Top SEIU-UHW Staffer, Leon Chow, Departs amidst Reported Connections to Man Convicted of 162 Criminal Counts

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow -- a top staffer for Dave Regan whose brief political career exploded in flames in 2012 -- is getting attention for his alleged connections to an ex-con recently found guilty of more than 150 criminal counts following a multi-year FBI probe.

Chow is no longer employed by SEIU-UHW, where he was paid approximately $120,000 per year.

According to an article in the SF Weekly, Chow has connections to Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow (no relation), who on January 8 was found guilty on 162 counts of racketeering, murder, money-laundering, and dealing in stolen liquor and cigarettes.

During a sentencing hearing in March, Shrimp Boy will face a mandatory life term, according to the Los Angeles Times ("Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow found guilty of 162 counts in massive corruption case," 1-8-16). The FBI investigation involved raids that detained more than 20 people including former State Senator Leland Yee.

What's Leon Chow’s connection to Shrimp Boy?

According to the SF Weekly, Chow is an "associate" of Shrimp Boy.

Shrimp Boy, after completing an earlier jail term, rose to the top of a Chinatown fraternal organization called the Ghee Kung Tong group, which was attempting to manage a night market in San Francisco's Chinatown with city funding.

Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow

When city officials "balked at handing over the market to a shady character like [Shrimp Boy] Chow," says the Weekly, "Shrimp Boy had an associate who did take over the market — a Chinatown advocate and union organizer named Leon Chow."

According to the Weekly, "Chow secured a permit for the night market in 2010 on behalf of his union, Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West (why home healthcare workers were interested is still unclear, but the union accepted a $5,000 check from Pius Lee to do it)."

The article, entitled "Shrimp Boy Associate Is Helping Julie Christensen," continues:

[Leon Chow’s] tenure with the market was brief: the night market ran for a full season in 2010 but for only two Saturdays in 2011 before closing. Chow, too, would soon drop off the scene. He mounted a brief campaign for city supervisor in 2012, running against incumbent progressive John Avalos in the Excelsior District. That effort ended after it was revealed that Chow lived in Walnut Creek, not the Excelsior; having committed the same offense that landed disgraced former Supervisor Ed Jew in federal prison (lying about his residence on a voter registration form) it seemed Chow's political career was over.

(Fyi -- Leon Chow’s earlier brushes with the law are detailed in various posts.)

Last fall, SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow reappeared in Chinatown to work on behalf of a business-dominated association attempting to elect a business-friendly candidate, Julie Christensen, to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors.

San Francisco's progressives -- including most of its labor unions -- backed candidate Aaron Peskin, who won the November 2015 election.

The business-dominated association -- called the "San Francisco Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth" -- was founded by Regan after he parachuted into California in 2009. Regan teamed up with leaders of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to create the Alliance, which has attempted to exert a rightward pull on the city's politics.

San Francisco Chamber of Commerce

Regan -- who’s made his name as the Boss's best friend at the bargaining table -- has extended his alliance with corporate CEOs to the terrain of electoral politics by forming such political alliances. Regan's Alliance includes multiple business associations and other conservative elements of the labor movement, such as the Police Officers Association.

Last year, SEIU-UHW and Regan’s so-called "business-labor alliance" threw their full support behind AirBnB and real estate developers, who campaigned aggressively against a pair of affordable housing and anti-gentrification ballot measures that were championed by neighborhood groups, tenants and progressives.

Where's Leon now?

Stay tuned!

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Sells Out SEIU Local 1021, Pimps for Kaiser Permanente

Tasty hears that Dave Regan’s latest atrocity has many observers shaking their heads in disgust.  

Here’s what happened.

In California, SEIU Local 1021 represents thousands of public-sector employees who work for the City of San Francisco, the city’s courts, city college, etc. Most of these workers get their health insurance from Kaiser Permanente, which is trying to boost the cost of their health insurance by $15 million a year.

San Francisco’s elected officials and the city's workers are fighting back. According to an analysis by city officials that’s cited in this Los Angeles Times article, “nonprofit” Kaiser HMO made a 15% profit margin from the City employees’ business during the past two years. That’s $87 million in profits.

Meanwhile, “nonprofit” Kaiser has pocketed more than $9.5 billion in company-wide profits since 2009.

That’s why elected officials and labor unions demanded that Kaiser lower its proposed rate hike on San Francisco’s workers. The city’s unions -- including SEIU Local 1021, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees, Union of American Physicians and Dentists/AFSCME -- even formed a coalition to fight Kaiser’s rate hike. Check out one of their leaflets below, entitled “Kaiser: Stop Draining San Francisco Tax Dollars,” which bears SEIU Local 1021’s logo.

Here’s where SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan enters our story.

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

Did “Wall Street” Dave rush to the side of workers and taxpayers in order to fight the disgusting profiteering by the nation’s largest HMO? Not by a long shot.

According to multiple sources, Regan recently appeared at San Francisco’s city hall with a team of Kaiser’s executives and conducted a round of lobbying visits to push elected officials to approve Kaiser’s full rate hike.  

According to several sources, Regan even tried to enter the office of John Avalos, one of the most progressive members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Last year, Regan teamed up with the Chamber of Commerce to try to unseat Avalos by fielding one of Regan’s staffers -- Leon Chow -- as a candidate against Avalos. That is… until Chow crashed and burned in spectacular fashion after evidence surfaced that he violated multiple election laws!

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow

So… when Regan recently walked into Avalos’s office, Avalos reportedly told Regan to get out. At which point Regan began jabbing his finger at Avalos’s chest in “old school” fashion before “Wall Street” Dave and the Kaiser suits beat a hasty retreat.

Regan and his business-suited buddies then continued to lobby other elected officials to approve Kaiser’s multi-million-dollar rate hikes.

Quite a story, right?

Remember that famous labor song that says, “Which side are you on?”

Well… what does it mean when a top SEIU official shows more solidarity for a multi-billion-dollar HMO than for SEIU’s own members -- not to mention workers in general?

At a time when lots of people are asking well-deserved questions about the future of the U.S. labor movement, this recent episode speaks volumes.

Notably, Regan’s vision of company-dominated unionism is shared by the top leaders of SEIU, one of the nation’s largest unions. In fact, Tasty’s sources say SEIU President Mary Kay Henry hasn’t voiced the slightest opposition to Regan selling out San Francisco’s workers in favor of a giant HMO. 

Here's SEIU Local 1021's leaflet on Kaiser's price-gouging:

   Leaflet by SEIU Local 1021 about Kaiser Permanente's Price-Gouging of San Francisco's Workers: July 2013

After the Axe, Dave Kieffer Clings to SEIU's Dave Regan

Dave Kieffer

As Tasty predicted, Dave Kieffer -- who was recently fired from his job as the Executive Director of the SEIU California State Council -- has re-surfaced alongside Dave Regan.

Earlier this month, Regan granted Kieffer the title of “Director of Governmental Relations” at SEIU-UHW. Which is not to be confused with Rebecca Miller’s title of “Political Director” or Leon Chow’s designation as “Director of External Affairs."

So what do these people actually do... since, uhh, their jobs kinda sound like the exact same thing, right? Well, it’s all part of Regan’s scheme to hand out fat paychecks and big titles in order to purchase the loyalty of staffers.

Here's an excerpt from a page on SEIU-UHW's website identifying Kieffer's new position:

With the addition of Kieffer, SEIU-UHW now has the distinction of employing the largest collection of Purple Palace officials who are directly implicated in Tyrone Freeman’s multi-million-dollar crime spree, which last month resulted in 14 criminal convictions by a federal jury.

Kieffer and SEIU-UHW’s Steve Trossman famously engineered a cover-up that hid Freeman’s crimes from SEIU members and law enforcement for seven long years, according to the Los Angeles Times and sworn testimony by Jim Philliou.

And in 2008, Dave Regan was reportedly a key player in a scheme by which SEIU officials steered large monetary kickbacks to Tyrone Freeman even as Freeman intensified his theft of money from low-wage healthcare workers.

These ethically compromised officials -- who now pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries from their perch atop SEIU-UHW -- speak volumes about the sick values that now govern the union.  

SEIU's Dave Regan Inks Deal to Subcontract SEIU-UHW Members' Jobs

Tasty hears that the workers at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, CA have become the latest victims of Dave Regan’s concessionary caravan. Soon, 10 percent of SEIU-UHW's members at the hospital will lose their jobs as the result of a subcontracting deal penned by Regan.

Here’s what’s happening.

The hospital -- which is owned by Sutter Health, the largest hospital company in Northern California -- pocketed more than $200 million in profits over the past two years.

Last Friday, SEIU-UHW and Sutter reached a tentative deal for a new labor contract covering the hospital’s 1,100 workers. The deal was reached after Regan “fast-tracked” the negotiations even though workers’ current labor contract doesn’t expire until December 31.

What’s in the tentative contract? Regan’s biggest concession is a deal to eliminate the jobs of nearly 100 SEIU-UHW members by allowing Sutter to subcontract their work to Utah. The soon-to-be-jobless union members are currently employed in the hospital’s business office.

Workers say it’s a massive concession. Why? Because workers’ current union contract strictly prohibits the hospital from subcontracting their jobs. Section 12 of the contract reads:

No further bargaining unit work will be subcontracted, except by the parties' mutual agreement.

Crystal clear, right? In fact, NUHW’s leaders were the ones who negotiated this language in the years before SEIU’s trustreeship. Workers say that over the years, Sutter tried to subcontract workers’ jobs but was unsuccessful because workers’ old union actually enforced the agreement.

Sutter's Pat Fry and SEIU's Dave Regan

Not anymore. Last month, Regan attended the first bargaining session with Sutter executives and signaled his willingness to roll over for the Boss by stating: “We can work with employers like Sutter Health.” Observers speculate that Regan has a special relationship with Sutter’s CEO Pat Fry, who plays a top role at the California Hospital Association.

What did Regan get for his massive concession? Annual pay increases of just 2% for the still-employed workers, an even bigger “wellness” program, and additional cuts to workers’ health insurance.

Yesterday, Regan and Co. reportedly began conducting membership votes to ratify the tentative agreement. Tasty hears that SEIU is experiencing serious opposition from workers, so Regan dispatched dozens of staffers to the hospital including Vicki Jackson, Fola Afariogun, Julie Kwiek, Vu Nguyen, Gabrielle Zwain and Leon Chow. Chow -- who suddenly has lots of free time on his hands -- apparently has been tasked with applying his special skills in voting fraud.

According to workers, as many as 15-18 SEIU staffers are stationed inside a single conference room where workers are supposed to cast their votes. Workers are already reporting a variety of SEIU’s ballot-rigging tricks, including missing ballot boxes, intimidation, and workers denied the right to vote.

Stay tuned for more reports.

Sources: Top SEIU Officials Are Implicated in Chow Scandal

Dave Regan and Debbie Schneider

As Tasty noted in a recent post, insiders report that SEIU’s election-fraud scandal involving Leon Chow will soon entangle top SEIU leaders, including Dave Regan and Debbie Schneider.

Information supplied by these sources links Regan and Schneider to the Chow scandal and also implicates them in even more serious law-breaking.

Who’s Debbie Schneider? She’s a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board, is a longtime ally of Andy Stern and Mary Kay Henry, and worked alongside Dave Regan as a “Deputy Trustee” at SEIU-UHW.

Beginning in the summer of 2008, Regan and Schneider led a team of SEIU staffers who spent six months planning the trusteeship of SEIU-UHW, which ultimately took place in January of 2009. Inside the Purple Palace, their secret planning project was codenamed “TRUHW” for “Trustee UHW.”

As part of this effort, Regan and Schneider employed investigators to try to dig up dirt on SEIU-UHW’s then-leaders. SEIU’s investigators left no stone unturned, examining each person’s legal records, romantic relationships, property records, divorces, savings accounts and, yes… their voting records!

That’s how Regan and Schneider -- in 2008 -- first discovered Chow’s election fraud. They learned that Chow, from 2004 to 2008, had registered and voted illegally from the offices of the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco even though he lived in different county. Of course, this is the same apparently criminal violation that the San Francisco Appeal unearthed just two weeks ago.

So did Regan and Schneider hand over this information to law enforcement officials when they discovered it back in 2008? 


Nope!  And this is where our story gets even more interesting.

Less than 24 hours after SEIU imposed its trusteeship on SEIU-UHW in January of 2009, Leon Chow resigned his membership in SEIU and joined NUHW… as did every other member of SEIU-UHW’s 100-member Executive Board. Then, several days later, Regan and Schneider contacted Chow and reportedly threatened to turn him in to law-enforcement officials unless he quit NUHW and worked for the trustees! Chow complied. Various sources corroborate this series of events. 

Why is this important? Simple. It would implicate Regan and Schneider in multiple criminal violations, including extortion. Plus, Regan and Schneider became aware of a felony violation of the state's election laws, but reportedly failed to report it to police. Both of these violations carry serious criminal penalties.

And there’s more!

In 2012, Regan -- knowing that Chow had violated the state’s election laws -- nonetheless selected and sponsored Chow as a candidate for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. Regan even spent lots of SEIU-UHW’s resources to promote Chow’s campaign.

Furthermore, sources tell Tasty that Regan was fully aware of Chow’s more recent violations of election laws, including the fact that Chow claimed to reside in San Francisco while actually living in his Walnut Creek condominium. Regan, believing this information would never become public, deliberately foisted a fraudulent candidate on voters. 

What’s next? 


Tasty expects that law-enforcement officials will soon be posing questions about these interesting issues to Leon Chow and others... while they're under penalty of perjury!!


PS. A note to SEIU staffers. It is illegal to destroy records that are the subject of a criminal investigation.

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow Must File Campaign Financial Report on Monday

On Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle printed more news about Leon Chow’s decision to pull the ripcord on his political campaign following the publication of an article describing Chow's apparent election fraud. 

Chow, who serves on SEIU-UHW's Executive Committee, was running for a seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors. His campaign was backed by SEIU-UHW and the Chamber of Commerce.

According to the Chronicle, it won't be so easy for Chow and his puppet-masters, including SEIU's Dave Regan, to sweep their ugly mess under a rug. Here’s an excerpt from the article: 

Ending the campaign isn't as easy as sending an e-mail. Chow, who began raising money for his race in May, has to file his campaign financial statement for the first six months of the year with the city Ethics Commission by midnight Monday. He also can't close his campaign until he disposes of any remaining campaign cash and makes a final financial report.

Chow also may be facing legal problems. It is against the law to vote at an address where you don't live and business addresses don't count.

And here’s another excerpt from the article:

Plagued by growing questions about just where he lives, union organizer Leon Chow has dropped his effort to unseat Supervisor John Avalos in November.

The decision wasn't a surprise. After a San Francisco Appeal story this month revealed that Chow had been registered to vote at the office of his former Chinatown nonprofit agency from 2004 to 2008 and had listed a Walnut Creek condominium as his official residence in 2009 court papers, his campaign ground to a halt. Chow has canceled his campaign kickoff event and shut down his Chow for Supervisor website. Although he had not officially filed his campaign papers, Chow sent a brief e-mail to the city elections office, saying he would not run for the District 11 seat in the Outer Mission/Excelsior neighborhood and asking to have his name removed from the department's list of potential candidates. While Chow has denied any wrongdoing, he hasn't said why he decided to end his campaign. Calls and e-mails to Chow have not been returned.

Here’s the full article in the San Francisco Chronicle. 

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow Calls it Quits

SEIU-UHW's Leon Chow

Yesterday, Leon Chow’s political career reached its final, fiery conclusion when Chow -- a top official at SEIU-UHW -- officially withdrew from the race for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors amid allegations of election fraud.

The development was reported by the San Francisco Appeal -- which initially broke the story on Chow’s apparent felony violations of election laws -- and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Here’s an excerpt from the San Francisco Appeal:

Union organizer Leon Chow, whose ties to residences outside of the district may constitute voter fraud, has withdrawn his candidacy for District 11 supervisor. In a brief e-mail sent to the Department of Elections on Monday, Chow offered no explanation for the withdrawal of his candidacy…

Chamber of Commerce CEO Steve Falk, with whom Chow serves as co-chairs of the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth, also did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

Chow’s candidacy had enjoyed months of planning, preparation and funding by Dave Regan’s SEIU-UHW and the Chamber of Commerce. In the end, however, it plummeted to earth in a spectacular explosion only 15 days after Tasty first published this post.

Here’s how the San Francisco Bay Guardian described it:

[Reporter Chris Roberts] dropped a journalistic bomb on Chow's ambitions a couple weeks ago when he unearthed documents indicating that Chow actually lived in Walnut Creek and that he was registered to vote at Chinatown business address – both in violation of election law…

 And the San Francisco Appeal cited Tasty in its coverage of the story:

According to self-described "labor union related gossip site" Stern Burger with Fries, Avalos is reportedly an enemy of SEIU-UHW honcho Dave Regan, who, according to Stern Burger, helped push Chow to run for office against him. Avalos is a member of the Board's progressive wing and was runner-up to Mayor Ed Lee in last year's mayoral election.

So what’s next? 

Well, one chapter of our story may be finished, but other chapters remain to be written! 

First, Chow will likely face a criminal investigation for apparent election fraud and other felonies. One source tells Tasty that the San Francisco City Attorney’s office has already begun examining Chow’s case.  

Secondly, more shoes will drop in the near future! Soon, Tasty plans to describe additional details -- revealed by inside sources at SEIU -- that implicate top SEIU officials in a variety of additional criminal wrongdoing that’s connected to Chow’s case.

Stay tuned!