For those keeping book on Dave Regan's multiple methods of misinformation and manipulation,
here’s the unsuccessful trickery he reportedly tried to use against SEIU-UHW's members at Garden Grove Hospital & Medical Center in
Southern California.
The trickery is part of Regan's unsuccessful effort to block
workers from having
an NLRB election to leave SEIU-UHW and join NUHW.
Trick No. 1: Make Sh*t Up.
Under federal labor law, workers can only request an NLRB election to switch unions during
limited periods of time -- for example, during the days or weeks after a labor contract has expired but before
the next contract has been negotiated. These are what the NLRB calls
"window periods."
In this case, workers at Garden Grove Hospital were well
within this kind of "window period” as they prepared to submit
their signatures to the NLRB. Then one day, Regan got wind of the signature-gathering
and tried to slam shut the "window" by announcing he'd miraculously
reached an agreement for a brand-new contract with hospital management.
It was a complete and utter lie. Regan, however, was so
intent on deceiving the union's members that he even organized a membership vote
to ratify his fictitious contract.
Trick Nos. 2 and 3: Rig
the Ballot Count.
When the contract-ratification vote took place, workers
turned out in large numbers to vote down Regan’s contract… and Regan’s plans
appeared to be swirling furiously down the toilet.
But, hey, let’s give credit to Dave. He has endless creativity when it comes to deceiving workers… so Dave decided to
improvise some additional deceptions.
After the voting was finished and workers waited to count
the ballots, Regan busted out Tricks No. 2 and 3.
First, SEIU-UHW staffers announced they couldn’t count the
ballots in front of the union's members and instead would have to "take
the ballot box back to the union office" -- which happened to be in
another county.
Secondly, SEIU-UHW officials announced a sudden change in the
ballot-counting rules, aka Trick No. 3. Instead
of allowing a majority of the votes cast by Garden Grove workers to carry the day
(which has always been the rule for that hospital), SEIU-UHW officials
announced their ballots would be "pooled" with the ballots from two
other hospitals and then counted as one mega-group. That way, Garden Grove workers'
ballots would be diluted by the other two hospitals. Plus, it’d make it that
much harder to detect and challenge a fraudulent count.
Dave Regan: Bold thinker. Totally transformational. What a guy.
In the end, despite his best efforts, Regan’s elaborate scheme
of fraudulent fakery came crashing to the earth in a fiery explosion.
In the days following SEIU-UHW’s sham ballot count to
ratify a fake contract, hospital officials began getting lots of questions from
workers about the wage increases they were supposedly owed under Regan’s new “contract.”
That's when hospital officials realized what had happened
and sent an e-mail to employees with the following news:
The SEIU-UHW and its President, Dave Regan, claims that there were contracts reached at Centinela Hospital Medical Center, Garden Grove Hospital Medical Center and Encino Hospital Medical Center. There has never been an agreement reached. SEIU-UHW knows that there is no agreement and that it cannot prove there is an agreement.
