Insiders Describe Failures, Mistreatment and Firings inside SEIU-UHW

Dave Regan

Sources have offered more details about Dave Regan’s recent firing of Myriam Escamilla,  who formerly headed SEIU-UHW’s Hospital Division. They also describe a culture of bullying, abuse and mistreatment of SEIU-UHW staff.

One SEIU-UHW staffer writes: "I could write a book about how fucked up Dave Regan and his gang of fascist upper staff [are]."

Why was Escamilla fired?

According to one source, Regan reportedly canned her because she allowed Dignity Health and HCA to eliminate their financial contributions to SEIU-UHW’s Education and Training Fund during negotiations.

Prior to SEIU’s 2009 trusteeship, Sal Rosselli and his team negotiated contract provisions that required the two multi-billion dollar companies to contribute millions of dollars a year to an education and training fund to allow workers to go back to school to train for higher-paid positions inside the healthcare industry.

In a separate report to Tasty, an SEIU-UHW staffer sent along the following note about Escamilla, Regan, Chief of Staff Greg Pullman, and other SEIU-UHW officials, who reportedly “totally mistreat the staff.” (FYI, Paul Matakiewicz is a former supervisor in SEIU-UHW’s Hospital Division.)

Myriam came in and destroyed the whole division. She was a raging, racist bitch. She totally harassed and set up Paul Matakiewicz to be forced out after the years he help build that division. 

…She only had that job because she had once been married to Greg Pullman. I'm glad she was fired. She and other upper staff have tried everything they can to force out a current staffer who is disabled, but had never let it interfere with her work. They've tried to set up up, fuck with her numbers and turn members against her. This really speaks well of a "workers union." I could write a book about how fucked up Dave Regan and his gang of fascist upper staff.

Source: SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Is Pursuing Backroom Deal to Snatch 9,000 Members from SEIU Nevada

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan is attempting to snatch 9,000 members from “SEIU Nevada” through a backroom deal with the local's president, according to inside sources.

Here's what's happening:

SEIU Nevada’s 18,000 members are roughly divided between public-sector workers (mainly Clark County employees) and private-sector workers in the healthcare industry.

In July of 2013, Martin Bassick, a county employee, was elected president of SEIU Nevada. 

Regan apparently approached Bassick about splitting SEIU Nevada’s membership in half and "giving" the union’s 9,000 healthcare workers to Regan. It's not clear what Bassick would get in return. According to Tasty’s sources, these discussions have taken place completely "behind the members' backs."

If Nevada’s healthcare workers were handed over to Regan, observers say it would be disastrous.

Regan is notorious for making backroom deals with employers and would likely use Nevada's 9,000 workers as bargaining chips to get better deals from HCA and Dignity Health for Regan’s 150,000 members in California. In 2008, Regan famously backed a deal to trade away the pensions of SEIU workers in one state in order to advance SEIU officials’ personal agendas in other states.

Observers also point to Regan's track record at SEIU-UHW, where he has…

• Slashed workers’ health insurance, retirement plans and other benefits -- including the elimination of 20,000 workers’ pensions at Dignity Health and Daughters of Charity Health System.

• Sharply reduced representation services for the union's membership, allowing bosses to fire 33-year employees at the drop of a hat. 

• Aggressively boosted monthly union dues, including a 50% increase in the maximum dues rate to $124 per month -- with an ongoing $10 increase each year, which means the top rate is now $134 per month!

• Dramatically increased Regan's own salary to $300,000 a year and also transformed SEIU-UHW into a profit-making machine, with the union ending last year with $38 million in cash. 

• Made countless backroom deals with bosses including a recent deal with the California Hospital Association that would lower workers’ pay and benefits, prohibit workers from criticizing hospitals' poor patient-care practices, and ban workers from striking.

• Violated SEIU’s own Constitution by using ramrod ratification votes to force major benefit cuts down workers' throats.

It sounds like SEIU Nevada's members ought to give Bassick a jingle over at the Lacquered Up Nail Salon on Rainbow Blvd.

NLRB Overturns Illegal Unionization Scheme between SEIU-UHW and SoCal Hospital

The NLRB has found SEIU-UHW officials guilty of rigging an illegal unionization scheme with HCA, the nation’s largest hospital corporation, which forced 200 Southern California hospital workers to join SEIU earlier this year.

The findings -- which are documented in an official NLRB notice posted below -- recall a similar episode at Chapman Medical Center. In August of 2012, the NLRB reversed the results of a union-representation election for 220 of Chapman’s workers after determining that SEIU-UHW had illegally rigged the vote count in collusion with hospital executives.

SEIU-UHW’s track record of fraudulent elections raises obvious concerns as Dave Regan tries to negotiate a sweetheart unionization pact with the California Hospital Association that would allow SEIU-UHW to unionize 100,000 workers without any employer resistance but would force the workers into cheap, pre-negotiated contracts that ban strikes.

So what happened at the HCA hospital?

After HCA purchased Thousands Oaks Surgical Hospital, SEIU-UHW cut a deal with HCA executives that forced the hospital’s 200 Registered Nurses and other staff to join SEIU without a vote and forced them to immediately begin paying dues to SEIU.

In May, the hospital’s workers filed charges with the NLRB alleging that HCA executives and Dave Regan colluded to force the 200 workers into SEIU.

After an investigation, the NLRB overturned the unionization scheme and forced SEIU-UHW to post the following notice informing workers of their right to a democratic vote that allows them to elect the union of their choice.

   SEIU-UHW's NLRB Posting Notice resulting from illegal unionization scheme at an HCA Hospital (Thousand Oaks...

 

HCA Negotiations: Going Nowhere, Fast.

Tasty hears that SEIU's trustees are having some problems at HCA hospitals in California. Earlier this week, SEIU-UHW sent out a press release announcing that its members at three HCA hospitals in Southern California would conduct a one-day strike on Dec. 3 after more than a year of unsuccessful contract negotiations.

Registered Nurses at the three hospitals, who are represented by SEIU Local 121, have also been in unsuccessful negotiations at the same hospitals but, strangely enuf, Local 121 didn't issue a strike notice for Dec. 3.

According to the San Fernando Business Journal, the SEIU RNs planned to cross the picket line: "...members of SEIU Local 121RN will not be holding a strike on Friday. They still have five days left of bargaining with the hospitals’ management from Dec. 6 through Dec. 10, said Aimee Barajas, spokeswoman for the local union."

On Dec. 1, SEIU's trustees announced they were calling off the Dec. 3 strike and would instead sit down with HCA -- like they've been doing for more than a year.

So what's going on? As far as Tasty can tell, there are some serious coordination problems between SEIU's trustees and Local 121's leaders. How's it possible that these two SEIU locals are not coordinating their negotiations and strike plans against HCA, the largest hospital corporation in the US??

Tasty suspects these problems may have something to do with Ragin' Dave Regan's bull-in-a-china-shop style. During his short tenure in CA, Regan has already threatened the entire San Francisco Labor Council, the North Bay Labor Council, the Chair of the California Democratic Party, etc. Or it could be a simple case of incompetence by SEIU's out-of-state staff, like the failures that led to the firing of 38 UHW members at Piedmont Gardens in Oakland.

And this may be another hint: as far as incompetence, Tasty hears that Alex "Krooked" Espinoza is playing a lead staff role in the trustees' HCA campaign.