SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan and California Hospital Association Announce Secret Partnership Deal

Earlier this week, Dave Regan and Duane Dauner had an emotional reunion to end their months-long lovers’ squabble.

On Tuesday, they triumphantly announced that SEIU-UHW and the California Hospital Association (CHA) had reached a “visionary” deal to reshape U.S. labor relations and solve the nation’s healthcare problems. Here’s some of the gushing language from their joint press release:

a breakthrough agreement to form a strategic relationship that will change the face of healthcare in California and serve as new national model for how employers and unions interact.

So what are the details behind this “breakthrough, visionary and transformative” deal?

Well, that’s what Regan and Dauner were supposed to talk about at a press conference they held on Tuesday. However, they refused to disclose any details about the secret deal. 

When reporters asked for a copy of the deal, they refused to cough it up. And when reporters asked one question after the next to get some inkling of the basic terms of the deal, Regan and Dauner refused... and instead emitted mealy-mouthed talking points that left reporters frustrated and angry.

It was like a scene from “The Matrix” …with Regan and Dauner trying to dodge reporters’ questions as if their lives depended on it.

Fortunately, Tasty has his own inside sources. They say the deal is basically a do-over of SEIU’s infamous sell-out deals with the nursing home industry.

In SEIU's newly announced deal with CHA, hospital CEOs reportedly agreed to allow Regan to unionize 30,000 California hospital workers, without any employer opposition, in exchange for Regan’s agreement to force the workers into cheap, pre-negotiated “template” contracts with low wages and benefits along with a lengthy ban on strikes.

In addition, Regan agreed to put $20 million of SEIU-UHW members’ dues money into the bosses’ pocket in order to fund political campaigns aimed at winning billions of dollars of additional Medicaid payments for California’s hospitals.

The deal also contains a ‘trigger mechanism’ that will allow SEIU-UHW to organize more of the bosses’ workers… but only if SEIU is successful in delivering the billions of dollars of additional Medicaid revenues for the bosses.

The deal also contains a broad ‘gag clause’ that blocks SEIU and its members from criticizing the hospitals in any way during the 3 1/2 year deal, including in the media, the courts, the legislature and with regulatory watchdog agencies.

The deal has Dave Kieffer’s fingerprints all over it. 

Kieffer -- known as “Top-Down” Dave -- was the architect of similar deals between SEIU and the nursing home industry during the past decade (aka, "the nursing home alliance"). In those deals, SEIU infamously committed to team up with nursing home corporations to win “tort reform” designed to dramatically undermine the rights of patients to sue nursing homes that kill or injure them as a result of substandard care.

Kieffer’s earlier deals contained an identical ‘quid pro quo’ that made SEIU’s opportunity to organize workers contingent upon carrying out the industry's legislative dirty work and winning billions of dollars of additional Medicaid revenues for the corporations. 

It's a deal with the devil that throws workers and patients under the bus.

So how are observers reacting? Check out this quote from NUHW’s Sal Rosselli in the Los Angeles Times:

"In World War II, being labeled a collaborator was comparable to an act of treason," Sal Rosselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, said in a statement. "This agreement will undermine the rights of workers and will eliminate the union's watchdog role on behalf of patients.”

Stay tuned for more details as details of the secret deal inevitably leak out. Here's the full statement issued by NUHW on Tuesday.

   Statement by NUHW President Sal Rosselli on today’s announcement of collaboration between SEIU and the Cali...

An SEIU Document Sheds Light on Dave Regan's Proposed Deal with the California Hospital Industry

 

A source has provided a document that sheds more light on Dave Regan’s proposed partnership deal with the California hospital industry.

To date, Tasty’s sources have described only several features of the deal: a ban on strikes, the implementation of pre-negotiated “template” labor contracts on workers, and the elimination of many job classifications in order to give companies greater ability to "flex" and "multi-task" workers.

What else is in Regan’s deal?

Well, check out the terms of a similar partnership deal/unionization pact that SEIU was negotiating with California's nursing home industry in 2007 (see full document below).

The document emerged from the dark recesses of SEIU’s secret negotiations after Sal Rosselli and his reformers blew the whistle on SEIU's corrupt back-room deal… which caused Andy Stern, Mary Kay Henry and the Purple Palace to launch their effort to oust Rosselli and his reformers via a bogus trusteeship.

SEIU's Dave Kieffer

The document details the terms of a partnership deal under discussion between California’s nursing home bosses and SEIU’s Dave Kieffer, who was the intellectual architect and lead negotiator of the 2007 deal. Kieffer is reportedly playing a similar role in SEIU-UHW’s current negotiations with the California's hospital industry.

The document is nothing less than stunning. 

It contains a lengthy list of favors (euphemistically called “policy benchmarks”) that SEIU would have been required to accomplish in order to get “100% neutrality” at the Bosses’ nursing homes across the state. (“100% neutrality” means the right to organize all of the Bosses’ workers without any resistance).

In this case, the Boss is like a pet owner holding out taste treats in mid-air while telling his salivating purple poodle, “Jump HIGHER!”

So... what dirty deeds was SEIU prepared to perform for its corporate paymasters? The list is  jaw-dropping.

Item #1 required SEIU to betray California’s elderly and disabled nursing home residents by helping the Boss to re-write California's laws so nursing home companies would pay far less money to their patients when they killed, maimed, injured or abused them. Here's how it's described in the document below, with the term "facility" referring to a nursing home:

Reform tort law to set hard caps on non-economic punitive damages for elder abuse claims. Prevent all other legislation that expands potential liability of a facility.

Here are some additional items from Kieffer’s document:

Item #4 requires SEIU to steer $3 billion of additional Medicaid funding into the Bosses’ pockets.

Item # 5: “Prevent all consumer activist regulation and enforcement aimed at mandating quality care through greater punishment.”

Items 5, 6, 8 and 9 require SEIU to push through a variety of back-door maneuvers to undermine  minimum-staffing laws that are designed to protect the safety and health of nursing homes residents.

On the second page, item #8 prohibits SEIU from saying anything bad about the Boss… ever! It reads: “No negative rhetoric ever…”

Freeman was sentenced to jail for corruption

Item #9 requires SEIU to establish only one statewide SEIU  union in California guided by “Tyrone Freeman’s vision/philosophy.” WTF! In a reference to Sal Rosselli, the language states: “No Bay Area exceptions,” meaning the Boss demanded that SEIU remove Rosselli in order to do business.  Like the Purple Palace, the Boss prefers to deal only with corrupt and incompetent union leaders like Freeman.

Item #11: “No strikes, slowdowns, etc ever for any reason.”

Item #12: “Only long-term template CBAs, else letter disclaiming interest placed in escrow and available if union seeks changes in provisions.” (The term "CBAs" refers to collective bargaining agreements.)

Item #13: “Union is happy to have little or no role in workplace decision-making.”

Under the section entitled “Collective Bargaining Agreement”…

Item #1: “50 year collective bargaining agreement per the current template with ‘no strike’…”

Item #2: “No cap or limitations on economic return to employers.” (That is, SEIU would agree to allow the Boss to make as much profit as possible.)

Item #9: “No ability for union to demand 100% paid health care or use of union pension plan.”

Totally stunning, right? 

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

What's important to note about SEIU's deals is that SEIU not only sells out workers, it also throws patients and the public interest under the wheels of the purple bus. 

For example... SEIU's deals typically include gag clauses that block workers from criticizing healthcare corporations even when they jeopardize the health of patients. They also include provisions that require SEIU to fully embrace corporations' disgusting anti-consumer policy and legislative agenda.

It's a dirty deal with the devil... which SEIU is fully willing to accept.

In fact, Californians have already seen the consequences of SEIU's deals with the devil during Regan's trusteeship. 

Last year, Regan teamed up with the California Hospital Association to try to roll back California's landmark nurse-to-patient staffing law... even though this would have hurt thousands of SEIU's own members who are Registered Nurses.

More recently, Regan directed SEIU-UHW's political organizers to lobby alongside Kaiser Permanente to kill a bill introduced by UNITE HERE and multiple other unions that sought to hold down health insurance premiums by forcing companies like Kaiser to be more transparent about its price hikes on consumers.

All of this begs the question... what else is in Regan's proposed partnership agreement with the California hospital industry?

   A Proposed Deal for a Partnership between SEIU and the California Nursing Home Industry in 2007. Dated Marc...

Is Dave Kieffer on the Chopping Block Again?

Remember Dave Kieffer? He’s the high-paid SEIU official from Washington, DC who was appointed by the Purple Palace to run SEIU’s multi-million-dollar lobbying operation in California, which is called  the “SEIU California State Council.”

The last time Tasty caught up with him, Kieffer was hanging onto his job by the skin of his teeth after the State Council’s board of directors deadlocked on a vote to can Kieffer. The vote came after Kieffer, who’s known for his oversized arrogance, offended the California’s newly elected Democratic governor.

Well… Tasty hears that Kieffer’s job is (once again) on the chopping block after the same Democratic governor vetoed two bills that were SEIU's top legislative priorities in 2011. First, the Governor vetoed Assembly Bill 101, which would have given SEIU the right to “unionize” nearly 80,000 childcare workers who work out of their homes as independent contractors. The San Francisco Chronicle described SEIU as “devastated.”

Next, the Governor vetoed Senate Bill 408, a key legislative priority for Dave Regan. The legislation targeted a hospital chain that withdrew recognition from SEIU-UHW as the union for workers at a hospital in Redding, California. The workers had previously been members of SEIU-UHW, but when a majority of them signed petitions saying they no longer supported SEIU after the trusteeship, the company simply stopped recognizing SEIU-UHW in January 2011.

Tasty hears that SEIU's twin legislative defeats are raising alarm bells in Sacramento and Washington, DC. Some insiders are pinning the blame on cocky Kieffer’s bone-headed blunders, which apparently have damaged SEIU so badly that it can’t even pass legislation in a state where Democrats control the Governor’s office along with both chambers of the state legislature.

According to insiders, Kieffer’s days are numbered…

Dave Kieffer on Chopping Block?

Tasty hears that Dave Kieffer, the recently appointed Executive Director of SEIU’s California State Council, was nearly removed from his job today by a vote of the Council’s governing board. The board, which apparently is none too pleased with Kieffer, took up a formal proposal to terminate Kieffer… and then deadlocked on the vote.

Kieffer is literally hanging on by mere fingernails after reportedly wearing out the board’s patience due to his trademark combination of ineffectiveness and arrogance. Apparently, the board was especially pissed off at Kieffer’s comments that aired in the Sacramento Bee, where Kieffer criticized the Democratic governor’s proposal to bring tax and spending proposals to a vote of the people as a way to address California’s multi-billion-dollar deficit.

Kieffer called the governor’s proposal “terribly fraught with peril” and threatened to withhold SEIU’s money from any election campaign. Kieffer’s comments drew a sharp rebuke from the Governor’s spokesperson: “The people are the ultimate authority. The governor made a promise during the campaign, and he is not wavering from it.”

Kieffer, another of SEIU’s high-paid officials from Washington DC, has created substantial controversy in California and other states by pushing 'deals with the devil' in order to win "organizing rights" for SEIU at nursing home chains. Under Kieffer’s deals, SEIU throws its support behind nursing home chains’ proposals to change state laws so as to sharply restrict the rights of elderly and disabled patients to sue nursing homes for killing or injuring patients. The deals – which SEIU and its corporate partners call “tort reform” – have drawn sharp criticism from senior organizations like AARP.

Will Kieffer hang on to his job at SEIU's California State Council? Or will he be packing his bags to head back to DC to join his wife in SEIU’s Purple Palace? Stay tuned!