Election Brings Initial Loss for SEIU at Kaiser

SEIU may be on the brink of losing a unit of 343 Registered Nurses at Kaiser Moreno Valley Medical Center in Southern California.

Last Friday, nurses cast their votes in an NLRB election triggered by members of SEIU Local 121 who requested a formal vote so they can leave SEIU because they’re dissatisfied with the union.

On election night, a majority of the ballots supported leaving SEIU. The final vote tally won’t be finalized until three dozen “challenged” ballots are resolved. According to the NLRB, the vote tally at the end of election night was the following:

No Union:  120

SEIU Local 121:  111

Challenged Ballots:  37

SEIU Local 121 appears to be worried it’ll lose the election when the “challenged” ballots are finally counted. After the vote count, it filed a formal appeal with the NLRB in an effort to overturn the entire election.

The hospital’s nurses have been members of SEIU for more than 10 years but have been dissatisfied with SEIU for a long time, according to an RN who called the purple union “fear mongers.”

The vote couldn’t come at a worse time for SEIU. The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which includes Local 121 and other SEIU locals, will go back to the bargaining table with Kaiser for the first time on April 17 to negotiate a “national agreement.”

Since 2009, SEIU unions at Kaiser have been led by SEIU-UHW president Dave Regan, who has given away massive cuts in health benefits and retirement plans at hospital chains across California. Kaiser now appears to be angling to win the same cuts for its workers. 

Regan has been a big proponent of “partnership” deals with Kaiser and even colluded with Kaiser executives to fight strikes by other Kaiser workers, including statewide walkouts by the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the California Nurses Association.

Last year, Kaiser’s partnership unions split into two after Regan reportedly attempted to seize more decision-making power inside the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. The unions fed up with Regan broke away and formed a new coalition called the Alliance of Health Care Unions, which negotiated a national agreement of its own in 2018.

NUHW Celebrates a Decade

This month marks ten years since the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) was founded on the heels of a disastrous trusteeship imposed by SEIU’s Purple Palace in Washington DC.

Since 2009, NUHW has grown to more than 15,000 members. It has built a democratic and member-controlled union while waging militant fights and repeated strikes against healthcare corporations like Kaiser Permanente... winning it a reputation as a "giant killer." Last year saw NUHW’s expansion to Hawaii.

Meanwhile, SEIU-UHW has pursued a very different strategy: becoming the boss’s best friend.

SEIU-UHW has given up massive concessions to California’s biggest healthcare corporations. It’s given away workers’ defined-benefit pension plans, eliminated workers’ fully employer-paid health insurance, and allowed corporations like Dignity Health to impose wage freezes on 15,000 workers.

Forget strikes, says SEIU-UHW’s Trustee/President Dave Regan. In fact, SEIU-UHW has carried out only one or two strikes during an entire decade. SEIU-UHW even teamed up with Kaiser's execs to organize against workers' strikes.

What, then, is SEIU-UHW’s strategy for winning some measure of justice from the giant corporations that dominate the US economy?

During a TV interview with Los Angeles’s KNBC TV station, Regan famously admitted that SEIU-UHW is not interested in fighting employers on behalf of workers and their patients. The era of "adversarial relationships" between workers and corporations is dead, says Regan.

Instead, SEIU-UHW pursues “collaboration” and “teamwork” with corporations... as memorialized in Regan’s backroom deals with executives that force workers into cheap, pre-negotiated labor contracts. Check out this quick excerpt from his TV interview.

At first, corporations were all too happy to accept Regan’s boot-licking approach.

Later, when Regan’s usefulness had been exhausted, the execs kicked him to the curb like a two-bit punk. Gone were the days when Diamond Dave could prance around hotel suites with pinstriped execs.

Since then, Regan -- his ego on crutches -- has latched onto ballot initiatives, rather than worker organization, as his latest lame strategy for “winning for workers.”

Congrats to NUHW for all of its accomplishments and its perseverance during a time of ascendant corporations and intense need for worker organizing!

It’s been quite a decade, with more battles ahead.

For coverage of NUHW’s 10-year anniversary, see Steve Early’s article published earlier this week, with a few excerpts pasted below. (Steve Early, “A Trusteeship Diaspora: How SEIU’s-Inflicted Loss Became Labor’s Gain,” Beyond Chron, January 29, 2019.)

[Former SEIU President Andy] Stern’s military style take-over of UHW greatly tarnished SEIU’s reputation for being “progressive.”  It generated bad press for the entire labor movement because the trusteeship lent credence to anti-union propaganda about “union bosses” running roughshod over the rank-and-file and misusing their dues money…

Post-trusteeship UHW quickly lost the respect of other California unions and their political friends in Sacramento. In recent years, the Stern-installed leadership of UHW helped fracture a multi-union bargaining coalition at Kaiser Permanente, wasted more than $30 million on failed ballot initiatives, and lost a third of its membership….

Rosselli and other UHW members succeeded in building a new statewide healthcare workers organization that is independent of any national labor union… NUHW now has a statewide membership of 15,000 in about forty bargaining units. The union is known for its militant contract campaigns and involvement in progressive causes like Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and the on-going fight for single-payer healthcare.

…full-time staffers once employed by UHW have gone to work for other unions, central labor councils, labor reform struggles, community organizations, and political campaigns across the country. This new diaspora—from a once exemplary SEIU local– is helping thousands of workers win high profile organizing campaigns and strikes, like the recent LA teachers walk-out, and rejuvenate the unions involved.

California Hospital Workers Try to Bolt SEIU-UHW due to Bad Contracts

Dave Regan’s relentless spending on ballot initiatives is not only producing repeated losses at the ballot box for SEIU-UHW, it’s also generating decertification efforts by the union’s own members.

Two weeks ago, workers at 158-bed USC Verdugo Hills Hospital in Los Angeles filed a petition to dump SEIU-UHW and work without a union because they say SEIU-UHW has failed to win improved wages and health insurance for 230 workers there, according to NLRB records and the Glendale News-Press. (Lila Seidman, “Vote on keeping USC hospital union could come within weeks, employee says,” Glendale News-Press, January 8, 2019.)

Regan’s multi-million-dollar spending on ballot initiatives has left SEIU-UHW’s members with fewer resources for workplace organizing and representation... and weaker contracts. According to the worker who filed the petition at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, a majority of employees signed the decertification petition and are backing the effort to bolt from SEIU-UHW.

 “A vote on whether or not to keep a healthcare workers’ union at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale could come as early as the end of the month,” the Glendale News-Press reported last week. 

Last October, workers at the same hospital submitted an identical request but SEIU-UHW’s attorneys blocked it, saying the request was filed two days late. SEIU-UHW has made no such claims about the current filing, although SEIU-UHW’s lawyers are filing “unfair labor practice” charges in an effort to stall the vote.

The decertification effort offers a stark counterpoint to what’s happening at USC’s other two acute-care hospitals.

More than 1,100 workers at 401-bed USC Keck Medical Center and 60-bed USC Norris Cancer Center are represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). During recent years, they’ve waged a series of aggressive negotiating campaigns, including strikes and pickets, that boosted workers’ wages, health insurance, and retirement benefits.

Last spring, NUHW forced the two hospitals to in-source more than 100 subcontracted food service and housekeeping workers, leading to pay increases of up to 80%. One group of recently in-sourced workers had been members of SEIU United Service Workers West for years and were paid just above the minimum wage. After they voted to leave SEIU, NUHW successfully pressured the two hospitals to dump Sodexo, USC’s subcontractor, and to hire the workers directly.

Due to NUHW's success, hundreds more USC workers have voted to join NUHW through NLRB elections.

If workers at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital vote to decertify SEIU-UHW, it will put an even brighter spotlight on Regan’s decision to pour tens of millions of dollars of the union’s funds down the toilet in Dave's illusory quest for unionization via ballot initiative.

Stay tuned.

NUHW Hits Kaiser with Strike

The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) is taking on Kaiser Permanente again.

Not through ballot initiatives, which is Dave Regan’s preferred approach.

But through strikes… which SEIU-UHW hasn’t attempted against any healthcare company in years.

Last month, 4,000 NUHW members conducted a weeklong strike against dozens of Kaiser facilities across California. The strikers included Psychologists, Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Marriage and Family Therapists, Psychiatric RNs, Medical Social Workers, Addiction Medicine Specialists, Dietitians, Health Educators, and others.

It was the largest strike by mental health therapists in the nation's history, according to NUHW.

What do the strikers want? They're demanding more staff.

Kaiser’s chronic understaffing of its mental health clinics forces patients with depression, bipolar disorder, and other conditions to wait two months or more for appointments.

Strikers were joined by former Congressman Patrick Kennedy -- the author of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act and a national leader of mental health reform efforts -- who flew across the US to join them on the picket line.

RNs from the California Nurses Association and members of the Stationary Engineers Local 39 also joined picket lines across the state.

According to NUHW, the strike produced more than 1,000 press stories.

And one thousand patients reported their stories of Kaiser’s delayed care -- including suicides and other tragic outcomes -- to the union’s “Kaiser Don’t Deny” website, according to NUHW.

This isn’t the first time that NUHW has taken on Kaiser.

Several years ago, NUHW hit Kaiser with a series of statewide strikes and successfully got the state to fine the giant HMO $4 million for illegally delaying their patients’ mental health appointments. NUHW documented more than a dozen suicides connected to Kaiser's delayed care.

Check out this three-minute TV news story about the strike and Kaiser’s understaffed mental health clinics.

SEIU’s Andy Stern Joins Billionaires, Not Union Members, in Election Campaign

SEIU's Andy Stern

SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern has once again shown his true colors.

In an upcoming election for a seat in California’s legislature, Stern has jumped in on the side of billionaires to back a corporate Democrat who’s challenging a union member supported by progressive organizations, multiple local unions, Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and California-based unions inside SEIU.

The November election pits Jovanka Beckles -- a Teamster, two-term Richmond city councilmember and DSA member -- against Buffy Wicks, a former White House official and Clinton Super PAC director who recently relocated to California and has never held elected office.

According to records from the California Secretary of State, Stern has made two contributions to Wicks this year. When contributing the funds, Stern identified himself as a “consultant” for Grandview, LLC, a corporation founded by Stern soon after he resigned as President of SEIU in April 2010. (See below.)

Incorporation documents confirm Stern’s role in the company (see below). Stern may use the corporation as a vehicle for his consulting gigs with tech companies like Uber and AirBnB. Stern’s company is registered to a Washington, DC apartment -- presumably Stern’s -- which appears to have a “grand view” of the Potomac River.

Jovanka Beckles (left) and Buffy Wicks (right)

The race for the California legislative seat has features similar to recent electoral contests in the US including the one between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Crowley.

During this spring’s primary election, Wicks received $1.2 million from “wealthy donors tied to Lyft, Uber, and Bay Area tech firms, charter school interests, major landlords, a health care industry PAC, and Govern for California, a business-oriented Super PAC created by the board chair of Walmart and a former top advisor to Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,” according to an article authored by labor journalist Steve Early. (Steve Early, “Teamster Tackles Corporate Democrat in California Assembly Race,” Labor Notes, August 31, 2018)

The "grand view" of the Potomac from the DC apartment

If you’re curious about Wicks’ donors, check out this interesting website -- buffywicks.money -- which offers details about Wicks’ donors including billionaires Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman.

“In contrast,” says Early, “Beckles raised and spent only about $160,000, mostly in smaller, in-state donations. She ran as a “people-powered” candidate, free of corporate money and relied on few paid staffers or outside consultants.” Beckles supports “workers’ and tenants’ rights, single payer health care, and getting big money out of politics,” says Early.

Here's an interview with Beckles in Jacobin Magazine: "We Need a New Economy That Works for the Many” 

Early writes:

Ex-SEIU President Andy Stern is an individual endorser of Wicks—despite the fact that two major SEIU locals and their state council favor Beckles. Since leaving the union, Stern has become a corporate board member and gig economy consultant… In the Assembly District 15 race today, California single-payer advocates favor Beckles over Wicks, whose position on health care reform is much weaker.

If Beckles’ consistent solidarity with local labor causes is reciprocated through sufficient union voter turnout and spending on her behalf, she may indeed be joining the Assembly in January.

And there, she will be a rare “corporate-free” voice for many other working class and poor Californians whose interests tend to be overlooked by state legislators who do take money from business PACs and industry associations.

Beckles is backed by multiple unions including the National Union of Healthcare Workers, Transit (ATU) Local 192, University Professional and Technical Employees (CWA), Teamsters Joint Council 7, SEIU Local 1021, the Alameda and Contra Costa County Labor Councils, the California Labor Federation, both statewide teachers’ unions, AFSCME, and the California Nurses Association.

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.

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan: 'I can't get to the table with Kaiser'

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (“the Coalition”) doesn’t appear to be getting any closer to sitting down with Kaiser Permanente at the bargaining table.

Last week, the Coalition sent out an update to workers entitled, “Kaiser Permanente Continues Its Aggressive Behavior toward Coalition Unions.” Here’s how it begins:

Kaiser continues to demand a new Partnership Agreement and is requiring Coalition Unions to sign a new Partnership agreement as a condition of resuming negotiations of a new National Agreement… We have met three times with Kaiser leaders over the last few months to reach an agreement.  The Coalition has offered a counter proposal that was balanced—offering new rights and responsibilities within the Partnership for both our unions and Kaiser. We also have offered a ‘temporary cease fire’ that would get us back to the table for negotiations while addressing Kaiser’s concerns.  Both of these offers have been rejected by Kaiser.

The Coalition appears to be especially upset about Kaiser’s demand to insert a “Dave Regan rule” into a new partnership agreement. That’s the rule that would allow the Coalition unions to kick out one of its member unions for “egregious non-partnering behavior upon a vote of 70%” of the partnering unions.

Earlier this year, more than half of the partnership unions quit the Coalition after repeated problems with SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan and his attempt to snatch more and more decision-making power from the other unions. Under their partnership agreement, there was no way for the unions to kick Regan out, so they had to quit the Coalition and form an entirely new partnership group. That’s the problem that the “Dave Reagan rule” tries to solve.

In its recent message, the Coalition took some back-handed shots at the Alliance of Health Care Unions, which negotiated and signed a new “partnership agreement” with Kaiser in May and has been in bargaining since then for a new contract. (BTW, the Alliance’s agreement with Kaiser includes the so-called “Dave Regan rule.”)

Here’s what the Coalition says about the Alliance:

They have not reached an agreement as of July 11, 2018 and are not expected to resume negotiations until late August. As those negotiations have progressed, significant concerns have emerged that impact ALL union members at Kaiser. Specifically, Kaiser is demanding:

• Higher co-pays on our medical benefits
• “Market based” wages based on where people work
• Eroding RN staffing ratios

Meanwhile, other unions are also beginning their negotiations with Kaiser. Just last week, several thousand members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) began bargaining with Kaiser over three contracts that expire later this fall.

So… when will the Coalition finally get to the bargaining table?

It may take a while. So far, the Coalition’s “Plan to Win” has been downright underwhelming.

Stay tuned.

Kaiser Coalition scrambles as Alliance unions begin bargaining

Here’s the latest.

Next week, the Alliance of Health Care Unions will begin bargaining with Kaiser Permanente, according to sources. The Alliance includes the Teamsters, Steelworkers, AFSCME, American Federation of Teachers, UFCW, ILWU, Operating Engineers and the KPNAA.

What about the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (SEIU, OPEIU and IFPTE)?

Coalition leaders will meet next Tuesday to discuss their response to Kaiser’s proposal to enter into a new partnership deal with the giant HMO, say sources.

What’s Kaiser’s proposal?

After the partnership unions fractured in two over Dave Regan’s effort to seize more decision-making power, Kaiser gathered representatives from nearly all its unions on May 7 at the Marriott Hotel in Oakland and told them Kaiser would like to become partners with each of the two coalitions. Kaiser handed out a draft partnership agreement -- basically a modified version of the original agreement signed in the 1990s.

The new agreement has provisions that appear to be designed specifically to deal with SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan and the problems that swirl around him like stripes on a candy cane.

For example, one new provision would bar members of the partnership from backing “harmful” ballot initiatives or legislation. It looks like Kaiser adopted the same language that Regan penned into his secret deal with the California Hospital Association in 2014. The draft agreement reads:

Members of the Partnership, including KP and all individual local unions who are members of the Partnership, shall not pursue, sponsor or support legislation or ballot initiatives, which are specifically targeted at and the primary purpose of which is to harm another member of the Partnership. A Member of the Partnership who violates this section shall be expelled from the Partnership…

Another new provision would allow unions to expel a union from the partnership by majority vote. We can call this the “Dave Regan rule.” The draft agreement says:

…there may come a time when a majority of Union Parties believe there is cause to expel an individual union party. Should this occur, the Union Parties may expel an individual union party by majority vote of the senior union leadership designated from the union parties (not counting the individual union to be expelled).

Meanwhile, Regan and the Coalition have been stung by Kaiser’s announcement that it will not negotiate a “national agreement” with the Coalition this year. The current “national agreement” expires on September 30, 2018.

Earlier this week, the Coalition filed an “unfair labor practice” charge with the NLRB alleging that Kaiser’s action is illegal. (See a copy of the Coalition’s leaflet below.) The NLRB will now conduct an investigation to determine whether there’s any substance to the Coalition’s allegations.

Also, the Coalition asked the leaders of some affiliated unions to send a letter to Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson to ask him why Kaiser is not bargaining a national agreement with the Coalition this year. Observers describe the letter as “pathetic.” See below.

Meanwhile, NUHW has already scheduled multiple dates this summer to bargain with Kaiser over contracts covering 4,000 workers that expire September 30.

In another interesting move, Kaiser has reportedly asked NUHW to consider forming a more collaborative relationship with the HMO. Sources say NUHW ruled out the idea of joining either of the partnership groups. However, its rank-and-file leaders are reportedly discussing whether they’re open to negotiating one-on-one with Kaiser over their future relationship.

   Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions: Leaflet on ULP Charges over delayed bargaining (May 2018) by tastysternburger on Scribd

   Coalition Affiliates: Letter to CEO of Kaiser Permanente on Postponement of Partnership Bargaining (5-1-18)... by tastysternburger on Scribd

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan Drives Split Even Wider with Kaiser Unions

Here’s more news about Monday’s implosion of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (CKPU).

What did Dave Regan do to cause eight international unions -- including the Teamsters, the Steelworkers, UFCW, AFSCME and the American Federation of Teachers -- to quit the Coalition?

Here’s how the Northwest Labor Press describes it:

At a meeting of CKPU unions in August 2017 in Portland, SEIU-UHW pushed for a change to the CKPU’s bylaws to give more decision-making weight to unions based on their size. CKPU’s decision-making process had always before been based on consensus among its constituent unions—even though they varied in size from dozens to tens of thousands of members. CKPU had negotiated five national collective bargaining agreements with Kaiser using that process.

Though the discussion reportedly devolved into a shouting match at times, participating unions agreed to a compromise that gave somewhat greater weight to larger unions.

Then, according to several sources, SEIU-UHW asked Kaiser to bargain with them as the sole representative of the Coalition. Kaiser refused.

…The final straw was a March 19 meeting of the coalition unions, at which SEIU UHW brought up the decision-making process again, threatening to block agreement if it wasn’t revised further.

(Don McIntosh, “Kaiser Permanente union coalition splits,” Northwest Labor Press, March 27, 2018)

How are the unions responding to Monday’s blow-up?

Regan appears to be channeling Donald Trump. Rather than trying to leave open a path for possible reconciliation, he’s been busy thumbing his nose at his former union partners inside the Coalition.

"Frankly they are much smaller,” Regan told Bloomberg News. “They will have their work cut out for them. I think what they’re going to discover is that they made a mistake. They will regret what they’ve done.”

(“Kaiser Permanente Labor Partnership Fractures After 20 Years,” Bloomberg, March 28, 2018)

In internal talking points, SEIU-UHW instructed its organizers to talk to rank-and-file Kaiser workers about “Why the small unions left the coalition.” SEIU-UHW is telling its members that “a cluster of small unions... left the Coalition because they wanted the right to cut a weak deal with Kaiser over the objections of the majority… The majority of us in the Coalition said NO WAY.  So the small unions left the Coalition to go it their own way.”

A member of SEIU-UHW's bargaining team

Meanwhile, SEIU-UHW posted photos of its Kaiser bargaining team members holding signs that say: “We are the Real Coalition.”

Will Regan soon begin calling his former union partners “Little Marco” or “the Fake Coalition”? Too soon to say.

Of course, Regan's claim that he is somehow valiantly defending workers against backroom deals is a bit difficult to swallow. After all, Diamond Dave is the unrivaled king of secret sellout deals with pin-striped bosses. 

Just ask Regan's own Executive Board about his secret deal with the California Hospital Association. Dave's deal imposed a massive gag clause on workers, barred workers from striking, forced workers into pre-negotiated contracts with stripped-down wages and benefits, and even blocked workers from speaking publicly about hospital companies' profits and executive salaries. 

After signing the deal, Regan famously refused to show a copy to the members of his own union's Executive Board. A copy of the deal, with Regan's signature at the bottom, later emerged in a lawsuit with all of Regan's dirty deeds on full display.

How are others responding to the breakup of Kaiser's partnership unions?

Today, NUHW circulated an e-mail to its members recalling Regan’s lengthy history of cutting backroom deals with employers. Here’s an excerpt:

NUHW never joined the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions because we understood from the start that Dave Regan was intent on controlling the coalition to promote the interests of SEIU-UHW leaders rather than the interests of Kaiser workers and patients.

Unfortunately, current SEIU leaders are not interested in winning good contracts. Their primary goal is to increase their membership and their dues income. To achieve that goal, they have been willing to sacrifice the welfare of their own members in exchange for agreements with employers that give them enhanced organizing rights. Ever since Regan took over SEIU-UHW in 2009, he has allowed the standards we fought hard to win to be steadily whittled away and agreed to takeaways that NUHW has refused to accept in our contracts.

Union Heads Meet with Kaiser CEO in D.C. over Dave Regan’s Ballot Initiative

SEIU's Mary Kay Henry and AFSCME's Lee Saunders

Dave Regan’s ballot initiative against Kaiser Permanente prompted a secret confab this week in Washington DC, say Tasty’s sources.

On Monday, Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson reportedly met with top officials from the partnership unions, known as the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.

Who was in the room?

The presidents of many of the international unions that participate in the partnership including the AFT’s Randi Weingarten and AFSCME’s Lee Saunders. 

SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry reportedly attended a pre-meeting, but then ducked out of the room before the Kaiser CEO showed up. It looks like Mary Kay Henry didn’t want to face Tyson, who says SEIU-UHW’s ballot initiative would jeopardize the future financial stability of the HMO.

Meanwhile, Kaiser took another shot at Regan this week.

The HMO mailed a two-page letter to the homes of tens of thousands of SEIU-UHW members with the heading, “We need your help securing our future together: Help stop an attack on Kaiser Permanente.” The letter calls on the union’s members to contact Regan and tell him to “stop putting our future at risk.” Tasty guesses this is one piece of what’ll likely be a campaign to turn the hearts and minds of SEIU-UHW members against their erratic president.

Regan, after parachuting into California into 2009, surgically attached himself to the hips of Kaiser’s execs… even working with them to try to break strikes by NUHW and the California Nurses Association. So it’s not hard to understand why Regan’s recent attack on Kaiser -- which caused Kaiser execs to block SEIU-UHW from participating in upcoming national bargaining -- is causing SEIU-UHW’s members to scratch their heads.

Here’s a copy of the letter Kaiser sent to SEIU-UHW members:

   Kaiser Permanente's Letter to Workers regarding SEIU-UHW's California Ballot Initiative: 01-23-2018 by tastysternburger on Scribd

Dave Regan’s Ballot Initiative Knocks SEIU-UHW out of Kaiser Partnership

Here’s some interesting news from California.

Kaiser Permanente has blocked SEIU-UHW from participating in upcoming bargaining with its “partnership” unions after SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan filed a statewide ballot initiative targeting Kaiser, according to an internal memo issued by Kaiser executives last week. A copy of the memo along with the ballot initiative is below.

What’s going on?

Here’s what Tasty has learned so far.

Apparently, Regan has become increasingly marginalized by Kaiser’s execs and by the other “partnership” unions in the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (the “Coalition”). The Coalition, which is made up of 28 unions representing 100,000 Kaiser workers across the US, bargains a national contract with Kaiser once every three years.

In late 2015, Regan sued Greg Adams, a top Kaiser exec, who served on the board of the California Hospital Association (CHA) and was caught up in Regan’s failed ballot initiative targeting the CHA.

Then, in August of 2017, Regan reportedly pissed off the other partnership unions when he tried to change the Coalition’s bylaws in order to give SEIU-UHW virtually all of the power to call the shots during the next round of national bargaining, which begins early next year. Other unions, including AFSCME, rejected Regan’s proposal, which sparked a shouting match during a three-day meeting of the partnership unions in Portland, Oregon.

Apparently, Regan has burnt turf not only with AFSCME but with SEIU locals in both Oregon and Colorado, including his erstwhile buddy Meg Niemi.

And another source reports that Regan no longer has the support of Hal Ruddick, the Executive Director of the Coalition. Ruddick is a former hack staffer at SEIU-UHW whom Regan got appointed to his position at the Coalition. Later, Regan reportedly attempted to have Ruddick fired, but was unsuccessful -- which hasn’t made Regan super popular at the Coalition’s offices.

After failing to convince the partnership unions to give him more power, Regan asked Kaiser’s execs for their help. In an internal memo issued last week, Kaiser's Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Chuck Columbus wrote:

…for months now, SEIU-UHW’s leadership has insisted in private meetings that Kaiser Permanente management negotiate with SEIU-UHW as the sole representative of the Coalition in upcoming National Bargaining. In these meetings, SEIU-UHW’s leadership has threatened that if we refused their demands, they would put an initiative on the California ballot that would adversely affect Kaiser Permanente… We said no to SEIU-UHW leadership’s demand.

Meanwhile, Kaiser reportedly has told Regan it plans to propose cuts to SEIU-UHW members’ wage structure in Northern California.

Currently, SEIU-UHW’s members from San Francisco to Sacramento to Fresno are covered by a single pay scale.

Regan and Kaiser Senior VP Chuck Columbus

Kaiser’s execs told Regan they will propose cuts such that future SEIU-UHW hires in Sacramento would earn 10% less than those in the San Francisco Bay Area, while new hires in Fresno would earn 20% less than the Bay Area.

Regan, seeing takeaways on the table and little power inside the CKPU or with Kaiser’s execs, decided to turn to his old stand-by tactic of a statewide ballot initiative. On November 16, he filed an initiative with the California Attorney General (“Accountability in Managed Health Insurance Act”) which would prohibit Kaiser from raising its monthly insurance rates until Kaiser’s capital reserves drop below a certain level.

Kaiser’s response?

Kaiser removed SEIU-UHW from next year’s partnership bargaining, saying Regan’s ballot initiative violates the terms of its partnership deal with SEIU-UHW. Kaiser’s memo says:

In sponsoring this destructive initiative, SEIU-UHW leadership has violated both the spirit and the actual terms of the agreements that set up our valued Labor Management Partnership. Accordingly, we today have informed the leadership of SEIU-UHW that we are withdrawing certain privileges of Partnership from SEIU-UHW due to the union’s outrageous conduct. Among the privileges we have withdrawn is participation of SEIU-UHW in 2018 National Bargaining. 

Kaiser’s memo then takes a shot at Regan and his ballot initiatives:

Over the past few years, SEIU-UHW leadership has used the initiative process to force concessions from various employers. All these efforts have failed. If SEIU-UHW goes ahead with spending the millions of dollars it will take to get this initiative on the ballot, we are confident that once California voters understand the impact on Kaiser Permanente, they will join us to defeat this measure in November.

These developments are quite a turnaround for Regan, who has prided himself on being Kaiser execs’ lapdog.

For example, in 2012 Regan convinced the partnership unions to adopt an invasive corporate wellness program that allows Kaiser to peer inside workers’ bodies and collect blood samples and other “biometric data” so Kaiser can monitor workers’ weight, blood pressure, smoking rate, cholesterol levels and personal lives.

In another episode, Regan directed SEIU-UHW staffers (including Greg Maron and Jared Mayhugh) to work as strikebreakers alongside Kaiser managers to stop SEIU-UHW members from joining strikes by NUHW and the California Nurses Association (CNA) at Kaiser.

And then there are Regan’s famous “wellness walks.” Instead of picket signs and picket lines, Regan gave purple pedometers to SEIU-UHW members and told them to lose weight so as to reduce Kaiser’s health insurance costs.

Regan quickly became known as Kaiser’s Richard Simmons.

If Regan has been such a loyal lapdog to Kaiser’s execs, why is Kaiser now seeking takeaways from Regan?

One observer put it this way: “Because they can.” This observer points to Regan’s failure to build a rank-and-file organization inside Kaiser facilities that can fight takeaways.

A similar explanation comes from RoseAnn DeMoro, the Executive Director of the CNA. At a rally several years ago when Regan was in the throes of his lovefest with California hospital execs, DeMoro predicted that the execs would eventually kick Regan to the curb. “These corporations will treat Regan like they do every class traitor. They’ll toss him aside once he’s no longer useful to them.” (Tasty is paraphrasing DeMoro here.)

The fact that Kaiser is coming after Regan for wage cuts in Northern California is quite a stunning historical reversal.

In the late 1980s, Kaiser unilaterally imposed a similar multi-tiered wage structure across Northern California, which Kaiser workers tried to overturn by waging a seven-week strike. Afterwards, Sal Rosselli was elected president of the union and, during the next 15 years, he and his team dramatically expanded and strengthened the union and successfully eliminated Kaiser’s multi-tiered wage structure in 2005. In fact, Rosselli went even further, negotiating improvements to Southern California Kaiser workers’ wage structures to help close the wage gap with their Northern California co-workers. (Kaiser’s Southern California workers earn substantially less than those in Northern California.)

Since parachuting into California in 2009, Regan has taken no steps whatsoever to address the lower wage rates paid to SEIU-UHW members at Kaiser’s Southern California facilities. And he’s now facing a push by Kaiser execs to re-impose the multi-tiered wage structure that Rosselli successfully eliminated back in 2005.

                                                     

In other words, Regan is poised to possibly deliver a massive failure to tens of thousands of Kaiser workers.

What’s next?

 

Hal Ruddick, the Coalition's Executive Director

The Coalition unions have been conducting surveys and electing bargaining committees to participate in national bargaining, which begins early next year. SEIU-UHW, of course, will be on the sidelines. It won’t bargain with Kaiser until 2019, when its “local union agreement” with Kaiser expires on September 30, 2019.

As far as Regan’s ballot initiative, once it’s cleared by the California Attorney General, SEIU-UHW will need to spend millions of dollars to collect enough voter signatures to qualify the measure for the November 2018 ballot.

By the way, Regan also has filed at least nine other ballot initiatives for the November 2018 ballot, which target Stanford Health Care, DaVita Inc., Watsonville Community Hospital, and Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. Regan’s increasing reliance on ballot initiatives raises an interesting question about whether his corporate targets will band together to try to block his use of ballot initiatives as bargaining leverage, as an earlier piece of California legislation appeared to do.

What do Kaiser workers say about Regan’s ballot initiative?

According to Tasty’s contacts, workers had no idea their union’s president had even filed a ballot initiative until Kaiser officials sent them the memo below.

It’s another symptom of Regan’s so-called “innovative 21^st century unionism,” which relies on hiring lawyers to file ballot initiatives rather than organizing workers to build workplace power.

   Kaiser Permanente's memo to employees on SEIU-UHW's Ballot Initiative:12.12.2017 by tastysternburger on Scribd

   SEIU-UHW's Ballot Initiative against Kaiser Permanente in California by tastysternburger on Scribd