SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan Trashes SEIU International at Annual Membership Meeting

SEIU-UHW's Leadership Assembly featured a "giant custom flame bob"

A union member who attended SEIU-UHW's recent "Leadership Assembly" in Fresno, California sent along the following report, including news that Dave Regan used the event as a platform to trash SEIU International and President Mary Kay Henry.

The report begins this way:

I have just finished a few days at the leadership conference, and do I feel dirty. Not because of the members, they were the saving grace, but because of the SEIU-UHW staff leadership that are also on the executive board. These people are not members, they have no concept of the struggle that working people face, they don't know us or the work of the members.

As far as Regan trashing SEIU International...

The other part that I found so completely strange was the mention of the Home-care members being put in their own union. Regan was blasting the International, and their wrong decision to create SEIU 2015. Reagan and others have said several time that the International "stole" their members. I may be naive, but aren't they still in a union? Actually, they are still with SEIU. We are fighting for the same things and the same political agenda's, but they act like these members are their property to be stole. Really, I am sure Dave is just sad about the lack of dues and Cope. I was shocked about how much crap Dave was spreading about the international. I can't imagine that the International will just sit back and take this.  I am actually more than fine with Dave and his minions get kicked out by the international.

(FYI, the term "COPE" refers to voluntary political contributions that SEIU-UHW collects from some of its members and uses to fund political campaigns.)

Tasty's source says Regan also referred to his collapsing deal with the California Hospital Association, apparently confirming details disclosed in last week's post penned by California Watchdog President Jamie Court.

Regan said that if the hospital CEO's would not support the medi-cal measure then maybe they would start going after their high pays and bonuses. … Why would hospitals NOT support this measure. This will be more money for them. It was clear that we are spending members dues to push Reagan and his buddies agenda.

Regan has already spent more than $10-$15 million of SEIU-UHW members' dues dollars to twice file and then withdraw the same ballot measures he's now considering re-filing for third time.

And here's a final excerpt. Btw, check out this union member's dead-on description of Regan and SEIU-UHW’s fatcat staff leaders: "a greedy man and a few sycophants who are more boss than working people." 

Of course, the biggest message was around Cope. Pretty much, UHW has become a lobbying group. They are pushing that all executive board members must collect ten $10 dollar COPE cards every three months. The staff are the ones pushing these goals, and if they are not met staff is disciplined. We are constantly losing good staff and member leaders. … The problem is the people making the decisions on behalf of UHW members is a greedy man and a few sycophants who are more boss than working people.  Not only was Regan's message all about cope (And man was he a boring speaker), but about the upcoming ballot initiatives that we will be pushing. 

Consumer Watchdog: ‘Death Rattle Shakes Dave Regan’s Pact with California Hospital Association’

Jamie Court, President of Consumer Watchdog

Today, the President of Consumer Watchdog reported the following news about SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan’s deal with the California Hospital Association in a blog:

Word on the street is that union President Dave Regan's Faustian bargain with the California hospital industry -- cuddle up with hospitals' management to keep patient problems quiet and receive more than 60,000 new hospital workers -- is now teetering on the brink of collapse. Apparently Regan shut up, but the hospitals didn't put up the new workers. Good riddance.

Consumer Watchdog, founded by public interest lawyer Harvey Rosenfield, is a non-profit consumer advocacy organization with offices in California and Washington, DC. It has won legislation to reform HMOs and utility companies as well as court battles to defend consumers against banks, oil companies and insurance corporations.

Jamie Court, Consumer Watchdog's president, describes additional details about SEIU-UHW's "Pax-Lucifer" with the CHA in today’s blog on his organization's website:

Inside sources says talks between the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) and the California Hospital Association (CHA), the industry's lobbying group, have stalled...

As a result... Regan reportedly is now considering re-filing the same statewide ballot initiatives that he’s already filed (and withdrawn) twice at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to SEIU-UHW's membership. According to Court:

Regan may be threatening to take those two initiatives out of the closet again as a club for the hospitals, but it's not clear he has the money or connections to actually get them to the ballot. No one with any juice wants to work with Regan anymore.  He had 70,000 of his 150,000 members recently stripped from UHW and has lost any leverage to gain more members. Can you hear the death rattle for the corporate collaborator?

Court describes how SEIU-UHW threw patients and consumers under the bus in exchange for Regan’s backroom deal to add more workers to the union's membership rolls:

[SEIU-UHW’s] labor-management deal with the hospital industry is a business model to stop the public and regulators from knowing about quality of care problems at hospitals -- one pioneered by SEIU-UHW at Kaiser Permanente for years...

The most pernicious part of the Pax-Lucifer was that Regan agreed the union would never oppose any hospital industry political position or have a public difference of opinion in the policy world.  That's led his union's name to be affiliated with many anti-patient positions, including opposition to health insurance rate regulation, patient safety protections and good consumer bills. His slap down by SEIU leaders was well deserved. Now he's getting the other side of the hand from the hospital industry.  It's a cautionary tale. But Regan doesn't strike me as guy who knows his Faust.

As Regan thinks about re-filing his ballot initiatives, he might wanna take a glance at a new law approved last year by California’s governor that turns Regan's ballot-initiative bamboozle into a crime punishable by up to three years in jail. 

Then again, Dave might look good in pinstripes...

Here's a link to Jamie Court’s full blog.

More on SEIU's Transfer of California Longterm Care Workers

Here’s additional news, analysis, and commentary on SEIU's transfer of California long-term care workers as well as the "leaked memo" authored by SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan: (1) an excerpt from labor journalist Cal Winslow’s article and (2) NUHW’s perspective on the situation.

Late last week, Winslow -- author of "Labor’s Civil War in California" -- published "SEIU: Pawns in Their Game" in CounterPunch and Beyond Chron. Here’s an excerpt:

The announcement of the new union itself came from the desk of Mary Kay Henry, the President of SEIU. Good news? SEIU is always about being the biggest, triumphalist in its campaigns – and gimmicks…

The details? Just how will all this happen? Well, we’ll have to wait. So will the workers. Not to worry, however; according to the mailer, “We are developing an orderly transition plan and will be in regular communication with you and all affected members over the next few months.” Questions? “Please call 844-259-1694. Your fellow union members are standing by to take your call.”

I called and was informed that eight members were ahead of me but “your call is important to us.” However, I could leave a question and receive a call back “within two business days.” I held on and after 16 minutes spoke to Minh, a “staff organizer” in Los Angeles. I asked him if it was indeed a done deal he said yes. And would the new local be headed by Laphonza Butler, a Henry protégé, now of Local 6364, “yes, at this point… it is still a process in transition.” And would there be any informational meetings in my area, North Bay, Santa Rosa? “No, none were scheduled.”

…Widely despised in trade union circles, not to mention amongst his own members, Regan came to California in 2008, parachuted in by Andy Stern, then President of SEIU, to take command of a trusteed UHW. Since then he has established himself as a friend of the hospital bosses par excellence, a grantor of concessions, champion of partnerships. His latest secret deal has been with Kaiser Permanente and its hospitals, one that stops the public (and the authorities) from knowing about quality of care problems in the state’s massive healthcare industry.

Finally, here’s NUHW’s take:

"Corporate Collaborator" Dave Regan undercut by SEIU International; SEIU-UHW members caught in crossfire

"In the labor movement, there are two kinds of leaders — those who fight big corporations, and those who collaborate with them," Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court wrote in the Huffington Post this week. "The poster child for the collaborators just had half his membership taken away.

"David Regan, head of United Healthcare Workers West, who inked sweetheart deals with California's largest HMO, Kaiser and its hospitals, to keep quality-of-care problems hush-hush, and only fought for corporations' political goals, lost 70,000 of his 150,000 members recently. 

"It's a fitting fate for one of labor's biggest corporate sellouts."

Mary Kay Henry, president of SEIU International, is shoring up her power base within the union by unilaterally cutting SEIU–UHW in half and moving 70,000 home care workers into a new local. SEIU–UHW members not only didn't get to vote on the move, they were not even aware of it until the deal was done. 

Those who remember the 2009 trusteeship of SEIU–UHW will appreciate the irony of this latest fiasco, which Cal Winslow has dissected in his latest article, "Pawns in SEIU's Game," published this week by CounterPunch and BeyondChron.  

This same top-down decision to eviscerate SEIU–UHW was the basis for the trusteeship that resulted in the ouster of the union's previous leaders, who went on to form democratic, member-led NUHW with the support of thousands of SEIU–UHW members. It was clear then that the transfer was purely a political move, a scheme by SEIU International's then President Andy Stern and then Vice President Mary Kay Henry to get rid of the democratic leadership of SEIU–UHW and put it firmly under the control of SEIU International in Washington DC.

And if anyone doubted that fact, it was later made abundantly clear when Stern and Henry decided not to follow through on the move once they'd installed their friend Dave Regan as president of SEIU–UHW. 

Stern has since moved on to join the ranks of corporate America, leaving Mary Kay Henry in charge, and now she's resurrected the scheme, this time to undermine her former protégé, Regan, who has responded with an outlandishly hypocritical memo that rails against the very same actions that helped get him his job in 2009. Regan was in favor of carving up SEIU–UHW when it worked in his favor but calls it "a massive betrayal" now that it doesn't.

Click here to read Dave Regan's memo. If you think it sounds familiar, it is. These are the same arguments voiced by NUHW leaders when they were ousted from SEIU–UHW by Regan, Henry, and Stern six years ago. 

One could almost find it amusing if it weren't so tragic. A once democratic union that was built through decades of struggle has been steadily undermined over the past six years until it has become a corporatized branch of the autocratic SEIU International. And now, with the transfer of half of SEIU–UHW's membership into a new local, the dismantling of what was once the biggest, strongest, proudest healthcare union in California is nearly complete. 

Our condolences to SEIU–UHW members, who remain trapped in an undemocratic and increasingly corporate-minded union whose leaders protect their own power at the expense of the workers they ostensibly represent. 

Leaked Memo In Full: Dave Regan on Internal War with SEIU

Check out Dave Regan’s leaked memo, first described in a June 17th article in the San Francisco Business Times. Tasty has pasted it below.

In the memo -- "Who’s Gonna Bell the Cat? The Tyranny of the Majority: Ethics and Values in SEIU?” -- Regan catapults himself to new heights of hypocrisy by tearfully condemning SEIU's decision to transfer 65,000 SEIU-UHW long-term care workers to a new statewide union.

In 2009, Regan not only supported this transfer, he was a top SEIU staffers in DC who designed, promoted, and executed the plan to carry out the transfer of these same 65,000 workers. Later, SEIU President Andy Stern rewarded Regan for his political hatchet job by appointing him to head SEIU-UHW after its pro-democracy leadership had been removed.

As far as Regan's hypocrisy, the president of a consumer rights organization describes it this way in a piece published yesterday in the Huffington Post:

Regan has "issued one of the more hypocritical memos ever written... In a long, dressed-up whine about his fate, he complained about payoffs, gag clauses, and everything being for sale, including souls. These are the very strategies Regan made his bones with in the union movement."

In Dave’s delusional memo, Regan tries to reinvent himself as a crusader for union democracy, transparency, and worker rights. Regan pretends to leap onto the stage as a hero who’s being victimized by a tyrannical despot. Cloaked in self-righteous armor, he climbs atop his high horse and tearfully moans and groans about the horrific crimes and injustices that, uhh, he himself actually perpetrated against these same workers.

And in case that’s not enough, Dave heaves another steaming shovelful of bullsh*t atop his dungheap of hypocrisy.

Remember the recent revelations about the gag clause that Regan secretly signed with the California Hospital Association?

Well, Dave didn't blink an eye when, with the stroke of his pen, he gagged more 80,000 hospital workers from reporting patient-care violations to government investigators. But now, he's crying crocodile tears over an internal SEIU gag rule (which he reportedly agreed to) that's supposed to stop him, a graduate of Cornell University, from airing SEIU's dirty laundry with the outside world.

Cry me a river, muthafuka!

And spare me your morally righteous bullsh*t.

As Jamie Court, the president of Consumer Watchdog, noted in his Huffington Post article:

In the labor movement, there are two kinds of leaders -- those who fight big corporations, and those who collaborate with them. The poster child for the collaborators just had half his membership taken away.

David Regan, head of United Healthcare Workers West, who inked sweetheart deals with California's largest HMO, Kaiser and its hospitals, to keep quality of care problems hush-hush, and only fought for corporations' political goals, lost 70,000 of his 150,000 members recently.

It's a fitting fate for one of labor's biggest corporate sellouts.

Here's the full piece:

  Dave Regan: "Who’s Gonna Bell the Cat? The Tyranny of the Majority: Ethics and Values in SEIU?" (...