Dave Regan's Secret Deal Brings More Cuts to SEIU Workers in Ohio

What's in store for workers under Dave Regan's secret partnership deal with the California Hospital Association?

Well, workers in California might wanna chat with their Ohio counterparts who’ve been reaping the bitter fruits of Regan's earlier sellout "partnership" with Catholic Health Partners (CHP), a $6 billion hospital chain in Ohio.

In 2008, Regan inked an infamous back-room deal with CHP’s execs. At the time, Regan was president of SEIU 1199 Ohio. 

Under the deal, the company’s execs -- not the workers -- asked the NLRB to hold unionization elections for 8,000 workers. And get this: the Boss asked for only one union to be on the ballot: SEIU!

The backroom deal -- negotiated by SEIU’s Dave Regan, Scott Courtney and Mary Kay Henry -- ultimately led to SEIU's violent attack on a Labor Notes conference in 2008 that sent some conference-goers to the emergency room and left David Smith, an SEIU homecare worker, dead of a heart attack.

So why was CHP willing to ink a secret unionization deal with SEIU? Here's a clue.

In the first contract, SEIU negotiated ZERO improvements to workers’ wages, benefits and working conditions. A company official described it this way:

There are no separate standards giving Union employees more money or rights and privileges than non-union employees have in the workplace.

Then, in 2012, SEIU let the company eliminate workers’ seniority rights and their defined-benefit pension plan.

Fast-forward to 2014. 

Last week, The Morning Journal (Lorain, Ohio) reported that CHP is now demanding even more cuts from SEIU’s members at Mercy Regional Medical Center in Lorain, OH, including:

• the elimination of step increases in the wage scale.
• the elimination of paid sick time.
• the elimination of overtime pay.
• cuts to workers' health insurance that would force them to pay $5,000 more in out-of-pocket expenses per year.

Damn.

So… is CHP going bankrupt? Hardly! Profits are up over last year -- $113 million in profits during the first six months of 2014, according to the financial statements on CHP’s website.

The moral of the story? 

You can trust Regan and his Purple Palace pals as far as you can throw them. They're happy to toss workers under the bus to keep their business buddies happy and the union dues flowing.

Kaiser Workers: "Dave Regan's Secret Plot Got Me Banned from Canada"

A source sent Tasty this incredible story involving Dave Regan and the Canadian border police.

Here’s what happened.

Recently, the International Association of Machinist (IAM) held its once-every-four-years convention in Toronto, Canada. Prior to the convention, SEIU’s Dave Regan hatched a scheme to monkey-wrench the machinists’ convention because of the machinists' support for NUHW

Regan instructed his staff to recruit some unsuspecting SEIU-UHW members from Kaiser Permanente’s hospitals in California and then send them to Canada to carry out his secret plot. Regan instructed his staffers to deliberately keep the rank-and-file workers in the dark about the purpose of their trip. Instead, workers were told they were going on an all-expenses-paid trip to Canada on behalf of SEIU.

After arriving at Toronto’s airport, the workers were asked by Canadian customs officials: “What's the purpose of your trip to Canada?” The SEIU-UHW members responded that, uhh, they weren’t really sure, but their union had sent them there for some kind of union business. The gracious Canadians kindly allowed their neighbors from the south to enter the country.

Hours later, SEIU officials broke the news to the Kaiser workers that they’d been sent there to disrupt the IAM’s convention. The handful of Kaiser workers -- along with a few staffers from an SEIU local in Toronto -- were instructed to carry out a hare-brained scheme that has the familiar fingerprints of SEIU staffers Amado David, Greg Maron and Steve Trossman.

So what happened?

The group of approximately 10 SEIUers valiantly attempted to assault the convention of more than 2,000 machinists. Apparently, one SEIUer entered the convention center and made a beeline for the bathroom, where he courageously tried to hang pro-SEIU leaflets in toilet stalls. Another SEIUer donned a gorilla mask and unsuccessfully attempted to rush the stage where IAM officials were addressing the 2,000 delegates.

Not the smartest move.

Soon, the purple foot soldiers were surrounded by machinists and Canadian police officers on a street corner outside the convention. There, they were questioned by police about multiple violations of Canada’s penal code, including trespassing and disrupting a private event.

When it finally came time for the Kaiser workers to head back to sunny California, they breathed a sigh of relief and made their way to Toronto’s airport. That’s where they got the biggest shock of their trip. 

At the airport, the Kaiser workers were confronted by Canadian immigration authorities -- the same ones who’d accepted their not-so-believable story when they first entered the country.

It turns out that the immigration officials had already been contacted by the police about SEIU's multiple criminal acts at the convention center, and that the immigration authorities were none too pleased that SEIU had taken advantage of Canada’s friendly approach.

So what did they do?

The immigration authorities announced they were banning the Kaiser workers from ever returning to Canada. Ouch!

Tasty hears that by the time they touched down in California, these SEIU-UHW members were none too pleased with Dave Regan and his deceitful ways. Their “all-expenses trip to Canada” had become "a lifetime ban" facilitated by healthy doses of lies from Regan and SEIU. 

SEIU storms Labor Notes conference.

Not surprisingly, this isn't the first time Regan has pulled this trick on SEIU’s members. In 2008, he instructed his staff to recruit busloads of SEIU members to travel to Dearborn, Michigan... also under false pretenses.

Once there, SEIU officials told the workers to storm a Labor Notes conference attended by 1,000 union activists and pro-democracy reformers.

Tragically, one of SEIU’s rank-and-file members -- a homecare worker named David Smith -- died of a heart attack during Regan’s violent assault on the convention. SEIU also sent a 67-year-old conference-goer to the hospital after pushing her to the floor and cutting open her head.

So, for all you SEIU members out there: If SEIU ever asks you to get on a bus or join them for an all-expenses-paid trip, you know what to say.

What Happened to SEIU's CHP Campaign in Ohio

Remember all the hullabaloo surrounding SEIU's organizing drive at an Ohio hospital company called Catholic Health Partners (CHP)? That's the one that sparked SEIU's violent attack on a Labor Notes conference in 2008 that sent some conference-goers to the emergency room and left David Smith, an SEIU homecare worker, dead of a heart attack.

Well... Tasty recently learned about a particularly pathetic conclusion to this pathetic episode in SEIU's recent history. Here's some background.

Some years ago, SEIU's Dave Regan, Scott Courtney and Mary Kay Henry launched a campaign to organize thousands of workers at CHP hospitals in Ohio. This trio of Purple Palace officials literally spent millions of SEIU members’ dues dollars on the campaign.

In 2008, CHP executives announced they had decided to use an obscure provision of federal labor law (called an "RM" petition) to run snap elections so that 8,000 workers could vote on joining SEIU. This unusual approach didn’t require 30% of the workers to sign petitions to trigger the elections. Instead, the Boss simply ordered the election. Unsurprisingly, this prompted calls that CHP was trying to install SEIU as its company union.

During the run-up to the election, the California Nurses Association leafleted CHP's nurses about SEIU’s sweetheart deal with the company. SEIU cried bloody murder and promptly cancelled the election. That’s when Regan and other SEIU officials ordered the violent attack on the Labor Notes conference, where the head of CNA was supposed to speak.

Eventually, CHP and SEIU rescheduled the election for the 8,000 workers. Even though SEIU was the only union on the ballot, SEIU got trounced in the election. In fact, SEIU lost 40 of the 44 separate elections in the “bargaining units” covering CHP’s workforce.

Since then, SEIU’s negotiators have been bargaining a first contract for the 600 CHP workers who’re now members of SEIU. Last week, an Ohio newspaper published this article describing SEIU’s new contract. How'd the workers do under SEIU? Not so good. In fact, SEIU’s contract provides ZERO improvements to workers’ wages, benefits and working conditions. Here’s how a hospital official described SEIU’s contract:  

There are no separate standards giving Union employees more money or rights and privileges than non-union employees have in the workplace.

In fact, workers will end up losing money after SEIU deducts 1.75% of their wages for union dues.

So why did SEIU negotiate such a horrible contract? This, my friends, has all the telltale signs of one of SEIU's backroom deals with the Boss. Dave Regan and Mary Kay Henry likely convinced CHP officials to run the union elections in exchange for SEIU’s commitment to negotiate a contract with no increases in wages, benefits or working conditions. That way, SEIU officials could accomplish their #1 goal:  increasing SEIU’s membership… even if workers end up losing money on the deal.

SEIU’s Zac Altefogt Joins Purple Pinocchios

SEIU at Labor Notes and Zac Altefogt

Remember how SEIU officials rigged the contract-ratification votes at Luther Manor Nursing Home and Mercy Health Partners’ Hackley Hospital… even going so far as to stuff ballot boxes and block union members from voting?

Well, here’s what SEIU’s Communications Director Zac Altefogt told the Muskegon Chronicle after Hackley’s workers delivered a landslide defeat to SEIU in last week’s NLRB election:

“We're a democratic union, and that was their choice,” Altefogt said of a group that SEIU began representing in 2007 at the time of the Mercy-Hackley hospital merger. “We provided this group with a strong first contract. People can join a union or leave it at any time.”

Yeah right… Looks like Zac has conveniently forgotten how SEIU has blocked workers’ NLRB elections for up to 2 ½ years in an effort to stop them from leaving SEIU. Or how SEIU committed such severe violations of federal labor laws that a judge tossed out the largest private-sector union election in the past 70 years.  

Well, it turns out this isn’t the first time that Zac has massively misinformed the Michigan media. Readers might remember an infamous episode that took place in Dearborn, Michigan in 2008. That’s when SEIU sent busloads of people to attack a Labor Notes conference attended by union reformers from 50 unions throughout the U.S.  During the attack, SEIU knocked workers to the floor and even bloodied a 67-year-old woman who ended up in a nearby hospital's emergency room. And tragically, an SEIU homecare worker named David Smith died of a heart attack during SEIU’s assault.

So how did Zac -- after summoning every ounce of integrity -- describe SEIU’s attack on the Labor Notes conference to Detroit’s Metro Times newspaper?

"It was a peaceful protest," says Zac Altefogt, spokesman for SEIU Healthcare Michigan.

Just recently, Tasty discovered that Zac knew the event wasn’t gonna be a peaceful even before it happened. Here’s a message that Zac sent through SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s twitter account in the days leading up to the attack: "Getting ready to RAID the RAD!"   “RAD” refers to Rose Ann DeMoro (the Executive Director of the California Nurses Association), who was gonna speak at the conference and was the focus of SEIU’s attack that day.

As you can see, it's no great wonder that "Zac" rhymes with "hack" -- because he's a big one.

P.S.  For analysis of last week’s election at Hackley Hospital, check out this article by journalist Mike Elk in In These Times.