Source: Leak of Dave Regan's Attack Memo Came from Inside SEIU-UHW

Here's the latest info on SEIU's transfer of California long-term care workers to SEIU Local 2015.

Remember Dave Regan's piece called "Who’s Gonna Bell the Cat? The Tyranny of the Majority: Ethics and Values in SEIU?”? That's the memo that slams Mary Kay Henry and was "leaked" to the press.

Well, here's an interesting development.

Tasty's sources have revealed the identity of the "leaker." 

Who is it?

Dave Regan!

According to Tasty's sources, Regan penned the piece with Steve Trossman (SEIU-UHW's Communications Director) and then told Trossman to leak it to the press. Trossman approached his crew of "go-to" reporters (those who reliably publish SEIU-UHW's materials), including Chris Rauber at the San Francisco Business Times and Tracy Seipel at the San Jose Mercury News. Rauber, of course, wrote this story.

Trossman: Cover-ups and Leaks

What's the significance?

Well, it's notable that Regan is now using "leaks" of internal SEIU information as a "weapon" in his self-described "war" against Mary Kay Henry and SEIU. This represents an escalation that’ll inevitably sharpen tensions.

Additionally, it means we can expect that more "leaks" will follow from Regan... and that he'll deploy similar quote-and-dagger tactics against Henry.

Secondly, Tasty has learned that Mary Kay Henry was prepared to trustee SEIU-UHW if Regan had refused to transfer UHW's 65,000 long-term care workers. In fact, the staff of multiple California SEIU local unions were on "24-hour-a-day standby" to receive orders from SEIU to carry out the seizure of SEIU-UHW’s offices.

Finally, here's the latest news about SEIU Local 2015, the new statewide union.

According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, Mary Kay Henry has named Laphonza Butler -- the current president of SEIU Local 6434 -- as the "provisional president" of SEIU Local 2015.

On June 22, Butler changed her Facebook profile picture to feature one of herself standing alongside Henry.

The Bee also reports:

“Along with Butler, the new statewide local will be led by Arnulfo De La Cruz, Kim Evon, Robert Li, and April Verrett, SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry said Tuesday.”

Notably, each of the newly merged unions (Local 6434, Local 521, and SEIU-UHW) will have a representative among SEIU Local 2015’s top five staff people... except for SEIU-UHW! 

Of course, this is another sign that Henry is actively marginalizing Regan and SEIU-UHW. 

 

Butler's new FB profile picture

Here's some background on the five staffers whom Henry has appointed to run SEIU Local 2015:

Laphonza Butler (2014 pay of $165,952) is the president of SEIU Local 6434, serves on SEIU's International Executive Board, is the president of the SEIU California State Council, and is a close ally of Mary Kay Henry.

Kim Evon (2014 pay of $131,503) is currently the Secretary-Treasurer at Local 6434 and also serves on the board of the SEIU California State Council.

Robert Li (2014 pay of $94,579) is a staff member of SEIU Local 521, where his job title is "Director II," according to the US Department of Labor.

April Verrett (2014 pay of $127,931) is the Executive Vice President of “SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana-Missouri-Kansas,” a union of 64,000 workers whose name grows longer with every SEIU merger. She’s been a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board since she was placed on Mary Kay Henry's slate of IEB candidates in 2012. She’s also on the board of the SEIU Illinois State Council.

As far as Arnulfo de la Cruz, this appears to refer to Arnulfo "Bobby" de la Cruz (2014 pay of $124,223), a longtime SEIU staffer who's been on the Purple Palace’s payroll as an "Assistant Area Director" in California.  De la Cruz’s son is also named “Arnulfo de la Cruz” and works for SEIU as the "National Director" for immigration reform.

Kaiser Exec: John August "is not technically a Kaiser Permanente employee"

Here’s an interesting article about John August’s sudden exit from the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (aka, “the partnership unions”).

In case it wasn’t crystal clear, the article offers more evidence that Kaiser’s execs are the puppet masters who control the partnership unions with every twist and turn of their fingers.

In the article, August’s departure is confirmed not by union officials… but by Kaiser! Ordinarily, the Boss isn’t the formal press source for internal union leadership changes, right?  But here’s how the article starts:

John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, is stepping down this summer, Kaiser officials confirmed Thursday.

John Nelson, vice president for brand communication at Oakland-based Kaiser, confirmed that August is leaving his post. Nelson stressed, however, that August is not technically a Kaiser Permanente employee, but is employed by the union coalition at Kaiser.

Of course, in PartnershipLand, it’s hard to know who’s sitting on which side of the bargaining table. In fact, Kaiser funded most of August’s $200,000-a-year salary. And August worked out of a fancy office inside Kaiser’s national headquarters in Oakland.

Apparently, that’s why Kaiser’s “Vice President of Brand Communication” had to go to great lengths to make clear that “John August is not technically a Kaiser Permanente employee.” Coulda fooled Tasty!

Here’s the full article, which was penned by Chris Rauber, a not-so-competent journalist who’s apparently a half-brother of SEIU-UHW’s Steve Trossman.

San Francisco Business Times

Head of Kaiser Permanente Union Coalition to Step Down

Chris Rauber, Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

May 16, 2013, 2:53pm PDT

John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, is stepping down this summer, Kaiser officials confirmed Thursday.

John Nelson, vice president for brand communication at Oakland-based Kaiser, confirmed that August is leaving his post. Nelson stressed, however, that August is not technically a Kaiser Permanente employee, but is employed by the union coalition at Kaiser.

The coalition includes unions that represent roughly 100,000 members at Kaiser.

August had headed the coalition for seven years.

Chris Rauber's beats include health care, insurance and the wine industry for the San Francisco Business Times.

A Yolk in the Eye for Journalist Chris Rauber and SEIU's Steve Trossman

It looks like Steve Trossman (SEIU-UHW’s Communications Director) and Chris Rauber (a reporter at the San Francisco Business Times) have egg on their faces… again! Readers might remember Rauber from an earlier episode, when he published an article -- peddled by Trossman -- that got the facts all wrong on SEIU-UHW’s contract with Tenet Healthcare.

Apparently, Rauber is SEIU-UHW’s favorite go-to journalist because he simply re-prints SEIU’s press releases as full-blown articles without doing any fact-checking. (Talk about lazy journalism!)

How did Rauber accomplish his latest faceplant? This summer, NUHW and the Courage Campaign (an advocacy organization) asked California’s governor to investigate double-digit insurance rate hikes that Kaiser Permanente imposed on more than 300,000 California consumers. In letters to the governor, the two organizations pointed out that Kaiser failed to justify its rate hikes, as required by California law.

After the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the complaints, Rauber printed his own SEIU-inspired article trashing the San Francisco Chronicle and its reporter. Rauber simply dismissed the complaint against Kaiser as “a bargaining ploy” and called the Chronicle’s article “odd.” (Hmmm, Tasty wonders why it’s "odd" for a newspaper to write about giant companies ripping off the public…)

Well, here’s the latest news. Government officials just finished their investigation and… guess what? NUHW and the Courage Campaign were right! Kaiser was over-charging California consumers by as much as $30 million. And Kaiser, which is swimming in $5.7 billion in profits, has agreed to partially roll back its rate hikes on the 300,000 consumers.

So what is SEIU’s "dynamic duo of disinformation" saying about these latest developments? As far as Tasty can tell, there’s not a peep from Trossman and Rauber. Must be busy cleaning all that egg off their faces.

Family Ties?

A resourceful reader tipped off Tasty about a possible explanation for Chris Rauber's cushy coverage of SEIU's trustees in the San Francisco Business Times.

The reader thinks it has something to do with the resemblance between Rauber and SEIU communications director Steve Trossman. Check out their side-by-side photos. Could they be cousins? Or simply conspirators to push SEIU's misinformation through the business press?

Truth about Tenet Contract Trips up SEIU... and Journalist

By now, readers are probably all too familiar with SEIU’s strong dislike of the truth. Check out this latest episode, which snared a gullible journalist at the San Francisco Business Times. Here’s what happened:

Recently, SEIU issued triumphant press releases announcing they’d won 18% wage increases during a contract settlement with Tenet Healthcare in California. Chris Rauber, a reporter at the San Francisco Business Times, wrote two entire articles about the contract, which appeared to be reprints of SEIU’s press releases.

Rauber penned this headline for his first article: “SEIU reaches tentative 3-year contract at 9 Tenet hospitals in California, with up to 18% pay increases.”

Sounds good, right? Well… that is, until you actually read the contract language. It turns out that SEIU’s new agreement freezes workers’ wage scales for the first two years of the contract and increases the wage scales by only 1% increase during the third year.

Here’s what the actual contract language says, which Rauber conveniently forgot to mention in his article. [See the section labeled “Annual Hospital Wide Increase.”]

“Effective July 1, 2011, the wage scales shall remain unchanged.”

“Effective July 1, 2012, the wage scales shall remain unchanged.”

“Effective July 1, 2013, the wage scales shall increase 1%.”

So what about the 18% wage increase? Well, it turns out that it applies only to workers whose wages are far below the pay scale. Instead of immediately bringing them up to the pay scale, the contract caps their annual pay increase (including any “step” increases they’re owed) at 4.5%.

Not a great deal, especially when you consider that in 2010, Tenet made $1.1 billion in profits –its biggest profits in seven years. The for-profit company is projecting another $1.3 billion in profits during 2011.

So who negotiated the Tenet contract? SEIU’s Hal Ruddick – the same guy who bargained away the defined-benefit pension plan for 12,000 workers at Catholic Healthcare West. In that fiasco, Ruddick traded away workers’ pension plan for an infamously inferior cash-balance retirement plan, which is saving hundreds of millions of dollars for the hospital company.

As for the Tenet story, Tasty reminds readers that you can’t trust what SEIU says. And Chris Rauber… that goes for you, too. Time to do your homework!