Partnership Unions' Tentative Agreements Are Leaked

A copy of the Kaiser partnership unions' "tentative agreements" has finally slipped through the tightly clenched fists of SEIU-UHW officials.

A quick review offers some hints about why they've have treated the TAs like a top-secret White House national security briefing.

First of all, the so-called “TAs” -- which were triumphantly announced by both Kaiser and the partnership unions -- are not actually TAs. 

During labor negotiations, workers and management are supposed to negotiate contract language for the next several-year period. That didn’t happen here. 

Check out the partnership unions' TAs, which was signed by Hal Ruddick ( Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions) and Dennis Dabney (Kaiser Permanente). In small font at the bottom of each page is the following disclosure: "Note: The parties will approve contract language at a later time." 

In other words, the two sides didn't actually negotiate contract language. Instead, the "TAs" appear to be rough guidelines for negotiations that’ll happen at “a later date.”

So what are workers currently voting on during their unions' so-called ratification votes?

Good question.

Some of the language in the “TAs” is so half-baked that it's difficult to know what Kaiser and union officials will possibly end up agreeing to at “a later date.”  In at least one case, there's an actual blank spot in the TAs ("$______ per year") related to an apparent increase in the "partnership tax."

The fact that the negotiations haven't been completed raises a bunch of questions. 

Dennis Dabney with SEIU's Meg Niemi

• Who will be at the negotiating table when Kaiser and the partnership unions actually negotiate the real contract language? Will the partnership unions' bargaining team be elected? Or will it be filled with union staffers who are notoriously in management's pocket?

• Will the contract language be presented to union members for a vote?

• What happens if Kaiser takes a harder line at the real negotiating table and members have already ratified a three-year agreement?

A full copy of the so-called "tentative agreements" is pasted below. Here are a few items that jumped out at Tasty in his quick review of the agreement.

Pension:  The TAs set in motion a process that appears to be designed to eliminate workers' defined-benefit pension plan during the next round of negotiations and replace it with a 401(k) plan. Here's what the agreement says:

"The parties remain committed to working on a joint vision and consistent strategy for retirement programs. To that end, a joint committee will be established to review the pension benefits provided in Section 2.B.2.b., and reflected in Exhibit 2.B.2.b. The purpose of the review will be to explore retirement income programs for the purposes of recruiting and retaining employees, controlling costs and liabilities, and ensuring meaningful and predictable income to KP retirees. The joint committee will provide annual summaries of its progress, and will make consensus pension recommendations at the next round of National Bargaining." (Emphasis added)

Partnership Tax:  It looks like the partnership unions and Kaiser will be extracting more money from workers' paychecks through an increase in the partnership tax. Today, workers are taxed at 9 cents for every hour they work in order to fund Kaiser's partnership. Here's an excerpt from the so-called TAs. Check out the blank.

"Under the funding formula in place in 2015, by 2017 the LMP Trust Fund will take in less money than necessary to continue to fund existing programs at their current level... In order to sustain current operations while keeping up with annual cost increases, as well as to implement the new and revised provisions of the 2015 National Agreement, the LMP Trust Fund should be increased by $_______ per year."

“Changes in the Employer's overall funding of Partnership expenses... shall be at least proportional to employee contributions..."

Hal Ruddick: "Was I supposed to bargain contract language?"

Health Benefit Cuts?  The TAs open the door to cuts in workers' health benefits in 2017. In 2018, under Obamacare, the federal government will begin taxing companies if companies’ health benefits exceed a certain dollar threshold. This is what’s known as the "Cadillac tax." 

In the TAs, the partnership unions have "assured" Kaiser that they will do whatever it takes "to avoid the tax." The only way to avoid the tax is to reduce workers' health benefits by making workers pay a substantial portion of the monthly premiums, by boosting workers’ out-of-pocket expenses, etc. Here's the language from the TAs:

"Cadillac Tax:  Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition are committed to KP being the affordable health-care provider of choice. As part of this commitment, Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition agree to collaborate in assuring that KP is not subject to any PPACA excise tax. If it is determined in May 2017 that a tax would be levied in 2018, the parties will meet and reach consensus decisions by August 2017 to avoid the tax."

Retiree Health Cuts: In 2012, the partnership unions accepted cuts to workers' retiree health benefits that gave Kaiser a $1.9 billion windfall, according to the company's published financial statements. 

In the new TAs, the partnership unions have made more changes to these benefits. However, the language in the TAs is so vague and poorly written that it's unclear how it’ll impact workers. The language appears to place a cap on the amount of money that Kaiser will spend per employee for retiree health benefits. Apparently, workers will be on the hook for the rest. The TAs say:

"Coalition represented employees who retire on or after January 1, 2017, shall be subject to the following: Fixed amounts effective 1/1/2017 of $573 in NCAL and $279 SCAL."

Corporate Wellness Program:  In 2012, the partnership unions proposed a system whereby the boss -- Kaiser -- is allowed to track and monitor workers’ body weight, smoking habits, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. 

Crazy, right?

SEIU-UHW's Dave "Biometric Data" Regan

In the TAs, the partnership unions allow Kaiser to begin capturing even more biometric data from each worker. By 2016, Kaiser will be capturing the following data from workers: smoking, blood pressure, body weight, A1C, mammogram, pap cervical, colorectal, and cancer. 

Welcome to the brave new world of Big Brother... brought to you by Dave Regan and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions!

Local Bargaining:  SEIU-UHW once again failed to conduct any "local bargaining" on worksite issues affecting SEIU-UHW members. Since the 2009 trusteeship, SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan has not convened any local bargaining with Kaiser.

Here's a copy of the TAs.

  The Tentative Agreements by and between Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions: 20...

Kaiser's Partnership Pals Hold Birthday Celebration as Rebellion Breaks Out in Partnership Ranks

Wellness walks? Dance-a-thons? Contract buddies? Purple pedometers?

Meg Niemi and Dennis Dabney

In case you thought you'd seen it all, here's the latest from the Disneyland world of partnership bargaining, which resumed this week at the San Jose Marriott Hotel (April 28-30).

It comes from the twitter account of Meg Niemi, the President of SEIU Local 49. Niemi was last seen hugging Kaiser Permanente's top HR executive, Dennis Dabney, during recent bargaining meetings.

On Friday, Meg sent out the following tweet after SEIU members delivered "happy birthday” cards to Scott Allen, Kaiser’s Director of Labor Relations in Washington and Oregon, to celebrate the partnership's birthday. Looks like the officials atop the partnership unions are gearing up for a real knockdown drag-out fight with the Boss, right?

Here's the pic, with the smiling HR official standing in the middle. (Btw, not too many signatures on those b-day cards, right?)

Interestingly, it looks like another partnership union didn't get the memo about the all-smiles-and-hugs approach to Kaiser and its HR department.

UFCW Local 400 -- which is part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions and a “partnership” union – has sued Kaiser in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for violating its members’ contract, according to a Courthouse News article published April 10, 2015.

Local 400 -- whose members include RNs, Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, Mental Health Professionals, Substance Abuse Counselors, Audiologists and other professionals at 33 Kaiser outpatient facilities in DC, Maryland and Virginia -- says Kaiser is violating basic provisions of its labor contract and giving substandard care to patients so it can boost its profits.

The union has filed more than 60 grievances in an effort to get Kaiser to fix the problems. But Kaiser won't even follow the contract's grievance procedure!  That's why Local 400 is suing Kaiser in federal court.

Yesterday, UFCW Local 400 posted the following statement on its website: “Kaiser Worker Treatment Cause of Concern.” 

The statement details problems with off-the-clock work, inadequate staffing levels that underminethe quality of care, Kaiser’s profiteering at the expense of patients, and the HMO’s refusal to give benefited positions to workers. Here are some excerpts:

Once a model of labor-management cooperation, Kaiser Permanente has made troubling changes in the way it treats its health professionals, bringing in managers lacking experience in a union environment, disregarding the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, and focusing more on profits than the well-being of its employees and patients. 

As a result, an unprecedented number of grievances have been filed in the Mid-Atlantic region over the past year.

“Kaiser was once a model employer and we hope it will be again, but right now it’ s anything but,” said Local 400 Secretary-Treasurer Lavoris ”Mikki” Harris... 

“Kaiser’s recent behavior leads me to wonder whether the for-profit cart is dragging the non-profit horse,” Harris said. “As a result, Kaiser’s vaunted Labor-Management Partnership is not what it once was, with Kaiser’s health professionals being treated not as its most valuable resource, but rather as a cost to be minimized. Together, we will reverse this unfortunate turn of events.”

Way to go, Local 400! 

It sounds like the local’s members -- many of whom do the same work as NUHW’s members in California – have borrowed a page from the red union's playbook. 

More to come? Stay tuned.

Kaiser's "Partnership" Bargaining Begins as Goofy Hugs Delegates

This week, the "partnership unions" are holding their first bargaining session with Kaiser Permanente at the Manhattan Beach Marriott Hotel in Southern California (April 14-16).

Wanna have a glimpse at partnership “bargaining”?

Check out the following photos, tweets and messages from SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan, Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson, Kaiser Coalition Exec. Dir. Hal Ruddick, and others. They come from the "bargaining kickoff" held earlier this month (March 30-April 1) as well as the partnership unions' "Union Delegate Conference" at Disneyland (March 27-29).

Staffers from the Labor Management Partnership were so thrilled by the speeches of top union and Kaiser leaders that they tweeted excerpts to the outside world. Here's an interesting excerpt from SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan's speech: "Negotiations are not a debate and tantrums don't work."

Hmm. So if you can't actually "debate" the Boss across the bargaining table about workers' wages, health benefits, staffing levels, pensions, etc... then WTF are contract "negotiations" for? 

Hal Ruddick, the Chief Negotiator for the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, absolutely loved Diamond Dave's quote! In fact, he tweeted it himself. Way to go, Hal!

Here's another revealing quote from Regan: "We have chosen strategic collaboration." Here, Regan is referencing this infamous interview on NBC television, where he reported that our economy no longer has "employers" and "workers" -- only partners who work in a "teamwork economy." 

Btw, Regan really hates it when workers criticize management. (Ohh, and that goes for all of you SEIU-UHW members who are getting layoff notices from Kaiser despite the company's $3.1 billion in profits last year. Stop criticizing, dammit. Partnership really works).

Here's Ruddick, one of Regan's lieutenants, speaking to the crowd about "leading."

Here's the multi-million-dollar CEO of Kaiser, Bernard Tyson, doing a panel discussion with Hal Ruddick and Kathleen Theobald, the Executive Director of Kaiser Permanente Nurse Anesthetists Association (KPNAA), during the Union Delegates Conference.

Interestingly, even though they're management, Tyson and other Kaiser execs attended the Coalition's "Union Delegates Conference," where "delegates" are presumably supposed to prepare their bargaining strategy for negotiations with the Boss.

Instead... the partnership unions turned the delegates conference into a full-blown propaganda party for Kaiser's fatcat execs, who are systematically working to slash and burn workers' health benefits, pensions, and wages.

Here's Meg Niemi, the President of SEIU Local 49, hugging Kaiser's top HR official, Dennis Dabney. Dabney, who favors $5,000 dollar suits, decided to dress down for the workers.

Here's CEO Tyson at the Union Delegates Conference.

Check this out. The partnership unions and Kaiser even served a "partnership" cake to the delegates!

In case you're wondering... CEO Tyson had a "great" time at the Union Delegate Conference, according to his tweet.

Before the conference was over, the partnership unions placed posters of Tyson in the lobby areas of the Union Delegates Conference. Remember -- Tyson is trying to eliminate workers' pension plan even though Kaiser gives him 9 separate pension plans!

All in all, the delegates -- who are supposed to safeguard the interests of 90,000 Kaiser workers -- had a super awesome time.

And in case Regan, Ruddick and Tyson weren't entertaining enough, the LMP staff even brought along Goofy and other Disney characters to work the delegates!

Wow! This partnership sure is "innovative!"

Update on Kaiser Partnership Bargaining

What happened at this week’s "kickoff” of labor negotiations between Kaiser Permanente and the "partnership unions”?

Well… there wasn't any actual "bargaining."

After a three-day weekend of prancing around Disneyland with Kaiser execs, the partnership unions spent Monday and Tuesday in a "bargaining kickoff.” On Monday, Kaiser’s execs and union officials made speeches interspersed with "Instant Recesses” and "Thrive Activities" to keep participants awake.

On Tuesday, the unions were trained on how to do “interest-based bargaining.”

As far as speeches, sources say Chuck Columbus (Senior VP and Chief Human Resources Officer for Kaiser) was the first speaker and offered a gloom-and-doom picture about the vague, but very dangerous, "challenges" lurking in Kaiser’s future.

Don’t trust Chuck.

He formerly served as the VP of Human Resources at Ford Motor Co., where he eliminated the defined-benefit pension plan for new hires and forced them into a 401(k) plan. He also implemented a two-tiered wage system that pays new Ford employees only half as much as regular employees. This pushed Ford’s profits through the roof.

In 2009, Kaiser's then-CEO George Halvorson and COO Bernard Tyson recruited Columbus to do the same thing at Kaiser… with the assistance of SEIU’s newly implanted trustee from the East Coast, Dave Regan.

A year ago, Regan and Columbus gave a joint presentation to the California Public Employees Retirement System where Regan talked about cutting workers’ benefits if they don't meet the requirements of Kaiser's wellness program. You can see a video of Regan's comments on this earlier post.

 

Dave Regan with his buddy, Chuck Columbus, in Jan. 2014

At Monday's meeting, Columbus (who earns $1.5 million a year at Kaiser) told workers about the vague challenges facing Kaiser in the future, but forgot to mention one of the biggest challenges -- where to stash Kaiser's billions of profits. Last year alone, Kaiser pocketed profits of $3.1 billion.

Kaiser's Ray Baxter spoke about Kaiser's corporate wellness program, which has been "re-branded" as "Total Health.” 

Another speech had this intriguing title:  "One KP.”

A bevy of bloviating fatcats took the stage including Dennis Dabney (Senior VP of Labor Relations and Labor Management Partnership for Kaiser), Jim Pruitt (VP of Labor Management Partnership and Labor Relations for The Permanente Federation), Artie Southam (Executive VP of Kaiser’s Health Plan Operations), Hal Ruddick (Executive Director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions), and Dave Regan.

Lastly, here's a development that speaks volumes about the partnership bargaining. According to Kaiser workers in Northern California, Kaiser is currently laying off SEIU-UHW members with the assistance of SEIU-UHW officials. 

At Kaiser Vallejo Medical Center in Northern California, SEIU-UHW members with as many as 30 years of seniority are receiving layoff notices. They say workers are getting layoff notices without regard to seniority lists. And workers say SEIU-UHW is totally AWOL... even after workers make phone calls and send e-mails to Union Reps and SEIU-UHW’s headquarters in Oakland.

Again... these layoffs are happening as bargaining is underway. And as Kaiser's profits and membership are booming.

Where’s SEIU-UHW?

In the boss's pocket.

Leaked Document from Kaiser Partnership Bargaining… but Rotated!

After some technical difficulties, Tasty was able to rotate the leaked internal document from Kaiser Permanente’s "partnership" bargaining so it’s more readable.  Here it is.

  Kaiser Permanente’s 2015 National Bargaining with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions: Labor Manageme... by tastysternburger

Partnership Pals Discuss Cost-Cutting in Hotel Ballrooms

Kaiser workers who are members of SEIU and the other “partnership unions” might be interested to know what their union leaders and bosses are saying inside hotel conference rooms.

Earlier this month, the Labor and Employment Relations Association held its annual conference at the Hilton Portland and Executive Towers in Portland, Oregon.

During the conference, John August gave a speech titled “Examples from the Labor-Management Partnership at Kaiser Permanente: Cost Reduction in Health Care,” according to the conference schedule.  

Until recently, August served as the head of the “Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions” (CKPU) -- aka, the partnership unions -- where he teamed up with SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan to push a "21st century" style of unionism that involves slashing workers' benefits to boost Kaiser's bottom line.

Meanwhile, Kaiser’s Dennis Dabney gave a speech about “Navigating the Workforce of the Future in Partnership.” Tasty only wishes that Dabney had discussed the topic of “How Corporations Give Forgivable Tax-Free Loans to Fatcat Execs While Simultaneously Attempting to Slash Workers' Benefits."

It turns out that when Dabney quit his job as the V.P. of Human Resources at First Energy Corp. and then took his new position as the Senior V.P. for Labor Relations at Kaiser, the nonprofit HMO gave him a tax-free forgivable loan of $300,000 to help poor Dennis relocate to Kaiser's HQ in Oakland, California, according to Kaiser's tax returns.

And here's a speech that'll no doubt show up on Netflix sometime soon.

Conference-goers were graced by the presence of none other than SEIU’s David Rolf (aka “Clueless in Seattle”), who discoursed about new telephone apps and online petitions in a spellbinding speech entitled “Innovative Strategies for Organized Labor.”  

Wow!