A reader who
works at Dignity Health in
California sent the following note:
Hello Tasty,
I thought this might interest you. It arrived in the mail yesterday. I think I can say now that SEIU really is a company union. This is of course right in the middle of contract negotiations. We've seen SEIU reps here exactly once in the past three months - not that I enjoy seeing them anyway.
The
attachment is a letter signed jointly by the hospital’s CEO and SEIU-UHW (see below). Dignity recently mailed it to workers' homes
in an envelope emblazoned with Dignity's logo.
The letter asks
workers to attend a rally in the state capitol to lobby state officials to boost
taxpayer-funded Medicaid revenues for the hospital industry by billions of
dollars a year. According to the letter, hospital officials will excuse workers
from their shifts on June 2nd so they can hop on an SEIU-UHW bus that’ll pick
workers up in front of the hospital and take them to Sacramento… where they’ll
hold “a massive capitol rally” to press legislators and the Governor to deposit
billions more dollars into the industry's coffers.
This
pro-industry political mobilization -- funded and organized by hospital CEOs
and SEIU-UHW -- is supposed to turn out "more than 5,000 people," according
to SEIU-UHW's website.
Hmm… but isn't
the hospital industry already making tons of money?
Absolutely.
Forbes
recently reported in an article entitled "Hospital
Profits Soar as Obamacare Prescribes More Paying Patients" (March 1,
2015) that “hospital operators continue to see profits and revenue not seen in
a decade thanks to the Affordable Care Act…”
California’s
hospital companies report booming 2014 profits, including Sutter Health ($458 million), Dignity
Health ($913 million), and Kaiser
Permanente ($3.1 billion).
So why is
SEIU-UHW putting more money in the boss's pocket?
It's a
result of Dave Regan's so-called
"strategic
partnership" with the industry, whereby Regan has become best buddies
with company CEOs by making their companies more profitable while at the same time throwing
workers and patients under the bus.
Regan's strategy was most recently manifested in his infamous
2014 deal with the California
Hospital Association, which delivers a variety of body blows to hospital
workers including gag clauses, pre-negotiated contracts, substandard wages and
benefits, and a requirement that SEIU-UHW use its members, and at least $20 million
of their union dues money, to push the industry's legislative agenda.
Will workers
actually see some portion of the billions of dollars that Regan is helping put
in the bosses’ pockets?
Regan reportedly failed to negotiate anything like that in his deal with the CHA. Instead, the opposite is true. Regan continues to negotiate cuts to SEIU-UHW members' health
benefits, pensions, etc -- even wage freezes at Dignity hospitals -- despite
the fact that hospital companies are enjoying unprecedented profits.
As the
reader said: "I think I can say now
that SEIU really is a company union.”
