Guess Who's Back? Shady Rickman... Again. WTF!?

In 2008, Rickman Jackson became a household name across Southern California after the Los Angeles Times revealed he’d stolen more than $30,000 from the low-wage homecare members of SEIU Local 2015.

At the time, Jackson served as the “Chief of Staff” of the union’s president, Tyrone Freeman. Together, they stole thousands of dollars from the union’s members. Jackson personally accompanied Tyrone on union-funded adventures to “the Grand Havana Room in Beverly Hills for $175 glasses of cognac” and other felonious funfests, including Freeman’s union-funded wedding at a Hawaiian resort.

Freeman was sentenced to 33 months in a federal prison. And Jackson was stripped of his union position.

What’s the latest?

SEIU Local 2015 -- the scene of Rickman’s corruption -- just hired Rickman as the Director of its Organizing Department, according to a source inside SEIU Local 2015.

WTF!

Union officials reportedly announced Jackson’s hiring during a member conference call on February 25, 2019. Tasty’s source provides the following details:

His hiring was announced in a member conference call that takes place every Monday. This particular call, on February 25, made no mentioned of his hiring until the end of the call, with no discussion for members. The following week, April Verrett, president of 2015, discussed the hiring of Rickman where several members stated their opposition to his hiring because of what happened with Tyrone. Make no mistake, April did not say what Rickman did and only classified his actions as an error like a clerical mistake, because Rickman signed something he shouldn't have signed. She tried to justify his hiring as part of the union's Restorative Justice agenda, as if Rickman's corruption could compare to racist policies that make millions of people of color criminals rather than Rickman stealing from home care workers. Members were also angry there was no transparency because the executive board did not about this hiring, much less a discussion. April lied when she said the decision to hire Rickman was also because it was hard to find a director for external organizing. She said the union had been looking for 18 months for a director to fill the vacancy but the director had actually left around September 2018. When she was told Rickman had not re-paid the local, she denied this but did not provide any evidence. She said she would provide the evidence at a later time and to the member who asked instead of the general membership.

For those who may have forgotten the details of Rickman’s corruption, reporter Paul Pringle described them in a 2008 Los Angeles Times article that detailed the findings of an investigation led by former state Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp and an SEIU audit.

Freeman steered vast amounts of union money into union-created nonprofit organizations, which then used fake transactions to deposit cash into the pockets of Tyrone and others. One of these nonprofit organizations -- the Long-Term Care Housing Corp -- made lump-sum payments to Freeman while also paying Rickman $2,500 a month to supposedly “lease” Rickman’s personal home to serve as the organization’s offices. All told, Rickman pocketed $33,500 from this scam.

(Paul Pringle, “SEIU accuses local union leader of misusing funds,” Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2008.)

In October of 2008, SEIU stripped Rickman of his position and “exiled” him to Canada while keeping him on payroll. (Paul Pringle, “SEIU leader loses post over scandal,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2008.)

What idiot at SEIU would hire someone who stole tens of thousands of dollars from the union’s own hard-working members?

Its mind boggling, right?

SEIU’s leaders are clearly pathetic, but this level of corruption and disdain for its members is shocking even to those of us who’ve waded neck-deep through purple muck and mire for years.

Ten Years Later...

This month marks the tenth anniversary of some of the headline-grabbing events that led up to SEIU's disastrous trusteeship of SEIU-UHW.

Ten years ago, SEIU-UHW -- then led by president Sal Rosselli -- was one of the most successful healthcare unions in the nation. Labor journalist Steve Early called SEIU’s takeover of SEIU-UHW “the mother of all trusteeships.” Unfortunately, it gave birth to a Frankenstein-like child headed by Dave Regan, who quickly drove the once-powerful union into the ground.

So what happened ten years ago?

During August 2008, a reporter named Paul Pringle published eight articles in the Los Angeles Times detailing a massive corruption scandal perpetrated by Tyrone Freeman, one of Andy Stern’s closest allies.

Freeman’s corruption was stunning. It ranged from union-funded jaunts to Hawaii with his personal assistant, $175 glasses of cognac and cigars at an exclusive cigar club frequented by Los Angeles movie stars, no-show jobs for relatives, and kickbacks from corporations in exchange for deals that sold out low-wage healthcare workers.

During the months leading up to August 2008, Freeman had served as Andy Stern’s attack dog in Stern’s campaign to “implode” SEIU-UHW. A boatload of Stern’s staffers also worked on the campaign, such as Stephen Lerner, Dave Regan, Bill Ragen, Tom DeBruin, Josie Mooney, Debbie Schneider, Steve Trossman and Denise Poloyac.

Andy Stern

Earlier in the summer of 2008, Freeman was riding high after Stern initiated a maneuver to transfer 65,000 union members out of Rosselli’s SEIU-UHW and put them in Freeman’s union… without a democratic vote by the workers. 

Following the transfer, Freeman would have led one of SEIU’s largest local unions… and he then would have delivered all of his union’s votes to Stern at SEIU’s conventions where Stern sought reelection as the international union’s president.

But in August 2008, the curtains were finally pulled back on Freeman’s years-long corruption scandal and he plummeted to earth like a flaming meteor.

Stern, angry at the loss of his loyal ally, announced on August 25, 2008 that SEIU was launching trusteeship hearings against Rosselli’s union. During the preceding years, SEIU-UHW’s members had caught Stern and his DC-based staffers making backroom deals with healthcare corporations that sold out workers and patients, and violated democratic principles.

In 2010, Stern resigned as the President of SEIU after launching yet another disastrous attack, this time against UNITE HERE. Freeman, in turn, ended up in federal prison. "May God have mercy on me," said Freeman at the time of his sentencing. "I am accountable for these bad decisions."

Meanwhile, Rosselli and his crew of rank-and-file leaders launched the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) as a militant, member-led, democratic alternative to SEIU.

Ten years later, this history stands sharper in our collective memory.

Here’s a link to the series of articles in the Los Angeles Times from August 2008.

Source: SEIU Officials Secretly Funded Tyrone Freeman's Legal Defense for Crimes against SEIU's Own Members

“What ever happened to Tyrone Freeman?,” asks a reader

In late 2013, Freeman -- a close ally of SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern -- was sentenced to a 33-month term at a federal prison in Yankton, South Dakota. 

According to a reliable source, Freeman was eventually released from Yankton and transferred to a halfway house in Long Beach, Calif. 

Tasty’s source provided answers to some of the long-standing mysteries surrounding Freeman’s criminal trial:

• Who was the secret financier who funded Freeman’s multi-million dollar legal defense?

• Why didn’t Freeman rat out the higher-up SEIU officials -- including Andy Stern and Eliseo Medina -- who were implicated in the crimes for which Freeman was convicted?

Before Tasty offers up the source’s answers, here’s some quick background:

After Freeman was indicted, a team of million-dollar attorneys from Mayer Brown LLP -- a global law firm with offices in New York, DC, London, Paris, Beijing, Dubai, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, etc -- parachuted into California to defend him.

They included Kelly Kramer, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP who leads the firm’s “White Collar Defense and Compliance Team” and has personally defended former members of the US Congress. According to Super Lawyers, he’s one of the top white-collar defense lawyers in DC.

 

Kelly Kramer, Mayer Brown LLP

After Freeman was convicted, Mayer Brown LLP filed an appeal with the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, and parachuted two more attorneys from the East Coast to try to get Freeman out of jail.

They included Dan Himmelfarb, a partner in the firm’s DC offices, who specializes in appeals and has “filed more than 200 merits and petition-stage briefs in the US Supreme Court and has argued… 12 cases in the US Supreme Court...,” according to the firm's website. Before joining the firm, Himmelfarb was an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York and an Assistant to the US Solicitor General.

In other words, these guys charge beaucoup bucks -- likely $2,000-$3,000 an hour.

Who paid for these attorneys?

It sure wasn’t Freeman.

After all, when Freeman's wife appeared in court during Freeman's criminal trial, she was assigned a Public Defender because she couldn’t afford a private attorney.

So who paid Freeman’s legal bills?

 

Dan Himmelfarb, Mayer Brown LLP

Here’s what Tasty’s source says:

When Freeman was first indicted on multiple criminal charges, a clutch of nervous SEIU officials met with him to discuss his options.

Option #1: Freeman could try to beat the rap by pointing the finger at the higher-up SEIU officials who were apparently complicit in the crimes.

‘But don’t do that,’ argued the SEIU officials. ‘We’ll offer you a better option: SEIU will hire you the best attorneys in the whole damn country and we guarantee you’ll never see a day of jail time. But you can't implicate any of us.’

Of course, we all know that Freeman chose Option #2. And that’s why, during the trial, he never ratted out the SEIU higher-ups who, after all, were paying for his lawyers.

In the end, SEIU officials didn’t come through with their end of the deal -- their fancy attorneys didn’t keep Freeman out of jail.

Freeman has gotta feel burnt by his SEIU handlers, right?

Which leads Tasty to wonder whether SEIU officials might now be slipping him some hush money, given that Freeman has stayed silent even after getting out of jail.

Although Tasty’s source has provided answers to some of the long-standing mysteries, others remain unanswered:

Andy Stern, SEIU

• How much money did SEIU officials pay for Freeman’s defense and appeal?

• After the Los Angeles Times outed Freeman's corruption scandal, SEIU officials publicly condemned Freeman for stealing from low-paid SEIU members. Why did SEIU officials turn around and secretly fund his criminal defense for crimes committed against SEIU's own members? Isn't this proof that SEIU higher-ups are implicated in Freeman's crimes? After all, why else would they have funded his defense against stealing money from SEIU members?

• Who authorized SEIU's payments to Freeman's attorneys? What role did Andy Stern, Anna Burger and Mary Kay Henry play?

• Will Freeman tell his story to the public?

• Or is SEIU currently paying hush money to keep Freeman silent?

Who Butters Dave Regan's Buiscuits?

John Nelson, Kaiser's VP of Public Relations

Today, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan suffered a smackdown that leaves little doubt about who butters his biscuits.

Two months ago, as 3,500 Kaiser employees prepared for a weeklong strike to protest the understaffing of Kaiser's mental health clinics across California, Regan took the unprecedented step of teaming up with John Nelson (Kaiser Permanente's Vice President of Public Relations and Communications) to launch a coordinated P.R. attack against the workers.

An article in "Modern Healthcare" featured matching quotes from Regan and Nelson dismissing clinicians’ claims about the understaffing. 

Members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers are accusing healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente of understaffing its mental-health services, and they're threatening to strike if their issues aren't resolved… But Dave Regan, president of the SEIU-UHW, which represents 45,000 Kaiser employees across the state, dismissed NUHW's concerns, saying that the staffing problem “was a limited one and is completely solved.” (Modern Healthcare, “Kaiser Mental-Health Staffing under Fire Again,” December 4, 2014)

 “Completely solved."

Hmmmm.

This morning, government investigators released a 33-page report detailing the results of their months-long investigation into Kaiser's mental health services. They cited Kaiser for multiple violations of state law, including understaffing its mental health clinics and forcing patients to endure lengthy, illegal waits for care. Investigators are contemplating additional fines against Kaiser – that’s on top of the $4 million fine that Kaiser already paid last September.

 

Dave Regan, SEIU-UHW

In an article published today by the Los Angeles Times, Shelley Rouillard (the Director of California’s Department of Managed Health Care) directly refuted Regan's earlier statement:

For the second time in two years, California regulators have faulted HMO giant Kaiser Permanente for causing mental health patients to endure long delays to get treatment… In Northern California, patients didn’t get initial or follow-up appointments within the required time frame of 10 to 15 business days in 22% of the records reviewed… “That is not a good performance,” Rouillard said. “Fundamentally it comes down to there are not enough providers in the Kaiser system to serve everyone who needs mental health services." (Los Angeles Times, “State again faults Kaiser Permanente for mental health treatment delays,” February 24, 2015)

So… Regan not only pimps for the Boss, he knowingly lies for the Boss, and gladly throws patients and healthcare workers under the bus. 

Hmmm. 

If you're a member of SEIU-UHW, wouldn't that make you a bit nervous?

As NUHW Exposes Scandal, Top Kaiser Permanente Exec Resigns under Fire

 

Dr. Christine Cassel

Last week, NUHW scored an exciting victory when a top official at Kaiser Permanente resigned after the union exposed six-figure corruption inside the giant HMO.

NUHW’s action made headlines in the Los Angeles Times, Modern Healthcare, ProPublica and elsewhere.

Here's what happened.

Despite Kaiser's bogus claims of hard financial times, it turns out the HMO is awash with so much cash that it lubricates its Board of Directors with $1,400-an-hour salaries! 

According to tax returns posted on NUHW's website, Kaiser pays each of its 15 board members more than $200,000 a year for attending only six board meetings!

Hmm... last time Tasty checked, Kaiser was supposed to be a nonprofit!

And in the case of one board member, Kaiser’s gold-plated payouts triggered fears that the HMO is using its six-figure generosity to purchase the loyalty of a top industry insider.

NUHW revealed that the board member -- Dr. Christine Cassel -- also happens to serve as the CEO of the National Quality Forum, a DC-based organization whose decisions affect Kaiser’s revenues under the Medicare program.

Furthermore, NUHW revealed that last year, Cassel accepted a position on the board of directors of Premier, Inc., one of the largest group-purchasing organizations in the U.S. healthcare industry. For this third gig, Cassel took home $235,000 in cash and stock.

That's in addition to her salary at her ‘day job,’ where NQF pays her $561,000 a year!

After NUHW gave the info to ProPublica, the award-winning group of investigative journalists penned an article about Cassel’s conflicts of interest. Top ethics experts who are cited in ProPublica's article said her payouts are "egregious" and called on her to resign. A U.S. senator weighed in, instructing Cassel to cough up internal documents. NUHW called for Cassel's resignation.

Soon thereafter, Cassel quit her positions at both Kaiser and Premier, Inc., making headlines across the nation.

It's similar to an earlier episode, when NUHW ousted a fatcat CEO for pocketing eight pension plans while trying to eliminate workers' only pension. Once again, NUHW has scored an important victory by exposing the corruption among the well-heeled executives atop the U.S. healthcare industry.

SEIU-UHW staffer afflicted by foot-in-mouth disease

SEIU-UHW's Sean Wherley

This week’s "Homer Simpson Award" goes to Sean Wherley, a media spokesperson for SEIU-UHW and Dave Regan.

On February 20, a reporter from the Los Angeles Times asked Wherley whether SEIU-UHW is actually sincere about reforming the healthcare industry… or whether it's simply using several statewide ballot initiatives as bargaining chips in SEIU’s secret negotiations with hospital bosses.

Here’s an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times with Wherley’s response:

The association has said the union is using the initiatives as leverage in their negotiations with the state's hospitals around organizing efforts. Sean Wherley, a union spokesman, said the ballot measures were not bargaining chips. "This is purely an effort to rein in runaway healthcare costs in California," he said.

Uhhh… really??

Apparently... Sean “I Never Lie” Wherley is not super skilled at reading news headlines. 

On the same exact day that he was interviewed by the Times (February 20), SEIU Local 49 in Oregon was announcing it had executed SEIU’s latest horse-trading maneuver with the hospital industry. In that deal, SEIU agreed to withdraw its statewide ballot initiatives in exchange for secret "partnership" talks with hospital executives.

 

D’oh!

And it turns out that Wherley is not simply Internet-challenged, he's also suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's.

At the precise moment that he responded to the LA Times reporter's questions, Wherley somehow forgot that in 2012, Regan did exactly that Wherley is denying! Whoops! And he somehow forgot that Regan, on a recorded conference call, recently stated in very blunt terms that he's trying to do it again in 2014!

So congrats to Wherley, an aspiring comedian, for turning himself and SEIU into the punch lines for the week!

SEIU Email: "There's a reporter floating around the building trying to write a negative story on President Freeman..."

Ever wonder what it was like inside SEIU’s offices during the final days before the Los Angeles Times broke open the massive corruption scandal involving Tyrone Freeman, Rickman Jackson and other top SEIU officials?

Earlier, Tasty posted an internal email that showed how SEIU’s top DC officials were actively involved in trying to fend off a reporter’s investigation.

Here’s another e-mail from inside SEIU’s offices.

In the email, an SEIU official carefully informs union staffers that anything they say to a reporter will be visible to the whole world… including their purple bosses!

Just an FYI, there’s a reporter floating around the building trying to write a negative story on President Freeman. Be careful on what you say and ask first who they are … you don't want to be quoted in the LA Times.

   Email from SEIU Official to Staffers: Beware of Reporter's Questions about President Tyrone Freeman. J...