SEIU-UHW Hospital Worker: "We Are Not Your Property!"

AFL-CIO's Rich Trumka and SEIU's Mary Kay Henry

Here's the latest chapter in a rapidly developing story that began when hundreds of California hospital workers recently requested an NLRB election so they can leave SEIU-UHW and join NUHW.

This week, a worker at Enloe Medical Center in Chico, Calif. (who also happens to be a former member of SEIU-UHW’s Executive Board) sent a zinger of a letter to SEIU President Mary Kay Henry about SEIU’s underhanded efforts to block 700 workers from holding an NLRB election (see the letter below).

As reported in a previous post, SEIU took a similar action against cafeteria workers at the U.S. Senate in Washington DC who are trying to join UNITE HERE.

What prompted the hospital worker to write to SEIU’s prez?

Well, soon after she and her co-workers requested an NLRB election, SEIU ran straight to AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka’s office in DC, where Trumka promptly agreed to do SEIU’s bidding by getting the NLRB to block the election.

Interesting, right? After all, SEIU isn’t even a member of the AFL-CIO.

A couple of weeks ago, labor journalist Steve Early reported on these developments and took Trumka to task for turning his back on "employee free choice." Here’s a link to Early’s article: “AFL-CIO Delays CA Hospital Vote: What Happened to Employee Free Choice?”

Which brings us to this week, when one of Enloe’s workers sent a blistering letter to SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry. The letter is excerpted immediately below. A full copy is at the bottom.

Dear SEIU President Mary Kay Henry,

I'm writing to you as a union member and a former member of SEIU-UHW Executive Board…

Since the trusteeship, our experience with SEIU at Enloe has been, to say the least, one big disappointment, and it seems to get worse with each passing day. We only see union representatives when they want us to do something for them, like pay COPE, go to a lobby day, or house visit home care workers. When it comes to our concerns and grievances, the union reps are nowhere to be seen. Sometimes we learn of secret deals they’ve made with management behind our backs. And the union reps often just lie straight to our faces.

My co-workers have zero confidence in SEIU and some have even come to hate all unions because of their experience with SEIU.

When we complain to our reps, they blame us or they blame the union higher-ups. When we complain to the higher-ups, they blame the reps. Either way, nothing gets done. Management continues to violate our contract while the union does nothing.

When the contract was renegotiated in 2012, SEIU made concessions in our seniority rights when bidding on vacancies, allowed the employer to unilaterally change hours for the sole purpose of avoiding paying shift differential, bargained away restrictions on management rights, and did not really fight for a fair wage increase. We were given almost no notice of the ratification vote and were not even shown what we were voting on.

As our current contract reached its expiration date, we filed a petition with the NLRB seeking to join a different union, NUHW.

You can imagine our frustration when we learned that the AFL-CIO and SEIU have made some sort of deal that would prevent us from choosing a different union – we thought we had that right under the National Labor Relations Act!

We don't know about all of the agreements that are made among the unions and the AFL-CIO, we just know our current union is no good, and we want a chance to join a better one. What is wrong with that? Why would you deny us our legal rights? Why would you hold us hostage in a union we have come to distrust? Why do you treat us like we are your property?

To add insult to injury, as soon as we filed to join a different union, after hardly ever seeing any SEIU reps for years, suddenly there are seven full-time "organizers" in our hospital! Are they here to help us with our grievances and to help us get ready for a contract fight? Hardly. All they do is harass us with phone calls and house visits, interrupt our work and our breaks, and threaten us…

Our employer does whatever they want with no resistance from our so-called union. As far as we can tell the only difference between being in SEIU and not having a union is that we pay 2% of our modest wages for the privilege of being ignored, disrespected, and lied to.

And now you've engineered a deal with the AFL-CIO to block a fair election! What are you afraid of? A healthy debate? A choice for workers? Why do you have to resort to legal maneuvering instead of standing on the quality of your work?

The hypocrisy of SEIU is astounding. You use our dues dollars to campaign for the rights of fast food workers to organize without fear of intimidation from their employers, and for all workers to have the right to fair union elections. Yet, when we want the same thing for ourselves, you and Dave Regan unleash a small army to call us, stalk us at our homes, and interrupt our work and our breaks with their threats, lies, intimidation and coercion. Is this the labor movement you are building? We want no part of it.

All we are asking from you now is that you and Dave Regan get your thugs out of our workplace, off our phones and away from our homes. Stop behaving like a union-busting boss and let us get on with our future!

WE ARE NOT YOUR PROPERTY!

Please write us back explaining why you would do such a thing to us, and how you will respond to our request.

  SEIU-UHW Member's Letter to SEIU President Mary Kay Henry on Failures by SEIU-UHW and SEIU's Hypo...

Washington Post: SEIU Blocks UNITE HERE from Unionizing Low-Wage Workers, Then Abandons Workers

SEIU's HQ in DC: Just blocks from Senate cafeteria workers

A pair of articles in the Washington Post shines a spotlight on SEIU's campaign to block UNITE HERE from unionizing low-wage workers in Washington, DC.  

It's quite a story. 

And it's an interesting sequel to Steve Early’s recent article about similar issues in California involving SEIU-UHW, the AFL-CIO, and NUHW.

Last month, a WaPo columnist penned an article entitled, "The Homeless Man Who Works in the Senate." The column tells the story of 63-year-old Charles Gladden, a food service worker who’s worked at the U.S. Senate's cafeteria for the past eight years -- but has been homeless for the past five years due to low wages.

Gladden takes home only $360 for 40 hours of sweeping floors, mopping bathrooms, cleaning dishes, composting leftovers, and transporting laundry. At night he sleeps at the McPherson Square Metro Station just 2,000 feet from the White House.

Last week, another WaPo reporter published a follow-up story that poses an interesting question: Why are Mr. Gladden’s wages so low? Shouldn't he have a union?

 

Charles Gladden

It turns out that the food service workers in the cafeteria at the U.S. House of Representatives do, in fact, have a union. 

They've been members of Unite Here Local 23 for about 20 years and earn wages that have allowed some workers to buy homes, send their kids to college, etc.

So why are the conditions so horrible at the Senate cafeteria?

Here's where the story gets interesting.

It turns out that two years ago, the Senate cafeteria workers began organizing to join Unite Here. Last year, the workers were preparing to go public with their unionization effort when SEIU unfortunately got wind of their efforts. Rather than supporting the workers' campaign, says the journalist…

the Service Employees International Union sued Local 23, accusing it of violating a legal agreement the two unions had struck divvying up the city’s workplaces. Technically, public service employees were supposed to be SEIU’s turf.

“We were told we had to get out by SEIU because it was their jurisdiction,” says Local 23 President Jim Dupont. So Local 23 backed off. “It’s horrible for those workers. We have to go tell them no. They were so mad at us, and they have the right to be. It’s kind of a silly thing. There are plenty of people to organize.”

For the record, Unite Here has represented food service workers at the Smithsonian museums, the Nationals Park, other government agencies, and Washington DC's universities for many years.

So... after SEIU sued Unite Here and put an end to the workers' organizing campaign, did SEIU step up and try to improve workers' pay and benefits?

Nope.

Here's what has happened during the past year, according to the journalist:

Jaime Contreras: "We just haven't gotten there yet"

SEIU has not been actively working to help the Senate cafeteria workers actually unionize.

"It’s on our radar. We just haven’t gotten there yet,” says Jaime Contreras, director of the Capital Area District for the SEIU affiliate 32BJ.

For now, that means that Senate cafeteria workers will probably stay at lower wage benefit levels than their House counterparts.

This explains why the WaPo reporter gave the following piercing title to her article: “Why House cafeteria workers are paid better than Senate cafeteria workers. Hint: It has to do with a union.”

That “union,” of course, is SEIU.

UFCW Local 400's lawsuit against Kaiser... and two news articles

Three quick items:

1. Here's a copy of the lawsuit filed by UFCW Local 400 against Kaiser Permanente in federal court for refusing to follow their collective bargaining agreement, negotiated under the labor-management partnership. Tasty mentioned the lawsuit in this post.

2. Check out an article by labor journalist Steve Early entitled “AFL-CIO Delays CA Hospital Vote: What Happened to Employee Free Choice?” The article describes how SEIU recently enlisted the AFL-CIO’s Rich Trumka to delay an NLRB election requested by 700 California hospital workers who, on March 30th, requested an election to dump SEIU-UHW and join NUHW.

Early takes Trumka/SEIU to task for turning their backs on "employee free choice,” the labor movement's top legislative priority for years.

So why are workers at the hospital in Chico, Calif. bolting Dave Regan’s SEIU-UHW? Here's what one worker tells Early:

“In our last contract, SEIU bargained away important language and put up absolutely no fight for livable wage increases. Then they rushed a contract ratification vote, giving us little notice and no copies of the contract they had bargained…Only 100 out of 700 employees voted. This is not how a union should behave.”

Yo Diamond Dave: Is that what SEIU calls "free choice" and worker democracy?

FYI, journalist Cal Winslow has also published an article on the campaign by hospital workers in Chico: "California Healthcare Workers Fight for a Union that Will Fight for Them."

3. Lastly, see another article in “New York Capital” describing SEIU 1199 New York’s tight relationship with the hospital industry -- the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) -- and 1199NY’s split from the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), the state's largest nurses' union with 37,000 members. 

The two unions' opposing philosophies reflect a similar split among California’s healthcare unions, where SEIU-UHW has climbed deep inside the pocket of the state's hospital bosses and joined the bosses in attacking California's patient safety laws.

What's Art Pulaski thinking?

Art Pulaski

Remember Art Pulaski?

He was formerly married to SEIU’s Josie Mooney and is currently the head of the California Federation of Labor.

In 2012, Pulaski famously teamed up with SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan to engineer an "emergency" phone call of the Labor Fed’s board in an unsuccessful effort to roll back the state's landmark nurse-to-patient staffing ratio law.

Well… Pulaski has made another decision that’s left observers scratching their heads.

Next week, the California Labor Federation will hold its biennial convention in San Diego, California. Pulaski has decided to put the presidents of UNITE HERE (D. Taylor) and SEIU (Mary Kay Henry) on the same stage.

As you can imagine, the folks over at UNITE HERE are no fans of Henry and SEIU. Back in 2009, Mary Kay Henry was one of Andy Stern's key lieutenants who launched SEIU’s multi-million dollar hostile takeover aimed at seizing control of UNITE HERE and gobbling it up inside of SEIU. 

SEIU’s disastrous scheme -- a byproduct of purple arrogance and imperial ambitions -- was roundly condemned by the labor movement.

So what’s Pulaski thinking?

Good question. Here's the announcement.

The 2014 California Labor Federation Biennial Convention is only 12 days away, and our speaker lineup is as action-packed as our agenda! We know that in order to win in the long run we must grow our movement and go on the offense. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce two keynote speakers who know firsthand what it means to fight in the trenches, grow their memberships and win.

Be sure to join us Tuesday, July 29 to hear SEIU International President, Mary Kay Henry and UNITE HERE President, D. Taylor as each highlight their unique lessons learned from fighting hard to organize new members, and the importance of expanding our offensive game to maintain a powerful movement for all workers. You won’t want to miss this!

NUHW Kicks Kaiser Permanente out of AFL-CIO Convention

On Sunday, an interesting development unfolded at the Los Angeles Convention Center that marks an important moment in the history of Kaiser Permanente and its relationship with the U.S. labor movement.

As a result of NUHW, the AFL-CIO booted Kaiser and its purple purveyors of “partnership” out of the federation’s national convention because of Kaiser’s anti-labor track record. It’s a significant action given Kaiser's long-standing effort to market itself as a labor-friendly company.

And there’s absolutely no bigger forum for a showdown between Kaiser vs. Workers. After all, the AFL-CIO convention, where 1,600 delegates have gathered for five days, is the largest gathering of unions in the U.S.

Multiple media outlets are covering the story. Here’s how one article, entitled “Planned Union Protest Avoided When AFL-CIO Cancels Kaiser Events,” begins:

The AFL-CIO managed to avert a planned union-led protest by calling off scheduled national convention events that featured Kaiser Permanente this weekend, The Hill reports.

The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) had planned to picket the Sunday and Monday events highlighting the California hospital chain and health maintenance organization but found nothing to protest when AFL-CIO officials at the 11th hour removed the Kaiser sessions from the convention schedule.

Another article picks up the story:

The AFL-CIO scheduled two convention presentations featuring Kaiser Permanente (KP), the California hospital chain and health maintenance organization (HMO) whose continuing drive for contract concessions triggered statewide strikes by 20,000 of its own workers in 2011 and 2012…

In a letter sent to Trumka on Oct. 6, five Kaiser technical and professional employees who belong to the CNA-affiliated National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) questioned why the AFL was showcasing Kaiser as a “model employer.” They noted that “multiple affiliates of the AFL-CIO are currently in the middle of an epic struggle at Kaiser to defend standards that workers have fought decades to establish.” They asked Trumka “and the rest of the AFL-CIO to stand with us and not with this multi-billion dollar HMO.”  NUHW supporters at Kaiser in L.A. also prepared a leaflet detailing their employer’s recent mistreatment of workers and patients in California. They planned to distribute the flyer to the 1,600 delegates and guests attending the convention’s opening session that began at 3 p.m. yesterday.

Below, Tasty has posted NUHW’s letter and excerpts from the convention’s agenda detailing Kaiser's planned spots on the agenda, where the mega-HMO planned to push its wellness program and “Instant Recesses.”

Because of NUHW’s efforts, at the 11th hour on Sunday the AFL-CIO kicked Kaiser out. And Kaiser’s spot on the agenda was given to U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)!

Tasty’s sources say Kaiser officials were inside the convention center on Sunday when their departure was ordered.

In one article, an observer describes the action as “quite a blow to the HMO given its partnership with the AFL and Service Employees International Union,” which left the AFL-CIO in 2005.

Of course, it now remains to be seen whether the AFL-CIO will turn this action against Kaiser into a something more substantial. But for the time being, it represents another success for the feisty fighters at NUHW and an indication of the growing anti-Kaiser sentiment among unions.

Here’s more press coverage. Plus, see the two documents below.

The Hill:  “AFL-CIO Convention Avoids Healthcare Union’s Protest”

Fierce Healthcare:  “Planned Union Protest Avoided When AFL-CIO Cancels Kaiser Events”

The Nation: “What Counts as Workers’ Issue? Day One of the AFL-CIO’s 2013 Convention”

Labor Notes:  “No ‘Instant Recess’ at AFL-CIO Convention”        

CounterPunch: “As the Curtain Rises in LA”

   NUHW's Letter to the AFL-CIO on Kaiser Permanente's Planned Participation in the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention 9-...

   AFL-CIO Convention: Agenda for Sep. 8 and 9, 2013 with Kaiser Permanente events by tastysternburger

Staffers at the 'Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions' Describe John August's Abuses

After posting information about John August's sexual harassment scandal, Tasty received multiple emails from staffers at the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions where John August is the Executive Director.

So... Tasty decided to recruit a crew of volunteers to carefully interview the staffers, who have paint a picture that's far more serious than earlier reports.

Interestingly, the staffers' accounts are virtually identical. In some cases, they independently described the same incidents in excruciating, identical detail. Of course, Tasty doesn’t have the means to independently verify each staffer’s claims, but their stories match up and they’ve given no reason to doubt their truthfulness.

So here’s what the staffers say:

They confirm that August has had multiple sexual affairs with women, including rank-and-file SEIU members, union staffers, women unconnected to SEIU, and at least one current member of SEIU's International Executive Board.

The staffers also report that August has even targeted his sexual advances at Coalition staffers who're single moms. Why? One staffer put it this way: "These women need these jobs. Where else can you get paid so much money for not doing much work." In fact, Tasty reviewed the Coalition’s annual financial filings with the U.S. Department of Labor and, in 2011, many of the Coalition’s Field Staffers earned $140,000 while a "Meeting Planner" earned $105,000. 

The staffers also report that August's sexual harassment has a definite “predatory” quality. Basically, as August pursues women, he seems to enjoy “the hunt” as much as “the kill.” And they say August’s years-long pattern of sexual harassment and inappropriate affairs with union members are widely known by top officials at SEIU and the Coalition.

In addition to August's sexual affairs, the staffers point to another set of problems:  his abusive behavior towards the Coalition's staff.

They say August has serious anger-management problems and that he targets certain staffers with angry verbal attacks and abusive, retaliatory campaigns. They say he has a kind of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” personality. Basically, he can be warm towards a particular staffer, but if the staffer somehow gets on his bad side (for example, by resisting his sexual advances), then August reportedly unleashes unending abuse – including aggressive confrontations and singling them out for public humiliation during staff meetings.

One female staffer describes how August pulled her into a one-on-one meeting, and then yelled and screamed at her so furiously that spit was flying out of his mouth as he aggressively pointed his finger in her face. The staffer says, “It was vicious.” She says she basically went into shock after the meeting. “I’ve never felt so humiliated and demeaned,” she reports. After the meeting, she says, August then subjected her to months of unrelenting harassment.

Another staffer describes how, during staff meetings, August would take individual staffers into a room where the other staffers could hear him screaming and yelling at them from behind closed doors. She describes one scene where a sobbing staffer collapsed to a hallway floor after witnessing one of August’s verbal assaults against her co-worker.

Apparently, the victims of August’s abusive attacks are virtually all women, and staffers believe August may suffer from some sort of gender-based pathology that’s connected to his predatory sexual behavior towards women.

Another staffer reports that August’s history of abuse is well known by SEIU’s top officials. In fact, when August was a top official at SEIU 1199 Pennsylvania (now known as “SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania”), he was reportedly required to take anger-management classes after staffers complained about his behavior.

Furthermore, staffers have reportedly filed multiple formal complaints against August with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, the Coalition’s board of directors, the AFL-CIO, and even government oversight agencies, where at least one investigation is apparently underway.

Despite these complaints, top union officials have refused to take any action against August. One staffer put it this way: “He has no one to check him. He can do whatever he wants because the board doesn’t do anything.”

One former staffer said her main concern is stopping August's abuses:  “We just want it to stop. What hurts the most is knowing it’s happening to other people.”

So... Tasty would like to make an appeal to any conscientious lawyers out there. These women need help! The Coalition’s board of directors (which includes SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry) has refused to exercise any sort of responsibility despite knowing about years’ of abuses by August.

Furthermore, the fat-cat executives at Kaiser Permanente arguably bear substantial responsibility for August's ongoing abuses. A huge portion of August's salary is funded by the multi-billion-dollar HMO, and Kaiser gives August a fancy, rent-free office inside Kaiser's national corporate headquarters in Oakland! Kaiser's President and Chief Operating Officer, Bernard Tyson, even makes flashy videos with August. Finally, Tasty hears that Kaiser's execs have direct knowledge of August's sexually predatory behavior.

So... what do you say, lawyers?

Interested attorneys should contact Tasty at tastysternburger@gmail.com   It's time to put a stop to August's abuses!!

NLRB Exposes Another Election Fraud by SEIU’s Dave Regan

(Fyi - Tasty has added a copy of the settlement language at the bottom.)

In a decision announced several days ago, the NLRB has reportedly reversed the results of a fraudulent union-representation election after determining that Dave Regan’s SEIU-UHW illegally rigged the vote count in collusion with company executives.  

Here’s what happened.

Eight months ago, SEIU-UHW’s website triumphantly announced that a majority of the 220 workers at Chapman Medical Center -- a non-union hospital in Southern California -- had elected to join SEIU-UHW through a card-check process.

Soon afterwards, some of the hospital’s workers filed charges with the NLRB. They said that a majority of the workers hadn’t signed cards and didn’t want to be represented by Regan’s SEIU-UHW.

So who was telling the truth?

Eventually, the NLRB subpoenaed records from the vote count. And guess what? They found that a majority of the workers did not sign cards to join SEIU-UHW. Regan and the hospital bosses had simply fabricated the results and then lied to the workers.

On June 27, the NLRB issued a formal complaint against SEIU-UHW and the hospital’s executives. The complaint alleges that the SEIU and its business partner forced workers to accept an unwanted union, SEIU-UHW, as workers' bargaining representative.

On August 3, Regan and the Boss signed an out-of-court settlement with the NLRB rather than face a full-blown hearing in front of a judge. The settlement removes SEIU-UHW as the bargaining representative for the hospital's workforce. 

So why would the Boss agree to rig the results in favor of SEIU-UHW?

Well, think about it. If you’re a greedy boss, wouldn’t it be quite convenient to install a company union to do all your dirty work? That way, the company union could do things like, umm, slash the pensions for 14,000 workers at Dignity Health and then lie to workers about the cuts? Or gut the pension and health benefits for thousands of workers at the Daughters of Charity Health System and then ram the concessions down workers’ throats through an undemocratic and unconstitutional ratification vote.

With Regan’s most recent fraud (don't forget Fresno and Kaiser Permanante), Duplicitous Dave has accomplished a stunning “two-fer.”

Regan not only defrauded workers and shattered their trust into a thousand tiny pieces, but he also managed to deliver a serious blow to the efforts of the AFL-CIO and unions across the U.S. to advance "card check" or "majority sign-up" as an improved election procedure for workers. Single-handedly, Regan handed a massive P.R. coup to the right wing, who are already using the news of SEIU’s rigged card-check election to campaign against card-check efforts like the Employee Free Choice Act.

Way to go, Dave!

Here's a copy of the out-of-court settlement and "posting notice" that SEIU-UHW is required to sign by the NLRB. The hospital's executives are required to sign a similar agreement.
NLRB Settlement for SEIU-UHW regarding Rigged Election at Chapman Medical Center (California) August 2012

Rich Trumka to Mary Kay Henry: No Dice!

Yesterday, In These Times described “previously unreported letters [that] show the AFL-CIO rebuffing SEIU’s bid for a larger deal to freeze out NUHW.” 

According to the article, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry wrote to AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and proposed a “no-raid pact” that was conditioned on the Machinists union withdrawing its support for NUHW. Trumka declined SEIU’s offer.

Well, a source sent copies of the correspondence to Tasty! Below are the two letters.

But first, an interesting note about the letter from SEIU's Mary Kay Henry to Trumka: Take a look at the second paragraph, where Henry reports to Trumka that SEIU-UHW was trusteed in 2009 for "refus[ing] to abide by an internal jurisdictional decision of the SEIU International Executive Board." Her description of the trusteeship is significant because SEIU officials have repeatedly told workers and the media that the union's former leaders were removed for supposedly "stealing millions of dollars" -- a bald-faced lie that Mary Kay Henry has now documented in black and white! Also notable: today, more than 3 1/2 years after the trusteeship, SEIU officials have STILL not implemented the "internal jurisdictional decision" that was the stated rationale for SEIU's bogus trusteeship.

Letter from SEIU President Mary Kay Henry To Rich Trumka on Proposed No-Raid Pact 3-16-2012

Next, here’s Trumka’s letter to Mary Kay Henry shooting down her proposal.

Letter from Rich Trumka to SEIU's Mary Kay Henry on proposed no-raid Pact 5-02-2012

Lastly, here’s more news coverage of SEIU-UHW’s attack on California’s nurse-to-patient ratio from the website Daily Kos: “California Unions Battle over Fate of State’s Nurse-to-Patient Ratio Law.”

"It's a war, of that I am certain, and it will not be pretty"

More details are emerging from a growing trail of news coverage about SEIU-UHW Dave Regan’s dirty deal with the California Hospital Association to undermine California’s landmark safe-staffing law. Below are links to two articles along with excerpts featuring scorching attacks on "Wall Street Dave."

Interestingly, the first article describes a new development: namely, “previously unreported letters” between SEIU President Mary Kay Henry and the AFL-CIO’s Rich Trumka that “show the AFL-CIO rebuffing SEIU’s bid for a larger deal to freeze out NUHW.” Check it out. Here are the articles.

Josh Eidelson, “Are Nurses Headed to War with SEIU?,” In These Times, June 19, 2012.

California Nurses Association (CNA) Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro sent a blistering e-mail to her colleagues: “It is a war, of that I am certain, and it will not be pretty.”

Questioning whether SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) President Dave Regan "has any principles,” De Moro called him “dogged, arrogant and an enormous embarrassment to the labor movement.” De Moro, who directs both CNA and its national affiliate, National Nurses United (NNU), charged, “the hospitals believe that they have found a way to weaken the nurses and their union with Regan in their power, and this will lead to some pretty nasty scenarios for the nurses, patients, and of course the union.”

DeMoro called UHW’s Regan “a traitor to his class” and a “symptom” of the increasing “servility” of the mainstream labor movement. Rather than fighting corporations, said DeMoro, “he was doing their bidding. Overtly. Loudly.” Watching it happen, she added, management must be “sitting back, drinking their wine, and laughing their asses off.”

DeMoro suspects that Regan “cut a deal that Kaiser would help stop NUHW in exchange for Regan helping them to go after the nursing ratios.”

Michelle Amber, “CNA Wages War against UHW in California Claiming Attempt to Suspend Staffing Ratios,” Bureau of National Affairs, June 18, 2012.

A war has erupted between two health care unions in California over an attack by one of the unions on the state's nurse-to-patient ratios

DeMoro said she was “stunned, shocked, and horrified” that a health care union, which also represents nurses, would attempt to overturn a regulation that was a huge priority for another union. Contending that Regan is working on behalf of the CHA, she said when a “union works for the bosses, it turns on other unions.”

DeMoro said this is just the latest incidence of Regan working “behind the scenes” with the hospitals against the nurses' interests. She said Regan has accepted concessionary contracts with a number of hospitals for his members.

“When the nurses begin bargaining at one of these facilities, they have to dig out from the hole UHW has dug that is lower than the employer would have presented” because it agreed to the concessions, she said.

Meanwhile, SEIU’s Dave Regan and Steve Trossman are making a laughable effort to defend their disgraceful actions. They claim they colluded with industry execs in order to give hospitals "relief" from the "dire financial conditions" that will harm lower-income hospital workers.

First of all, California's hospital industry is far from poverty-stricken. It's producing more than $4 billion a year in profits. And it's showering its CEOs -- like Kaiser's George Halvorson -- with million-dollar pay increases. 

Second, Regan is hardly a die-hard defender of workers’ wages and benefits. Let's not forget Regan's track record. He rammed giant concessions down the throats of 3,000 workers at the Daughters of Charity Health System by violating SEIU-UHW’s own constitution! And he and SEIU’s Hal Ruddick  blatantly lied to 14,000 workers at Catholic Healthcare West/Dignity in order to eliminate their defined-benefit pension plan and thereby hand over $217 million in savings to the company in just a single year.  

SEIU's P.R. hacks may try to put Regan in a Superman costume, but the opposite is true. Check out this insightful image, crafted by a creative reader, that tells the truth about "Wall Street Dave."