Dave Regan's Chickens Come Home to Roost at Kaiser Bargaining

It looks like some of Dave Regan’s chickens are coming home to roost.

Observers have long critiqued Regan for negotiating terrible labor contracts that dismantled the defined-benefit pension plans covering more than 20,000 of SEIU-UHW's members at California hospital chains like Dignity Health and the Daughters of Charity Health System.

Observers predicted that Kaiser Permanente would eventually demand the same concession from Regan.

And that’s what happened earlier this week during negotiations between Kaiser and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions at the InterContinental Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. Here’s an e-mail that SEIU-UHW sent to its 50,000 Kaiser members on Tuesday:

From: Verna and Georgette <voice@seiu-uhw.org>
Date: Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 7:02 PM
Subject: CONTRACT ALERT: Kaiser's offer to us 

We’re still in the middle of bargaining but this can’t wait. We all know Kaiser’s been making record profits — but they opened this session complaining that “hard times” are ahead for the company. They followed up with a disrespectful contract proposal that demands big cuts from us, including: · Copay increases to $20 · More outsourcing and automation of our jobs · Lower pay and elimination of pensions — starting with new hires, then we’d be next

Apparently, Kaiser -- despite its massive profits -- is proposing the lowest pay increases in decades as well as the elimination of defined-benefit pension benefits for new hires covered by SEIU-UHW. Instead, new hires would get a cheap 401(k) plan. That’s what Regan allowed Dignity and Daughters of Charity to do.

How will SEIU-UHW respond?

The union's leaders are calling on members to prepare for votes during the summer to authorize a possible strike later in the year. 

That’ll be interesting. Since Regan took over SEIU-UHW during the 2009 trusteeship, the union has reportedly conducted only one strike at a small facility during the past decade. Pretty lame, right?

Hmmmm. Will SEIU-UHW’s members even remember what a strike is?

Stay tuned!

Dave Regan's Chickens Come Home to Roost for 15,000 SEIU-UHW Members at Dignity Health

In another sign of trouble, SEIU-UHW is reportedly facing demands for takeaways from Dignity Health during contract negotiations that began last month. The current contract, which is set to expire April 30, covers 15,000 workers and is SEIU-UHW’s second largest contract after Kaiser Permanente.

According to SEIU-UHW, Dignity wants to eliminate SEIU-UHW members’ access to fully employer-paid family health insurance, which has been a standard benefit at unionized California hospitals since the 1970s. Instead, management wants SEIU-UHW members to pay $125 per month to get health insurance for a spouse, and $175 per month for a spouse and children. Only “employee-only” coverage would be free to workers.

The demands spell trouble for Dave Regan.

SEIU-UHW members are already reportedly facing takeaways from Kaiser, which is the union’s largest employer. According to Regan, Kaiser wants 10%-20% cuts to the wage scales for future hires in California’s Central Valley, stretching from Sacramento to Fresno. Kaiser says it hasn’t begun negotiations with SEIU-UHW and has not yet put any proposals on the table.

So... in 2018, Regan will be in defensive bargaining covering more than 70% of the union’s membership even though both Kaiser and Dignity are flush with profits.

What’s going on?

The two companies apparently see Regan as vulnerable.

And Regan is vulnerable. But he can only blame himself for SEIU-UHW’s current problems. Why?

Because he laid the groundwork for the cuts by negotiating similar benefit cuts and wage freezes with other hospital companies. “We want the same cuts you gave to the other companies,” the execs at Dignity and Kaiser seemed to be telling Regan.

Soon after parachuting into California in 2009, Regan quickly began slashing workers’ long-established contract standards. Alameda Hospital was the first hospital where Regan agreed to eliminate SEIU-UHW members’ fully employer-paid family health benefits. Instead of paying $0 for family health coverage, Regan required SEIU-UHW members to pay $170 per month to get coverage for their children. Once the ink was dry on Dave’s signature at the bottom of the contract, Alameda Hospital executive Kerry Easthope told the San Jose Mercury News that Regan’s cuts were “a groundbreaking concession.” (Michele Ellso, “Alameda Hospital employees to get pay raise,“ San Jose Mercury News, 04/30/2009)

Next, Regan negotiated similar cuts to health insurance with entire hospital chains like the Daughters of Charity Healthcare System. In 2012, Regan used ramrod ratification votes to force massive concessions down the throats of thousands of thousands of Daughters of Charity workers. Regan tossed their fully employer-paid family health coverage in the trash can. Instead, SEIU-UHW members were forced to pay 25% of the monthly health insurance premiums -- or hundreds of dollars a month.

Regan also eliminated workers’ defined-benefit pension plan (he replaced it with a 401k plan), implemented an invasive corporate wellness program, and allowed the company to double workers’ out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions, doctors visits and other healthcare procedures.

At Dignity, Regan agreed to eliminate workers’ defined-benefit pension plan and accepted wage freezes for 15,000 SEIU-UHW members... even though the company was making profits.

So… is it a shocker that Kaiser and Dignity are now coming to Regan for more cuts?

Document Details More Cuts Affecting SEIU-UHW's Verity Health Workers

A source shared a copy of SEIU-UHW’s recent agreement with Verity Health System, which reveals even more cuts affecting the union’s roughly 2,000 members at four California hospitals.

First, SEIU-UHW failed to address the effects of a three-year wage freeze negotiated by SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan during the union’s prior negotiations. 

In 2015, Regan agreed to freeze SEIU-UHW members’ wage scales for three years and also agreed to block workers from receiving “step increases” based on their years of service at the hospital.

Under the agreement negotiated last month, SEIU-UHW members are supposed to once again start getting paid according to a wage scale. However, SEIU-UHW’s wage scale is now three years out of date due to the freeze negotiated by Regan. And… SEIU-UHW did nothing to fix that problem during last month’s negotiations.

Second, SEIU-UHW failed to reverse many of the cuts to its members’ benefits that Regan negotiated in 2015. For example, SEIU-UHW failed to restore workers’ Extended Sick Leave, a benefit that had been in workers’ contract for many years and which NUHW members at Verity hospitals continue to receive. Here’s the provision that SEIU-UHW negotiated for its members in 2015:

 

Exerpt SEIU-UHW's contract with Verity Health: 2015-18

Third, SEIU-UHW failed to restore benefits for hundreds of its members who lost their health insurance, vacation pay, sick pay, retirement, and other benefits due to cuts negotiated by Regan two years ago. 

In 2015, Regan agreed to radically change workers’ so-called “benefit eligibility standards” so that SEIU-UHW members must regularly work a minimum of 30 hours a week -- instead of 20 hours a week -- in order to qualify for benefits. In contrast, NUHW members at Verity hospitals are eligible for benefits if they work 20 hours a week or more, which is the decades-old standard in California’s healthcare industry.

Why did Regan and Co. refuse to fight for SEIU-UHW's members?

And why did SEIU-UHW officials swallow such a cheap contract in lightning-quick negotiations some 18 months before workers’ current contract is even set to expire?

Important questions, right?

Dave?

Here's a copy of the tentative agreements that were later signed by officials from both SEIU-UHW and Verity: 

  SEIU-UHW's Tentative Agreements with Verity Health System: 06-14-17 by tastysternburger on Scribd

Workers: "SEIU-UHW Cut Backroom Deal with California Hospital Chain"

SEIU-UHW officials have cut another dirty backroom deal with hospital bosses, according to workers at four California hospitals.

Here’s what’s going on:

Two years ago, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan made a backroom deal with a New York hedge fund that bought the Daughters of Charity Health System, a chain of six California hospitals in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

As BlueMountain Capital was negotiating to buy the chain in 2014, Regan met privately with its execs and agreed to accept massive benefit cuts for SEIU-UHW’s 2,000 members, according to documents later obtained from the California Attorney General.

Next, SEIU-UHW officials used ramrod ratification votes in 2015 to jam a new three-year contract down the throats of SEIU-UHW members at four of the chain’s six hospitals. In addition to containing a freeze on workers’ pay scales and other cuts, Regan’s new contract stripped hundreds of members of basic benefits -- such as health insurance, vacation, sick pay, and retirement benefits -- by gutting workers’ longtime benefit-eligibility standards. See this post for more details.

Several months later, NUHW negotiated with the same hedge fund for a contract covering 650 workers at the chain’s two remaining hospitals, Seton Medical Center and Seton Coastside Hospital. NUHW successfully fended off all of the cuts swallowed by Regan and also won increases of 3% per year to workers’ wage scales and one-time “equity” pay increases of up to 12%.

Last month, SEIU-UHW’s members got their latest surprise.

Under SEIU-UHW’s current labor contract, which expires in late 2018, SEIU-UHW is required to do mid-contract negotiations with the company to implement a new health plan that that “reduces costs for the employer.” Article 25 of SEIU-UHW’s contract reads:

"In order to reduce costs, the Employer and Union will work together as soon as possible to find a new health plan to take effect for 2017 through the term of the contract that maximizes Employee benefits while reducing costs of providing health coverage to the Employer." 

Last month, SEIU-UHW officials gathered a bargaining committee to negotiate over the health plan… but SEIU-UHW officials quickly pulled a giant switcheroo on workers.

Greg Pullman, Regan’s “Chief of Staff,” appeared as SEIU-UHW’s negotiator, and told the bargaining committee he planned to negotiate a quick three-year extension to SEIU-UHW’s piss-poor contract -- the same contract that has stripped hundreds of workers of basic benefits. Pullman said he wanted to roll over SEIU-UHW’s current contract with 3% pay increases for the next years.

What about fighting to restore workers’ benefits so they at least equal those enjoyed by NUHW members? Naaaah… forget it, said Pullman.

 

Dave Regan

Workers cried foul. But Pullman pushed the deal through a full year and a half before the contract will expire on October 31, 2018.

Now, SEIU-UHW’s 2,000 members are stuck until 2021 with a contract that gives its members second-class benefits compared to NUHW members who work for the same employer, Verity Health System.

SEIU-UHW’s members are stuck, that is, unless they exercise their right to dump SEIU-UHW in a decertification vote just like the workers did at Seton Medical Center and Seton Coastside Hospital.

Dave Regan Wins Reelection with Votes from Just 3% of Union’s Members

Last week, Dave Regan was declared the winner of SEIU-UHW’s internal election after winning the votes of just 3% of SEIU-UHW’s members. 

Of the union’s 86,512 members, Regan received votes from 2,916 members while his two challengers together collected about 1,000 votes.

Here are the vote totals for the election, according to SEIU-UHW’s website:

Total eligible voters: 86,512

Dave Regan: 2,916 votes

Niko Anagnostopoulos: 511 votes

Cartina Price: 469 votes

Regan’s vote totals dropped from approximately 8,000 in 2014 to just 2,916 in 2017. At the same time, Regan’s challengers collected about the same numbers of votes in 2017 as they did in 2014 – approximately 1,000.

In the run-up to the election, Regan campaigned around California by attending monthly steward council meetings at multiple hospitals. Regan’s efforts may have been prompted by the support shown for one of his challengers, a rank-and-file Kaiser Permanente member named Niko Anagnostopoulos who won the unanimous backing of the steward council at his hospital, which is one of Kaiser’ largest.

During his speeches to steward council meetings at Kaiser hospitals, Regan reportedly said he wants to negotiate a 10-year labor contract with Kaiser during the partnership unions’ negotiations next year. In California’s hospital industry, union contracts are typically two to four years in duration.

Interestingly, at St. Francis Medical Center in Los Angeles, Regan’s slate of candidates (the so-called “Healthcare Justice” slate) lost elections for seats on SEIU-UHW’s Executive Board. Independent candidates beat Regan’s slate by more than a two-to-one margin. The 384-bed hospital is part of Verity Health System, formerly the Daughters of Charity Health System.

In 2015, Regan negotiated massive cuts for workers at St. Francis and other Verity hospitals, including freezing workers’ wage scales, eliminating benefits for many part-time workers, and multiple other cuts. Next, Regan used a system of ramrod membership votes to ratify his give-backs to the four-profit company. SEIU-UHW members called Regan’s contract “the worst contracting or history.”

Facebook post by one of Regan's challengers following the vote count.

What’s next?

It’s unclear whether Regan intends to serve out the full three years of his next term of office.

In December 2015, Regan told a meeting of the SEIU-UHW’s Executive Board he would not run for re-election, according to board members who attended the meeting. Regan said he was backing the director of SEIU-UHW’s Kaiser Division, Chokri Bensaid, to succeed him.

As the election approached, however, Regan suddenly declared his candidacy. 

Some observers speculate he ran for reelection because he was concerned that Bensaid could not win a contested election. According to these observers, it’s possible Regan will resign his position during his next term of office so that Bensaid can be appointed by the union’s Executive Board as his successor.

Stay tuned.

Verity Health Workers: “Why did SEIU-UHW give away our health insurance, sick pay, and retirement benefits and freeze our pay scales?”

Nearly 2,000 workers at a chain of California hospitals are asking why SEIU-UHW officials agreed to freeze their pay scale and give away health insurance, vacation, sick pay, retirement benefits, and other benefits during contract negotiations with the company’s top executives.

Workers are angry, say Tasty’s sources, after NUHW recently negotiated a contract with the same company, Verity Health System, but didn’t accept any of the cuts negotiated by SEIU-UHW officials.

NUHW’s contract, ratified in December, covers workers at two of the company’s six hospitals. SEIU-UHW represents workers at the company’s remaining four hospitals.

Here’s what happened.

In November 2015, Dave Regan and other SEIU-UHW officials negotiated massive cuts for SEIU-UHW’s approximately 2,000 members at Verity Health System, formerly known as the Daughters of Charity Health System. SEIU-UHW represents workers at O’Connor Hospital, St. Louise Regional Hospital, St. Francis Medical Center, and St. Vincent Medical Center.

During negotiations, Regan agreed to freeze workers’ wage scales and to eliminate a whole range of benefits -- including health insurance, vacation pay, sick pay, and retirement benefits -- for hundreds of SEIU-UHW’s members who work part time at the hospitals.

As far as the benefit cuts, Regan agreed to change the contract’s so-called “benefit eligibility standard” so that part-time workers must now work at least 30 hours a week, instead of 20 hours a week, to be eligible for health insurance, sick pay, vacation pay, etc.

Regan also agreed to eliminate float differentials and short-call pay, cut Paid Time Off (PTO) accruals, eliminate “Jury Duty Leave” and “Education Leave,” eliminate future Extended Sick Leave accruals, as well as multiple other cuts. Regan also accepted the elimination of retiree health benefits for all employees at St. Louise Regional Hospital and O'Connor Hospital, according to a copy of the deal.

SEIU-UHW members called Regan’s contract “the worst contract in our history.”

To add insult to injury, Regan jammed the wage freeze and benefit cuts down workers’ throats by using ramrod ratification votes.

 

Dave Regan, SEIU-UHW

Two months later, approximately 650 workers at two Verity hospitals (Seton Medical Center and Seton Coastside Hospital) began their own negotiations with Verity officials after decertifying SEIU-UHW and voting to join NUHW.

With NUHW, workers successfully fought off all of management’s benefit cuts and won increases of 3% per year to workers’ wage scales during each year of the three-year contract. In addition, NUHW members won one-time “equity” pay increases of up to 12%.

Across California, Regan and SEIU-UHW have a well-documented history of cutting backroom deals with hospital CEOs to gut workers’ pay, benefits, and working conditions. Now, at the Verity hospitals, Regan’s dirty deeds have produced a lopsided outcome for employees who do the same work just miles apart. SEIU-UHW members, working 40 miles away from their NUHW counterparts, now receive vastly inferior benefits from the same company.  

Regan’s cuts offer another jarring contradiction.

SEIU officials have rightfully criticized Trump’s effort to cut health coverage under the Medicaid Program and the Affordable Care Act. So, ummm, why did one of SEIU’s top officials – Dave Regan – agree to eliminate health coverage for hundreds of SEIU’s own members without any kind of fight?

And while we’re on the topic of contradictions, why did Regan ink his sell-out deal with Verity, a company controlled by New York hedge fund BlueMountain Capital?

So much for SEIU’s fight against the 1% and the billionaire class, who are pocketing unprecedented profits while US workers struggle to pay rent and put food on the table.

Sources: Dave Regan Is on His Way Out

Job application??

Dave Regan is calling it quits at SEIU-UHW.

Sources inside SEIU-UHW recently confirmed that Regan will not stand for re-election as SEIU-UHW’s president when his three-year term expires in early 2017.

Ten months ago, Tasty reported that Regan told members of SEIU-UHW’s Executive Board he was throwing in the towel. At the time, he said he would support Chokri Bensaid, the director of SEIU-UHW’s Kaiser Division, to become his replacement.

Why is Regan leaving?

Observers point to a series of colossal failures that have taken a serious toll on SEIU-UHW and its members, including... 

• Regan’s backroom deals and mega-failures at the bargaining table that have stripped tens of thousands of SEIU-UHW members of their pensions and other benefits; 

• his failed battle with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry that has left Regan deeply isolated inside SEIU; 

• his loss of 65,000 homecare and nursing home workers that halved his union’s membership; 

• his failed backroom deal with the California Hospital Association that has cost SEIU-UHW’s members more than $25 million and has left the union mired in expensive legal battles and more politically isolated than ever; 

• his failure to organize healthcare workers to join SEIU-UHW; 

• etc.

And don't forget the personal scandals, such as Regan's physical assault on a process server that splashed his face across TV newscasts in California.

Where will Regan go next?

Coming to a reality TV show near you? 

It's not clear at this point.

However…Tasty hears that Diamond Dave would be absolutely perfect for a new reality TV show that Donald Trump is planning to launch after the US presidential election. 

Source: SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan is on His Way Out

At SEIU-UHW's Executive Board meeting last month, SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan announced he will not run for reelection when his three-year term ends next year, say sources.

Let Tasty be the first to wish Dave a hearty "GTFO." 

So, why is Regan leaving?

Some observers point to his repeated losses and failures, which have certainly taken their toll -- for example, his failed battle with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, his deepening isolation inside SEIU, his mega-failures in California, etc. 

In the Golden State, Regan has single-handedly led SEIU-UHW through a period in which the union lost half of its membership, destroyed the pensions and workplace standards for tens of thousands of California hospital workers, and flushed an estimated $25-30 million of union members' dues money down the toilet in Regan's failed pursuit of a so-called partnership with the California Hospital Association.

Other sources offer a different explanation for his departure. They say Regan is jumping ship because he's concluded he can’t win reelection next year. Here's what these sources say.

During SEIU-UHW's officer elections in 2011 and 2014, Regan was able to corral little more than 7,000 votes from the union's 140,000 members.

In 2011, Sophia Sims -- a rank-and-file Kaiser worker with few resources -- came within several thousand votes of defeating Regan, who collected only 7,000 votes that year. Not an impressive showing when you consider that Regan massively outspent Sims and also used the union's entire institutional machinery to push his candidacy onto the membership.

The elections were also marred by allegations of vote-rigging by Regan, which were detailed in a complaint to the US Department of Labor and a February 2011 lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

 

Dave's hand-picked successor? Chokri Bensaid

After the 2011 election, Regan looked for opportunities to knock Sims out of contention in future elections. 

In 2012, he accused her of "gross disloyalty or conduct unbecoming a member" and ordered her to be subjected to an SEIU-UHW show trial. In 2013, Regan's hand-picked kangaroo court found Sims "guilty" and banned her from competing in SEIU-UHW's elections for seven years.

In other words, Regan is vulnerable to internal challenges.

What's more, he’d face an even bigger challenge if he were to run in 2017. 

In the union's 2011 and 2014 elections, Regan relied heavily on SEIU-UHW's homecare workers as his main source of votes. Homecare workers are very isolated from one another (each worker is employed in a separate client's home) and are aggressively targeted for votes by Regan's staff, who serve up heavy doses of misinformation and threats to harvest their votes.

Last June, Mary Kay Henry and the SEIU International Executive Board stripped Regan of his electoral base when they transferred 60,000 SEIU-UHW homecare workers to Laphonza Butler’s SEIU Local 2015.

That means Regan, in 2017, would have to campaign among SEIU-UHW's remaining membership -- hospital workers -- where he faces outright hostility from thousands of workers. Why?

At Dignity Health, Regan gave away 15,000 workers' defined-benefit pension and accepted a wage freeze even though the company was pocketing giant profits… and then he lied to workers about the cuts.

At the Daughters of Charity Health System, Regan has twice used ramrod ratification votes to force massive benefit cuts down the throats of approximately 3,000 workers. In recent months, he agreed to strip hundreds of part-time workers of all their benefits.

So, just how vulnerable is Regan to defeat in the newly changed electoral landscape of SEIU-UHW's shrinking membership?

At Kaiser hospitals alone, Regan's critics turned out 13,000 votes for NUHW in the most recent NLRB decertification election -- nearly double the total number of votes that Regan received in SEIU-UHW's officer elections of 2011 and 2014.

With Diamond Dave headed for retirement next year, who will Regan annoint as his replacement? 

Not Stan Lyles, his current Vice President. 

According to Tasty's sources, Regan told attendees of last month’s Executive Board meeting he’s backing the union's Kaiser Division Director, Chokri Bensaid.  

Bensaid – who works alongside Kaiser’s fatcat executives to sell the "partnership" to workers -- has also built up some level of recognition among Kaiser workers, who’ll now become the largest bloc of voters in the union's officer elections.

As for Regan's departure… good riddance. And GTFO.

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan channels Donald Trump after slashing workers' benefits and pay

In his latest "groundbreaking" move, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan has borrowed a page from Republican Donald Trump’s playbook -- namely, lying through his frickin’ teeth.

Last month, Regan forced giant benefit cuts and a multi-year wage freeze down the throats of 2,000 SEIU-UHW members at four California hospitals run by the Daughters of Charity Healthcare System.

Altogether, Regan accepted more than a dozen benefit cuts -- including stripping hundreds of workers of their health insurance, vacation, holidays, sick pay, retirement, etc. -- which workers exposed by leaking copies of Regan’s agreement to Tasty.

After SEIU-UHW conducted ramrod ratification votes to implement the cuts, workers filed complaints with federal authorities alleging that SEIU-UHW officials withheld vital information from its members, blocked workers from attending negotiations, and committed irregularities during the vote count.

Which is why workers were a bit, umm, shocked to read SEIU-UHW's Dec. 14 press release describing its sell-out contract as "innovative" and "groundbreaking." Here's an excerpt from the press release, which is posted on SEIU-UHW's website (full copy is below):

As BlueMountain accepts the groundbreaking deal, it also assumes an innovative new contract that was recently ratified between 1,900 SEIU-UHW healthcare workers and the Daughters of Charity Health System. The three-year agreement protects benefits and… (emphasis added)

Of course, this is just the latest example of SEIU-UHW lying to its members.

Workers were also a tad surprised to see SEIU-UHW "welcoming" BlueMountain Capital as their hospitals' new owner. 

Headquartered on New York’s Park Avenue, BlueMountain is a $22 billion venture capital firm that makes enormous profits by buying and flipping companies after loading them with debt and exorbitant management fees.

 

Andrew Feldstein, CEO of BlueMountain Capital

Over the weekend, the New York Times described BlueMountain’s role in a scandal brewing in Puerto Rico. It turns out that BlueMountain and other hedge funds are working to keep Puerto Rico mired in debt so they can reap billions of dollars in profits for their wealthy investors. (See "Inside the Billion-Dollar Battle for Puerto Rico’s Future," New York Times, December 19, 2015)

Given SEIU's love of billionaires and venture capital titans, perhaps we’ll soon see "Wall Street Dave" and "The Donald" on the campaign trail together.

SEIU-UHW Officials Accepted Wage Freeze and Deep Benefit Cuts for 2,000 Workers at Daughters of Charity Health System

Here's the latest on SEIU-UHW's ramrod ratification votes at the Daughters of Charity Health System, where SEIU-UHW officials have once again forced massive wage and benefit cuts down the throats of 2,000 workers employed at four California hospitals.

As expected, a closer reading of the agreement negotiated by SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan has revealed a lengthy list of cuts in addition to Regan's blockbuster concession that strips hundreds of workers of health insurance, sick leave, retirement, and other benefits.

Here's a fuller list of the cuts. Below, Tasty has posted a copy of the full agreement as well as a two-page summary that SEIU-UHW staffers handed out to workers. 

• Wage scales are frozen. SEIU-UHW members will no longer receive "step increases" according to their years of service on the job.

• Part-time employees who work between 20-30 hours per week are no longer eligible for any benefits, including health insurance, vacation, holidays, sick pay, retirement, etc.

• "Education Leave" and "Jury Duty Leave" are eliminated.

• Retiree Health Benefits are eliminated for workers at St. Louise Regional Hospital and O'Connor Hospital.  In the prior contract ("Article 23: Retirement" on page 112-113), the company was required to pay up to 75% of the cost of monthly health premiums for employees who leave their jobs after attaining age 55 and completing at least 10 years of service.

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

• Short Call Pay is eliminated.

• "Float Differentials" are eliminated.

• Paid Time Off (PTO) accruals will be reduced by 16 hours every year of the agreement.

• "Extended Sick Leave accruals will be reduced by 1/2 of the amount in year 1 and 2 of the agreement."

• SEIU-UHW accepted a new management rights clause.

• Contract provisions on Holidays, Call Offs, Daily Cancellation, Seniority, Job Vacancies, PTO, and Union Membership were reduced to the lowest standard across the four SEIU-UHW hospitals, meaning that workers at three of the four hospitals will experience reductions.

Despite these cuts and reports of overwhelming "no" votes at the ramrod ratification votes, SEIU-UHW says its sellout agreement was somehow approved by the membership. As reported earlier, SEIU-UHW's lengthy delay in reporting the outcome of the votes has led to widespread discussion of ballot staffing and vote fraud.

For Dave Regan, however, the sellout contract is a "Victory!" Here's a post from SEIU-UHW's twitter page:

Meanwhile, here's a report from an SEIU-UHW member at one hospital:

I work at O’Connor Hospital and am an SEIU member.  The dealings re. this “tentative agreement” of two weeks ago were so secretive that many of us didn’t even know about the vote until  after it had taken place.    My own shop steward (who was a member of the negotiating team) failed to tell me about the vote, nor the fact that they had agreed to the clause “all past practices will be eliminated with the exception of prior arbitration decisions,” which is a loophole wide enough to drive a truck through.   Apparently that would supersede previous agreements not to outsource work, which would majorly impact my job security due to the nature of my job.  

Apparently the new “buyer” of the hospital, Blue Mountain, has learned from some of the mistakes of their predecessor of last year, Prime Healthcare, and instead of trying to fight the SEIU management they have made some sort of quid pro quo with them, thus the alacrity with which SEIU reps have soiled their credibility for all eternity, caught with both hands in the cookie jar and their pants down simultaneously.

People need to go to jail here.  This is a clear conspiracy to commit major fraud.

And here's a report from a second worker:

It kinda feels like battered wife syndrome here. Some are angry and lots are in some sort of a state of denial. SEIU has announced a "membership" meeting where I guess they will try to convince us what a great deal they got us. It's funny but here SEIU said we neeed these cuts because off the shape the Daughters were in. Forget that the new Boss has a war chest of $20 Billion at hand. The funny part is the Boss has referred to what got taken away as "waste". Our pay is "waste" but the 4 clowns who make up Verity Health have no waste whatsoever in their collective $58 million dollars a year in pay. I wonder what logic SEIU used in previous takeaways from Kaiser and Dignity who both were making record profits at the time of the cuts.

  SEIU-UHW&#x27;s summary of its tentative collective bargaining agreement with the Daughters of Charity Heal...

  SEIU-UHW&#x27;s tentative collective bargaining agreement with Daughters of Charity Health System, November...

SEIU-UHW Deploys More Dirty Tricks against Daughters of Charity Workers

Here's the latest from SEIU-UHW's ramrod ratification vote for approximately 2,000 workers at the Daughters of Charity Health System in California.

Early last week, SEIU-UHW officials held rushed votes in an effort to "ratify" a tentative agreement for a three-year contract that’s filled with cuts to workers’ benefits.

For example, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan agreed to eliminate benefits for hundreds of workers by gutting the "benefit-eligibility standards" for part-time workers. This concession alone will save the company millions of dollars a year and will leave hundreds of workers without health insurance for themselves and their children... not to mention sick leave, vacation pay, retirement benefits, etc.

Regan also agreed to eliminate retiree health benefits for all employees at St. Louise Regional Hospital and O'Connor Hospital, according to a copy of the deal.

Despite SEIU-UHW's rush-job votes, on November 17th workers at St. Louise and O'Connor voted by large margins to reject the tentative agreement, according to workers.

In the days after the votes, however, SEIU-UHW was mysteriously silent. Here's a report from one worker:

Typically, the union makes an announcement almost immediately the evening after the vote finishes. There has been a deathly silence from them since the vote. But, apparently the union feels more aligned with the Boss because an email was just sent out by Julie Hatcher (head of HR at O'Connor) to all Managers announcing that the CBA has been ratified, but, employees have heard nothing from SEIU. Despite reports from all hospitals that there was an overwheming no vote, the yes votes appeared by magic in the ballot boxes and the deed was done.

Workers say SEIU-UHW's crooked ratification vote is just one of many dirty tricks it deployed against workers during contract negotiations.

At O'Connor Hospital, workers report that the union's bargaining committee was hand-picked by SEIU-UHW staffer Val Tagawa, instead of being elected by members. 

In addition, SEIU-UHW refused to provide members with the dates and times of bargaining sessions, and it kept secret the location of negotiating sessions, say workers. A second SEIU-UHW staffer named Jackie flat out refused union members' request to attend the negotiations, according to workers. 

These actions kept workers in the dark about the deep cuts that SEIU-UHW was accepting at the bargaining table.

In recent days, workers reportedly filed legal charges against SEIU-UHW over its crooked ratification vote.

Stuffing the ballot boxes is not out of the question for Dave Regan. In 2012, the NLRB reversed the results of a fraudulent SEIU-UHW vote count at Chapman Medical Center after federal investigators concluded that SEIU-UHW falsified the vote count in collusion with the hospital management.

Stay tuned.

SEIU-UHW Resorts to More Ramrod Ratification Votes at Daughters of Charity Health System

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan is once again trying to shove massive takeaways down the throats of several thousand workers at the Daughters of Charity Health System, according to workers at the chain's hospitals. 

As in 2012, Regan has launched a series of ramrod ratification votes aimed at pushing a sell-out contract through the union's membership.

Yesterday, SEIU-UHW staffers conducted "ratification votes" at O'Connor Hospital in San Jose, Calif. and St. Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy, Calif. for a tentative agreement that’s "the worst contract in our history," according to a worker and SEIU-UHW member.

Among the contract's givebacks is a mega-whopper.  

According to contract language leaked to Tasty, Regan has agreed to slash and burn eligibility standards for workers' benefits (e.g., health insurance, vacation pay, sick pay, retirement, etc) so that hundreds of SEIU-UHW members would be stripped of their benefits, including the health insurance for their children.

What did Regan do?

Under the current contract, workers are eligible for benefits as long as they work half time or more – that is, at least 20 hours per week. This is a decades-old, industry-wide eligibility standard established by Local 250 and Sal Rosselli's union. Here's the actual language from the current contract between SEIU-UHW and the Daughters of Charity will (see the language for "Regular Part-time" employees):

Next, here's the NEW language that Regan inked during secret negotiations with company executives. This is the new standard that Regan is trying to ram down workers’ throats. Workers would be required to work at least three-quarters time (30 hours per week) to qualify for health insurance and other benefits. A source leaked the following excerpt from Regan’s tentative contract language:

Regan's sharp benefit cuts represent a concession of massive proportions, according to knowledgeable industry observers. 

If SEIU-UHW establishes this standard with the six-hospital Daughters of Charity chain, other large hospital chains like Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health, and Sutter Health will inevitably demand the same concession.

Of course, Regan has already gutted healthcare workers' retirement benefits by helping one hospital chain after another to eliminate workers' decades-old defined-benefit pension plans and replace them with cheap 401(k) plans. 

"The same thing will happen here," says a knowledgeable observer whom Tasty consulted about Regan's massive concession on benefit eligibility standards.

So how are SEIU-UHW's members at the Daughters of Charity responding?

At yesterday's ratification vote at St. Louise Regional Medical Center, only 16 workers voted in favor of SEIU-UHW's sell-out contract, according to workers at the facility. SEIU-UHW reportedly provided so little advance notice to workers that only one-third of the eligible workers were able to cast ballot.

One worker reported the following:

Most members were not even aware that bargaining was happening… SEIU came in a few days ago and announced that it was a done deal! We have been unable to see the full contract, yet they are holding the vote as I write this!  When we found out last week that bargaining was going on, several members asked to attend and were told it was being held in a secret place… It turns out no representative came to the hospital to inform us there was a vote, but one rep came and said, "The contract is settled, it's a done deal."

Another Daughters of Charity worker offered this comment about SEIU-UHW:

It is obvious that we have a union that is simply an extension of the employer who we have to pay dues to for the privelidge of hearing the same arguments made by the employer against worker's best interests. It's a sad day for Labor.

Meanwhile, Tasty hears that workers at nearby Seton Medical Center -- a Daughters of Charity hospital where approximately 700 workers successfully decertified SEIU-UHW and joined NUHW -- are jumping for joy now that they’re finally out of SEIU-UHW. 

Talk about dodging the purple bullet…