair of Walmart and a former top advisor to Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,” according to an article authored by labor journalist Steve Early. (Steve Early, “Teamster Tackles Corporate Democrat in California Assembly Race,” Labor Notes, August 31, 2018)

The "grand view" of the Potomac from the DC apartment

If you’re curious about Wicks’ donors, check out this interesting website -- buffywicks.money -- which offers details about Wicks’ donors including billionaires Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman.

“In contrast,” says Early, “Beckles raised and spent only about $160,000, mostly in smaller, in-state donations. She ran as a “people-powered” candidate, free of corporate money and relied on few paid staffers or outside consultants.” Beckles supports “workers’ and tenants’ rights, single payer health care, and getting big money out of politics,” says Early.

Here's an interview with Beckles in Jacobin Magazine: "We Need a New Economy That Works for the Many” 

Early writes:

Ex-SEIU President Andy Stern is an individual endorser of Wicks—despite the fact that two major SEIU locals and their state council favor Beckles. Since leaving the union, Stern has become a corporate board member and gig economy consultant… In the Assembly District 15 race today, California single-payer advocates favor Beckles over Wicks, whose position on health care reform is much weaker.

If Beckles’ consistent solidarity with local labor causes is reciprocated through sufficient union voter turnout and spending on her behalf, she may indeed be joining the Assembly in January.

And there, she will be a rare “corporate-free” voice for many other working class and poor Californians whose interests tend to be overlooked by state legislators who do take money from business PACs and industry associations.

Beckles is backed by multiple unions including the National Union of Healthcare Workers, Transit (ATU) Local 192, University Professional and Technical Employees (CWA), Teamsters Joint Council 7, SEIU Local 1021, the Alameda and Contra Costa County Labor Councils, the California Labor Federation, both statewide teachers’ unions, AFSCME, and the California Nurses Association.