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

Tasty hears that SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan has negotiated another concessionary contract in California. This one affects 14,000 workers at 31 hospitals operated by Dignity Health, which recently changed its name from “Catholic Healthcare West.”

Sources describe it as the worst contract in SEIU’s history of bargaining with the company. Why?

Well… during the past two years, Dignity made more than $1.4 billion in profits. Nonetheless, last week Regan accepted a one-year freeze on workers’ pay scales! And during the second year of the contract, workers will receive only a 2% pay increase.

And that’s not all. Regan negotiated more cuts to workers’ stripped-down retirement benefits. In 2009, SEIU’s Hal Ruddick famously allowed company officials to eliminate workers’ defined-benefit pension plan and then replace it with a cheap 401(k)-like plan. This massive concession produced a $217 million windfall for the company, according to the company’s financial records.

And there are even more concessions inside last week’s recent deal with Dignity Health. Regan and Ruddick also allowed Dignity officials to…

• Cut healthcare coverage for workers’ dependents
• Stop making contributions to workers’ training fund
• Create a system of two-tiered retirement benefits at Dignity’s hospitals in San Francisco that’ll force newly hired workers into cheaper benefits, and
• Implement a wellness program.

Just like at Kaiser Permanente, Dignity will now begin to track workers’ “biometric indicators” such as blood pressure, cholesterol, body-mass index (BMI) and smoking rates. And a “Dignity Health-SEIU Health and Wellness Committee” will help implement the company’s wellness program. Here’s an excerpt from SEIU’s agreement:

 

In an earlier post, Tasty provided an audio recording of Dignity’s executives talking about their “productive” relationship with their “partners” at SEIU-UHW. 

Well, Tasty hears that Dave Regan is best buddies with Dignity Health CEO Lloyd Dean, who pocketed $10 million in pay in 2009, according to tax returns. Dean also collects a fat paycheck for sitting on the board of directors of Wells Fargo Bank and recently was targeted by the Occupy movement for evicting homeowners while Wells Fargo raked in tens of billions of dollars of tax-payer funded bail-outs. Dean also happens to be the chair of San Francisco’s Chamber of Commerce, where he has teamed up with Regan to run pro-business candidates to take control of city hall. Dean also happens to sit on the "Let's Get Healthy California Task Force."

Quite a "productive" relationship, as they say. It looks like "Wall Street Dave" extracted giant concessions from SEIU-UHW's members for his good buddy Lloyd Dean.

"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."  

 

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

Remember the massive pension cut that SEIU officials negotiated with Catholic Healthcare West (CHW)?  SEIU stripped at least $217 million from workers’ pockets by eliminating their defined-benefit pension plan and replacing it with a 401(k)-style plan, according to financial documents recently filed by CHW.

Well, here's the latest news:  SEIU officials not only negotiated the $217 million pension cut, but they then blatantly LIED to CHW workers in order to get them to accept the horrible deal during the union’s ratification vote. (And when Tasty says “LIED,” he means full-on fraud, treachery and deceit.)

Here’s what happened: 

Last summer, as workers prepared to vote on SEIU’s tentative agreement to change their pension plan, this is how SEIU advertised the deal to workers (b/t/w, the “GDP plan” is the defined-benefit pension plan that SEIU eliminated):

Do you notice any mention of the hundreds of millions of dollars that workers would lose by accepting SEIU's deal? In fact, there's no mention of even the possibility that workers would lose a penny. SEIU officials, instead of telling the truth, flooded workers with thousands of leaflets with all-caps headlines like this one:

And guess who was one of the main perpetrators of this massive fraud against workers? Stan Lyles, who is SEIU-UHW’s Vice President and second-in-charge behind Dave Regan. Lyles’s picture appears on multiple purple propaganda pieces urging workers to vote “Yes” on the deal.

SEIU staffer Hal Ruddick, who now sits on Regan's Executive Committee, inked the massive concession with CHW executives and then directed the purple disinformation campaign against workers. And get this: Ruddick negotiated the cuts even though CHW made $917 million in profits last year, nearly doubling its profits from the previous year.

So how bad is SEIU’s pension cut? First of all, SEIU eliminated CHW's defined-benefit pension plan that guaranteed workers monthly pension payments for life that were based on workers’ final wage rate and their years of service.

In its place, SEIU implemented a new 401(k)-style plan that pays far less. Under this new plan, CHW contributes a fixed amount into each worker’s retirement account once a year (for example, 2% of a worker’s annual pay, which is the same as SEIU-UHW's union dues rate). When a worker retires, her retirement account is cashed out and this has gotta last for the rest of the worker's life. Here are excerpts from the agreement that Hal Ruddick signed:

Bottom line: SEIU officials committed a nearly quarter-billion-dollar fraud against its own members. In Tasty's humble opinion, these SEIU officials should face criminal punishment for this massive scam. And the pension cuts should be overturned because SEIU deliberately deceived its own members about what they were voting on. Hmmm...  any attorneys out there?

CHW Workers Remain Committed to NUHW!

Check out this cartoon and more at the awesome website of Ellen Dillinger--a UHW member and healthcare worker who is also a talented cartoonist!

Talking Shit, Indeed.

Recently, San Francisco's CPMC eliminated positions in the kitchens at three campuses and cut certain positions down from 8 hours per day to 4 hours per day. Many of those affected primarily are long term, 20 year employees. These employees were told to bid on positions in other departments -- positions that never were posted, so people in those departments already can't bid on them.

Under SEIU's leadership nothing has been in writing and nothing has been formally explained in a meeting or anything. Its a mess.

On Tuesday, workers at the CPMC California campus confronted SEIU Zombie Vu Nguyen (pictured, in a facebook shot he titled "Talking Shit") in the cafeteria. They asked him why there wasn't a "re-bid" to deal with these changes fairly in a way that respects seniority. When they demanded details of what's happened in the secret meetings with management, Vu responded, "I don't have to tell you... I don't work for you." (Note to Vu: You do work for the members.)

The CPMC crew was not impressed.

When they asked for a copy of the contract and he said, "You don't deserve the contract." (For real. Not making that up. He actually said that to a group of members.)

Just another example of the caliber of staff SEIU is hiring--both smug, nasty and dumb. Not Tasty's favorite combo...

The CHW Scoop

Last week, workers at Catholic Healthcare West, the largest hospital chain in California, started circulating petitions to leave SEIU-UHW and join NUHW. How is SEIU responding? Well, "my old school friends," let's just say it comes directly from Dave Regan's playbook.

Here are two reports:

On Thursday, SEIU staffer Chava Bustamante showed up at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco and promptly fired all of the hospital's Shop Stewards from their elected positions for refusing to sign an SEIU loyalty oath. Bustamante, who apparently fancies himself as a supporter of union democracy, has now shown his true colors for the world to see. Check out the email below from a Saint Francis worker.

Meanwhile, in Sacramento, SEIU sent 20 purple-shirted zombies to storm through CHW's Methodist Hospital. The purple mob, led by SEIU staffers Josie Summers and Sherrie Macias, pushed their way into the hospital's pharmacy and laboratory and began chanting "SEIU, SEIU" as they pumped their fists in the air and tried to intimidate workers who moments earlier had been busy with lab specimens and pharmacy orders. The stunned workers quickly called security guards to remove the SEIU mob from their hospital... but not before Josie Summers and Sherrie Macias fired all of the hospital's Shop Stewards.

Here's the email from a worker at St. Francis Memorial Hospital:



Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010
Subject: Saint Francis Memorial Hospital

I was a shop steward for the past 6 years at SFMH and you may have heard the entire steward council was fired yesterday by Chava Bustamante. The way we managed not to be canned during the trusteeship is that with each union rep (we are now on our 5th since January 2009, Ruben Garcia) we stood united saying we are not here to talk "politics", but rather stay focused on worksite issues. And we have managed to do some really good work - we recently got our PCC [Patient Care Committee] meeting again; it had not met for about 15 months since the trusteeship was imposed. Yesterday, Chava demanded we sign some kind of loyalty pledge to SEIU and one by one we each expressed our own objections. I said I value democratic values of free choice, etc. I just spoke with someone in the [NUHW's] Emeryville office who told me the circulation of petitions in CHW hospitals began yesterday. Thank God! I have been working at SFMH since the 1970s and have had many unusual experiences in the workplace, but getting fired by my own union takes the cake.