Kaiser's Partnership Pals Hold Birthday Celebration as Rebellion Breaks Out in Partnership Ranks

Wellness walks? Dance-a-thons? Contract buddies? Purple pedometers?

Meg Niemi and Dennis Dabney

In case you thought you'd seen it all, here's the latest from the Disneyland world of partnership bargaining, which resumed this week at the San Jose Marriott Hotel (April 28-30).

It comes from the twitter account of Meg Niemi, the President of SEIU Local 49. Niemi was last seen hugging Kaiser Permanente's top HR executive, Dennis Dabney, during recent bargaining meetings.

On Friday, Meg sent out the following tweet after SEIU members delivered "happy birthday” cards to Scott Allen, Kaiser’s Director of Labor Relations in Washington and Oregon, to celebrate the partnership's birthday. Looks like the officials atop the partnership unions are gearing up for a real knockdown drag-out fight with the Boss, right?

Here's the pic, with the smiling HR official standing in the middle. (Btw, not too many signatures on those b-day cards, right?)

Interestingly, it looks like another partnership union didn't get the memo about the all-smiles-and-hugs approach to Kaiser and its HR department.

UFCW Local 400 -- which is part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions and a “partnership” union – has sued Kaiser in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for violating its members’ contract, according to a Courthouse News article published April 10, 2015.

Local 400 -- whose members include RNs, Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, Mental Health Professionals, Substance Abuse Counselors, Audiologists and other professionals at 33 Kaiser outpatient facilities in DC, Maryland and Virginia -- says Kaiser is violating basic provisions of its labor contract and giving substandard care to patients so it can boost its profits.

The union has filed more than 60 grievances in an effort to get Kaiser to fix the problems. But Kaiser won't even follow the contract's grievance procedure!  That's why Local 400 is suing Kaiser in federal court.

Yesterday, UFCW Local 400 posted the following statement on its website: “Kaiser Worker Treatment Cause of Concern.” 

The statement details problems with off-the-clock work, inadequate staffing levels that underminethe quality of care, Kaiser’s profiteering at the expense of patients, and the HMO’s refusal to give benefited positions to workers. Here are some excerpts:

Once a model of labor-management cooperation, Kaiser Permanente has made troubling changes in the way it treats its health professionals, bringing in managers lacking experience in a union environment, disregarding the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, and focusing more on profits than the well-being of its employees and patients. 

As a result, an unprecedented number of grievances have been filed in the Mid-Atlantic region over the past year.

“Kaiser was once a model employer and we hope it will be again, but right now it’ s anything but,” said Local 400 Secretary-Treasurer Lavoris ”Mikki” Harris... 

“Kaiser’s recent behavior leads me to wonder whether the for-profit cart is dragging the non-profit horse,” Harris said. “As a result, Kaiser’s vaunted Labor-Management Partnership is not what it once was, with Kaiser’s health professionals being treated not as its most valuable resource, but rather as a cost to be minimized. Together, we will reverse this unfortunate turn of events.”

Way to go, Local 400! 

It sounds like the local’s members -- many of whom do the same work as NUHW’s members in California – have borrowed a page from the red union's playbook. 

More to come? Stay tuned.

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”?  

Dignity Health Demands Giant Wage and Benefit Cuts from SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

It turns out that SEIU-UHW officials are currently negotiating not just with Kaiser Permanente but also with Dignity Health, which is demanding sharp cuts to 14,000 SEIU-UHW members’ pay and benefits.

Dignity, formerly called "Catholic Healthcare West," is one of the largest hospital chains in the Western United States. And SEIU-UHW’s contract with Dignity is the union’s second largest labor contract after Kaiser.

Readers might recall that in 2009 and 2012, SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan and Hal Ruddick negotiated giant cuts to Dignity workers’ pay and benefits, including the elimination of workers' defined-benefit pension plan, a wage freeze, cuts to health coverage for workers' dependents, an intrusive Wellness Program, and other givebacks.

Here's what's happening in the current negotiations, according to reports from members of SEIU-UHW’s bargaining committee.

Dignity is now demanding wage cuts for SEIU-UHW members in dozens of job classifications.

The company claims that many workers' wages are "above market," so it has proposed a brand new wage grid that’ll slash their pay. According to the bargaining committee, Dignity has the lowest standby and collateral pay in California, and "we got only 2% wage increase for the first two years of our current CBA and on the third year we took a wage freeze." (SEIU-UHW’s current “CBA” or Collective Bargaining Agreement will expire April 30, 2015.)

Dave Regan

Under Dignity's proposal, workers who don't receive wage cuts would get a wage freeze along with a one-time bonus equal to 0.75% of pay.

In addition, Dignity is proposing even more cuts to workers' already-reduced retirement plan.

In 2009, SEIU-UHW's Hal Ruddick helped Dignity to eliminate workers' defined-benefit pension plan and replace it with a cheap 401(k)-like plan. That change produced hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for Dignity, according to the company's financial reports. Ruddick got workers to ratify the cut by blatantly lying to them, as documented in this earlier post.

Now… Dignity wants even more retirement cuts.

The company wants to transfer all of SEIU-UHW's members into a new and even cheaper retirement plan that was set up for Dignity's non-union employees. This change would bring multiple cuts to SEIU-UHW members, including reducing the amount that the company deposits in each worker's retirement account by $2,000 a year.

What's going on? Is Dignity losing money?

Nope. Last year, it made nearly $913 million in profits, according to its audited financial statement. 

Instead, what's at work here is Dave Regan’s program of "strategic collaboration” with corporate execs. Diamond Dave is more interested in pleasing his corporate partners than fighting on behalf of SEIU-UHW’s members. Earlier this month, Regan told SEIU-UHW’s bargaining committee they could not "debate" their employer at the bargaining table.

The proposed cuts at Dignity are simply the latest in a path of devastating destruction that Dave Regan has carved across California's hospital workforce since he parachuted into California in 2009. For example, Regan has already eliminated the defined-benefit pension plans for more than 25,000 of SEIU-UHW members, thereby shifting billions of dollars from workers' pockets into the hands of their corporate employers. 

Stay tuned as Dave Regan and Hal Ruddick, who engineered the massive cuts at Dignity, serve as the lead negotiators for 90,000 Kaiser workers represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.

Kaiser's Propaganda Team Moves into Overdrive

As partnership bargaining begins, Kaiser Permanente’s “Office of Labor Management Partnership” is waging a propaganda campaign that would make George Orwell blush. 

The campaign -- aimed at convincing workers that Kaiser's execs and sellout unions are not um actually selling them out -- delivers its message via magazines, websites, videos, tweets, Facebook posts, email blasts, instagram… and even cartoons.

Check out one of the latest-and-greatest piece of partnership propaganda below. 

It's a cartoon showing Kaiser execs and partnership unions leading workers to a fantastic future filled with promise and a glistening city of gold. Pay special attention to the business-suited execs who lead the ignorant healthcare workers in scrubs to a sunny “tomorrowland” by telling them: “Idle fear is the risk. It derails progress and partnership."

And when the workers finally reach "Tomorrowland," they jump for joy and exclaim in unison: "We made it to the other side. Hip hip for us and to our guides. Planning and prep that helped our passage. But working together was our key advantage!"

 

  Kaiser Permanente's Pro-Partnership Cartoon: "SuperScrubs - Crossing to Our Future" April 20...

So who actually dreams this sh*t up?

Here's a picture of some of the Propaganda Team during last month's Bargaining Kickoff. While workers listened to speeches from Kaiser execs and SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan in a hotel ballroom, the Propaganda Team was busily working in a hotel conference room upstairs.

The team reportedly includes Lisa Hubbard, Maureen Anderson, Andrea Buffa, Anjetta McQueen, Laureen Lazarovici, and Julie Light.

Together, they’ve produced such journalistic gems as the following articles in “Hank,” a glossy pro-partnership magazine published and distributed to Kaiser workers by the Office of Labor Management Partnership. 

Here's one edition subtly titled "Partnership: The Choice of Champions." And another that pictures Kaiser's workers inside Dorothy's magical shoes as they travel down the path towards the Emerald City of Oz, which sparkles amidst a golden sunset.

  

Some sinister bullsh*t, right? Interestingly, Tasty hears that many Kaiser workers refer to "Hank" as "Yank" ...or alternatively "Wank." Sounds about right.

More to follow!

Kaiser's "Partnership" Bargaining Begins as Goofy Hugs Delegates

This week, the "partnership unions" are holding their first bargaining session with Kaiser Permanente at the Manhattan Beach Marriott Hotel in Southern California (April 14-16).

Wanna have a glimpse at partnership “bargaining”?

Check out the following photos, tweets and messages from SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan, Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson, Kaiser Coalition Exec. Dir. Hal Ruddick, and others. They come from the "bargaining kickoff" held earlier this month (March 30-April 1) as well as the partnership unions' "Union Delegate Conference" at Disneyland (March 27-29).

Staffers from the Labor Management Partnership were so thrilled by the speeches of top union and Kaiser leaders that they tweeted excerpts to the outside world. Here's an interesting excerpt from SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan's speech: "Negotiations are not a debate and tantrums don't work."

Hmm. So if you can't actually "debate" the Boss across the bargaining table about workers' wages, health benefits, staffing levels, pensions, etc... then WTF are contract "negotiations" for? 

Hal Ruddick, the Chief Negotiator for the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, absolutely loved Diamond Dave's quote! In fact, he tweeted it himself. Way to go, Hal!

Here's another revealing quote from Regan: "We have chosen strategic collaboration." Here, Regan is referencing this infamous interview on NBC television, where he reported that our economy no longer has "employers" and "workers" -- only partners who work in a "teamwork economy." 

Btw, Regan really hates it when workers criticize management. (Ohh, and that goes for all of you SEIU-UHW members who are getting layoff notices from Kaiser despite the company's $3.1 billion in profits last year. Stop criticizing, dammit. Partnership really works).

Here's Ruddick, one of Regan's lieutenants, speaking to the crowd about "leading."

Here's the multi-million-dollar CEO of Kaiser, Bernard Tyson, doing a panel discussion with Hal Ruddick and Kathleen Theobald, the Executive Director of Kaiser Permanente Nurse Anesthetists Association (KPNAA), during the Union Delegates Conference.

Interestingly, even though they're management, Tyson and other Kaiser execs attended the Coalition's "Union Delegates Conference," where "delegates" are presumably supposed to prepare their bargaining strategy for negotiations with the Boss.

Instead... the partnership unions turned the delegates conference into a full-blown propaganda party for Kaiser's fatcat execs, who are systematically working to slash and burn workers' health benefits, pensions, and wages.

Here's Meg Niemi, the President of SEIU Local 49, hugging Kaiser's top HR official, Dennis Dabney. Dabney, who favors $5,000 dollar suits, decided to dress down for the workers.

Here's CEO Tyson at the Union Delegates Conference.

Check this out. The partnership unions and Kaiser even served a "partnership" cake to the delegates!

In case you're wondering... CEO Tyson had a "great" time at the Union Delegate Conference, according to his tweet.

Before the conference was over, the partnership unions placed posters of Tyson in the lobby areas of the Union Delegates Conference. Remember -- Tyson is trying to eliminate workers' pension plan even though Kaiser gives him 9 separate pension plans!

All in all, the delegates -- who are supposed to safeguard the interests of 90,000 Kaiser workers -- had a super awesome time.

And in case Regan, Ruddick and Tyson weren't entertaining enough, the LMP staff even brought along Goofy and other Disney characters to work the delegates!

Wow! This partnership sure is "innovative!"

NLRB: Hospital Workers Ousted SEIU-UHW, Voted to Join NUHW

Last month, the NLRB issued a 55-page decision that confirmed the results of an NLRB election conducted last year in which more than 700 workers at a Northern California hospital voted to dump SEIU-UHW and join NUHW.

The 55-page decision concludes a year-long investigation into legal challenges filed by SEIU-UHW after the March 2014 election at Seton Medical Center, located just south of San Francisco.

The outcome of the investigation?

Last month, the NLRB threw out all of SEIU-UHW's legal challenges, stating the following:

“…none of the Intervenor's [SEIU-UHW’s] objections raises a substantial or material issue of fact or law that would warrant a hearing in this matter.” (p. 54)

The NLRB also called for the election results to be honored by certifying NUHW as the workers' union.

Instead, SEIU-UHW appealed the NLRB's decision to the agency's Washington DC headquarters in an effort to frustrate and delay workers' election decision.

Meanwhile, at Seton Medical Center, SEIU-UHW's name is usually mentioned amidst a string of four-letter words and colorful expletives, say workers. Not only has SEIU-UHW refused to accept workers' election results, it recently began threatening retaliation against workers for not paying dues to SEIU-UHW -- even though workers voted more than a year ago to dump SEIU-UHW.

Back in 2012, SEIU-UHW's President Dave Regan gave away workers' defined-benefit pension plan, cut their health benefits, and implemented an intrusive Wellness Program… and then literally forced the cuts down workers’ throats of by conducting a ‘ramrod’ ratification vote that violated SEIU's constitution.

It's no wonder, then, that workers say SEIU and Diamond Dave would rank below convicted murderer/cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer in a popularity poll among workers.

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan: “We’re at war!”

Dave Regan recently had a conference call with SEIU-UHW’s staff and told them, "We're at war with the International union," according to sources inside the union.

This is the latest chapter in Reagan's deepening battle with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry and SEIU's International Executive Board, which in January ordered Regan to finally comply with a six-year-old order to transfer SEIU-UHW’s 65,000 home care and nursing home workers to SEIU Local 6434.

According to Tasty’s sources, some of SEIU-UHW’s staff were taken aback by Regan's call to arms. 

Meanwhile, a bunker-like atmosphere has reportedly descended on the union, with the union’s top officials and staffers nervously looking over their shoulders amid suspicions about loyalties. "Is s/he with us or against us?"

A number of SEIU-UHW staffers formerly worked for Mary Kay Henry and SEIU International. These staffers have greater loyalty to the Purple Palace than to Regan. Diamond Dave and his top lieutenants are fully aware of this, say sources, and are growing increasingly nervous about “moles” inside SEIU-UHW who are leaking information to Mary Kay Henry.

Regan, who’s notorious for conducting "witchhunts" and loyalty trials among the union's membership, will likely soon be deploying these tactics on his own staff.

Stay tuned.

Hal Ruddick (aka, "Mr. Backroom Dealer") is the Kaiser Partnership Unions' Chief Negotiator

A tip for Kaiser workers.

Beware of Hal Ruddick. He’s the new Executive Director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions and will serve as the “Chief Negotiator” for the partnership unions’ 90,000 members during negotiations with Kaiser Permanente .

As an SEIU staffer and one of Regan’s lieutenants at SEIU-UHW, he has a long history of cutting backroom deals with bosses and lying to workers.

In 2011, Ruddick was the Chief Negotiator for SEIU-UHW’s bargaining with Dignity Health. During the negotiations, Ruddick agreed to eliminate the defined-benefit pension plan for 14,000 SEIU-UHW members and replace it with a 401(k)-style plan. 

Even though it was a huge cut for workers, Ruddick got workers to ratify the cut by telling them it was a "pension improvement." Ruddick and SEIU-UHW actually issued leaflets to workers with a headline of “We Did It!... Pension Improvements.” (See below.)

Months later, Dignity reported the truth about Ruddick's cut in the company's quarterly financial statement: Ruddick’s cut had snatched $217 million from workers’ pockets and deposited it into the company's bottom line.

You can read more in these earlier posts (Fyi, Dignity was formerly called "Catholic Healthcare West."):

“SEIU-UHW Officials Push Concessions on 14,000 Workers at Dignity Health”

“SEIU Accepted a $217 Million Cut to Workers' Pensions, says Catholic Healthcare West”

“Purple Lies: SEIU Pushed $217 Million Pension Cut on Catholic Healthcare West's Workers”

And here's another example of Ruddick’s dirty tricks. It comes from Ruddick’s time at SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana, where he was the Chief Negotiator for 8,000 nursing home workers. In 2009, Ruddick did a backroom deal that allowed the Boss to strip millions of dollars from workers' health insurance fund, which sent the fund careening towards bankruptcy. Read more at this post:

“SEIU-UHW Hal Ruddick's Dirty Laundry in the Windy City”

So... although this guy should presumably be in some sort of jail by now, he's now serving as the Chief Negotiator for 90,000 Kaiser employees covered by the partnership.

It's the SEIU way...

Update on Kaiser Partnership Bargaining

What happened at this week’s "kickoff” of labor negotiations between Kaiser Permanente and the "partnership unions”?

Well… there wasn't any actual "bargaining."

After a three-day weekend of prancing around Disneyland with Kaiser execs, the partnership unions spent Monday and Tuesday in a "bargaining kickoff.” On Monday, Kaiser’s execs and union officials made speeches interspersed with "Instant Recesses” and "Thrive Activities" to keep participants awake.

On Tuesday, the unions were trained on how to do “interest-based bargaining.”

As far as speeches, sources say Chuck Columbus (Senior VP and Chief Human Resources Officer for Kaiser) was the first speaker and offered a gloom-and-doom picture about the vague, but very dangerous, "challenges" lurking in Kaiser’s future.

Don’t trust Chuck.

He formerly served as the VP of Human Resources at Ford Motor Co., where he eliminated the defined-benefit pension plan for new hires and forced them into a 401(k) plan. He also implemented a two-tiered wage system that pays new Ford employees only half as much as regular employees. This pushed Ford’s profits through the roof.

In 2009, Kaiser's then-CEO George Halvorson and COO Bernard Tyson recruited Columbus to do the same thing at Kaiser… with the assistance of SEIU’s newly implanted trustee from the East Coast, Dave Regan.

A year ago, Regan and Columbus gave a joint presentation to the California Public Employees Retirement System where Regan talked about cutting workers’ benefits if they don't meet the requirements of Kaiser's wellness program. You can see a video of Regan's comments on this earlier post.

 

Dave Regan with his buddy, Chuck Columbus, in Jan. 2014

At Monday's meeting, Columbus (who earns $1.5 million a year at Kaiser) told workers about the vague challenges facing Kaiser in the future, but forgot to mention one of the biggest challenges -- where to stash Kaiser's billions of profits. Last year alone, Kaiser pocketed profits of $3.1 billion.

Kaiser's Ray Baxter spoke about Kaiser's corporate wellness program, which has been "re-branded" as "Total Health.” 

Another speech had this intriguing title:  "One KP.”

A bevy of bloviating fatcats took the stage including Dennis Dabney (Senior VP of Labor Relations and Labor Management Partnership for Kaiser), Jim Pruitt (VP of Labor Management Partnership and Labor Relations for The Permanente Federation), Artie Southam (Executive VP of Kaiser’s Health Plan Operations), Hal Ruddick (Executive Director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions), and Dave Regan.

Lastly, here's a development that speaks volumes about the partnership bargaining. According to Kaiser workers in Northern California, Kaiser is currently laying off SEIU-UHW members with the assistance of SEIU-UHW officials. 

At Kaiser Vallejo Medical Center in Northern California, SEIU-UHW members with as many as 30 years of seniority are receiving layoff notices. They say workers are getting layoff notices without regard to seniority lists. And workers say SEIU-UHW is totally AWOL... even after workers make phone calls and send e-mails to Union Reps and SEIU-UHW’s headquarters in Oakland.

Again... these layoffs are happening as bargaining is underway. And as Kaiser's profits and membership are booming.

Where’s SEIU-UHW?

In the boss's pocket.

“Pretty much everything he says is completely wrong”

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan suffered an interesting smackdown in a March 30 article featured in “Capital,” a New York publication (Dan Goldberg, "Health Union Split Complicates Nurses' Jobs Push,” Capital New York, March 30, 2015).

Remember how Regan partnered with the California Hospital Association in a failed effort in 2012 to roll back California's nurse-to-patient staffing ratio law?

At the time, RoseAnn DeMoro (Executive Director of the California Nurses Association) said the following about Diamond Dave:

“It would be hard to imagine a more immoral and corrupt scenario than for a labor leader to be lobbying other unions to endanger patients on behalf of corporate hospital executives whose only concern is increasing profits.”

Well, this week’s article focuses on a similar split between the New York State Nurses Association and SEIU 1199 New York… but also includes a fiery exchange between the CNA and Regan.

Here's an excerpt from the article. (FYI, the “Greater New York Hospital Association” is the hospital industry's Chamber of Commerce in New York -- equivalent to the California Hospital Association.)

The same tensions that are now developing in New York are present in California where SEIU United Healthworkers West strongly opposes the staffing ratios that [NYSNA Executive Director Jill] Furillo helped put in place, and uses much the same rhetoric as GNYHA [the Greater New York Hospital Association].

“Sadly, California's mandated inflexible nurse staffing ratios have not improved patient care,” Dave Regan, president of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, said in an email. “…This short-sighted approach is completely at odds with recent innovations in healthcare, which have seen significantly better patient outcomes – at lower costs -- by utilizing a team-based approach."

Charles Idleson, communications director for the California Nurses Association said Regan's statement was “laughable, dishonest and misrepresented life in California."

"Pretty much everything he says is completely wrong,” Idleson said. “He hates nurses. He hates our organization. He has a partnership with the hospital association in California.”

Idleson said Regan's close working relationship with the California Hospital Association blinded him from doing what's right for nurses and patients.

“He has given up trying to engage in typical, traditional labor activity,” Idleson said. “His entire approach is to cut massive deals with employers that benefit the top tier of his union even at the expense of his own members.”

That same charge could be leveled at [SEIU 1199 George] Gresham and [GNYHA President Ken] Raske, who both believe cooperation serves their memberships better than knock-down, drag-out fights.

Leaked Document from Kaiser Partnership Bargaining… but Rotated!

After some technical difficulties, Tasty was able to rotate the leaked internal document from Kaiser Permanente’s "partnership" bargaining so it’s more readable.  Here it is.

  Kaiser Permanente’s 2015 National Bargaining with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions: Labor Manageme... by tastysternburger