Friday, February 2, 2018

Union Heads Meet with Kaiser CEO in D.C. over Dave Regan’s Ballot Initiative


SEIU's Mary Kay Henry and AFSCME's Lee Saunders

Dave Regan’s ballot initiative against Kaiser Permanente prompted a secret confab this week in Washington DC, say Tasty’s sources.

On Monday, Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson reportedly met with top officials from the partnership unions, known as the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.

Who was in the room?

The presidents of many of the international unions that participate in the partnership including the AFT’s Randi Weingarten and AFSCME’s Lee Saunders

SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry reportedly attended a pre-meeting, but then ducked out of the room before the Kaiser CEO showed up. It looks like Mary Kay Henry didn’t want to face Tyson, who says SEIU-UHW’s ballot initiative would jeopardize the future financial stability of the HMO.

Meanwhile, Kaiser took another shot at Regan this week.

The HMO mailed a two-page letter to the homes of tens of thousands of SEIU-UHW members with the heading, “We need your help securing our future together: Help stop an attack on Kaiser Permanente.” The letter calls on the union’s members to contact Regan and tell him to “stop putting our future at risk.” Tasty guesses this is one piece of what’ll likely be a campaign to turn the hearts and minds of SEIU-UHW members against their erratic president.

Regan, after parachuting into California into 2009, surgically attached himself to the hips of Kaiser’s execs… even working with them to try to break strikes by NUHW and the California Nurses Association. So it’s not hard to understand why Regan’s recent attack on Kaiser -- which caused Kaiser execs to block SEIU-UHW from participating in upcoming national bargaining -- is causing SEIU-UHW’s members to scratch their heads.

Here’s a copy of the letter Kaiser sent to SEIU-UHW members: