Newspaper: Calif. Legislator Filed Complaint against Dave Regan over Barroom Clash

The largest newspaper in California’s capital city has published an article confirming Tasty’s report about a barroom confrontation involving SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan that reportedly injured California Assemblymember Richard Bloom.

Last night -- just ten hours after Tasty posted an account of the incident -- the Sacramento Bee published an article confirming the report and offering new details. (Alexei Koseff, “A union president shoved him at a Sacramento fundraiser, lawmaker reports,” Sacramento Bee, August 21, 2016)

Here are some excerpts:

A California lawmaker reported to the Legislature earlier this month that he was shoved by a health care union president at a downtown Sacramento restaurant.

The confrontation between Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, and Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, occurred on Aug. 8 at Lucca Restaurant and Bar, where the two were attending separate events for the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and California Forward.

Bloom’s office declined to discuss the incident but confirmed that Bloom reported it to the Assembly Rules Committee.

According to the Bee, Regan began arguing with Andrew Crutchfield, director of the political advocacy group Govern for California, who was attending the event organized by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.

A few people from both parties came over to break up the dispute. Bloom got between Regan and Crutchfield, Sen. Ben Allen said, and that’s when Regan pushed him out of the way…

“From the short period of time that I witnessed the altercation, Mr. Regan appeared belligerent,” Allen said.

[SEIU-UHW staffer Steve] Trossman said Regan “maybe had a glass of wine” that night. He was not kicked out of the restaurant, Trossman said...

“I really don’t think alcohol was a factor in this,” Trossman said. “Dave is very passionate about workers…”

Sen. Ben Allen is a Democrat from Santa Monica, Calif. and serves as the Chair of the Senate Education Committee.

Regan's barroom clash was the top item in CALmatters

So, why did Regan -- who reportedly has a history of engaging in alcohol-fueled fights -- get “belligerent” and require lawmakers from both houses of California’s legislature to stop him from getting into a fistfight inside a Sacramento restaurant and bar?

According to Trossman, Regan tried to fight Crutchfield because Crutchfield was “gloating” about the US Supreme Court’s anti-union Janus decision and was criticizing unions.

Now… even if Crutchfield is the biggest rightwing anti-union ideologue in the nation, is it smart or strategic for a union leader to try to punch him during the middle of two political events attended by dozens of California legislators?

In the Sacramento Bee, Trossman tries to argue that Regan was not at fault because he was “provoked” or manipulated by Crutchfield into trying to punch him.

Hmmm, that’s a great message. 

If it’s so damn easy to manipulate Regan into doing stupid sh*t, isn’t Trossman basically saying Dave is a dumbass?

After all, rank-and-file union leaders face provocations at their worksites all the time from aggressive supervisors, anti-union bosses, etc. They manage to keep their cool. Why can’t Dave?

Thirdly, if Dave is gonna do something stupid, he should at least try to hit the guy he’s arguing with… and not an innocent bystander who happens to be a state legislator.

At the end of today, it's obvious that Regan can’t keep his cool. Remember, he’s the one who assaulted a process server who was simply trying to deliver legal papers to his house, according to court documents.

It seems like Regan’s handlers should keep him away from public events. And process servers. And union staff members. After all, who knows when someone will next set Regan off like a fistful of nitroglycerin?

Here’s a link to the full story in the Sacramento Bee:  “A union president shoved him at a Sacramento fundraiser, lawmaker reports.”

More Criticism of SEIU-UHW Dave Regan's Backroom Deal with California Hospital Association

Days after the Los Angeles Times slammed SEIU-UHW for its ballot initiative fraud, the Sacramento Bee has published an op-ed by NUHW’s Sal Rosselli, who blasts SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan for abandoning patients, defrauding voters, gagging workers, and undermining the labor movement. 

Here’s a full copy of Rosselli’s op-ed:

Sacramento Bee

Shady Union-Hospital Deal Is Double-Crossing Voters

BY SAL ROSSELLI
Special to The Bee

California voters have been duped, defrauded and double-crossed twice, and now they’re being fed an outrageously disingenuous lie to cover it up.

Earlier this month, a judge blocked an attempt by Oakland-based Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West to place on the November ballot an initiative to limit the pay of nonprofit hospital executives.

Why did the judge block it? Because it’s a bad idea? No. Because it was written incorrectly? No.

It’s hard to believe, but the courts blocked the initiative because it violated a secretive, collusive arrangement between the health care workers union and the California Hospital Association.

In 2014, the union abandoned its watchdog role by agreeing to a gag clause that legally prevents the union and its members from criticizing or filing ballot initiatives “adverse” to the hospital association or its members – in exchange for unfettered access to nonunion health care workers throughout California. Once the agreement was signed, the union abandoned its initiative, which had already qualified for the 2014 ballot.

Despite a chorus of critics in the media and the labor movement, SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan called the deal “visionary.” He didn’t see the fallout coming.

When the union failed to persuade workers throughout the state to become members, it retaliated against the hospitals by paying millions of dollars to get the initiative back on the ballot. The mess of threatened lawsuits and counterlawsuits quickly spiraled out of control, culminating in Regan’s alleged assault on an unsuspecting Contra Costa County process server.

California voters are paying the price for the spectacular collapse of this shady backroom deal. More than 600,000 people signed petitions to qualify the measure for the ballot in both 2014 and 2016, only to see it snatched away – once by the union officials who wrote it and now a second time as an unintended consequence of the gag clause.

SEIU-UHW officials are now crying foul to convince voters that they were sincere about the ballot measure in the first place. They’re hoping voters will forget that the union abandoned the measure once before and were prepared to do so again this year if it could have strong-armed the hospitals. And union leaders hope voters will have short memories two years from now when the union attempts its ballot-box blackmail again.

The National Union of Healthcare Workers has been a vocal critic of this scheme from the start. It embodies so much of what is wrong with the labor movement today.

Rather than subverting workers’ rights, unions should be democratic and member-driven. Rather than engaging in backroom deals, a union should be open and transparent. Rather than teasing and betraying voters, a union should be forthright and honest.

Let’s hope SEIU-UHW’s leaders learn their lesson and get back to organizing on behalf of health care workers rather than hospital executives.

SEIU’s Election-Year Flip Flop Reveals Terms of Secret Deal with California Hospital Industry

In California, SEIU has achieved a new level of notoriety by committing an election-year flip-flop that’d make even the most cynical politician blush.

The flip-flop is discussed in an op-ed published yesterday in the state capital’s largest newspaper (Sacramento Bee: “SEIU Sells Out on Prop. 45”). (Also in the San Francisco Examiner).

Here's the story.

Just months ago, SEIU was waging a highly publicized statewide campaign to control runaway healthcare costs that are hurting millions of families across the state. Sounds good, right?

Well… it turns out SEIU’s support for consumers is as deep as piss on a flat rock.

In the run-up to this Tuesday’s elections, SEIU unceremoniously tossed California’s consumers under the bus and instead threw all of SEIU’s political support behind the state’s multibillion-dollar insurance industry in a battle over a key measure on the ballot.

The measure -- Proposition 45 -- would give California’s elected insurance commissioner the power to limit exorbitant rate hikes imposed by HMOs on consumers. Thirty-five other states already have such a system in place.  

Prop. 45 is sponsored by a statewide nonprofit consumer organization called "Consumer Watchdog" and is backed by a coalition of consumer groups, community organizations, unions and others.

Who opposes Prop. 45?

California's HMOs and hospital corporations. They've already spent more than $57 million to try to defeat Proposition 45 -- and have outspent the measure's supporters by 14 to 1.

And then, of course, there's SEIU-UHW and the SEIU California State Council (SEIU’s statewide political arm)… which have joined industry CEOs in aggressively opposing Prop. 45. For example, SEIU-UHW sent this "Official Election Endorsement" to its 145,000 members. And here's a link to the SEIU State Council's election materials.

So why did SEIU commit such a massive act of betrayal against California's consumers?

SEIU's Regan and the CHA's Duane Dauner

It’s reportedly due to a "gag" clause in the "partnership agreement" that SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan inked with the California Hospital Association several months ago. 

The clause specifically prohibits SEIU from either sponsoring or supporting any legislation or ballot measures that are opposed by the insurance and hospital industries. 

Incredible, right? 

And that's reportedly just a small fraction of what SEIU traded away to industry CEOs... including a long list of other worker and consumer rights. 

Here are the details provided by NUHW’s Sal Rosselli in the Sacramento Bee:

So why has the Service Employees International Union – the nation’s largest health care workers union – joined health insurance corporations in opposition to Prop. 45?

The answer: A few months ago, SEIU signed a corrupt deal with those companies in which it promised that in return for the opportunity to unionize 60,000 California health care workers, SEIU would not criticize these corporations or support legislation they oppose. SEIU explicitly agreed to prohibit its 150,000 California members from participating in “communications that degrade or attack a signatory hospital or health system or the hospital industry” or that raise “concerns about hospital pricing and executive compensation in health care.”

In other words, SEIU has formally abdicated its watchdog role. In exchange for the chance to collect dues from 60,000 new members, SEIU has officially sold out their workers and is actively campaigning in support of their employers’ political goals. This is the very definition of a company union.

SEIU and California Hospital Association officials tout their deal as “revolutionary.” And perhaps they’re right. A defining principle of the labor movement is that unions represent workers. With a few strokes of the pen, SEIU has effectively silenced its members and put their dues dollars at the disposal of wealthy and powerful corporations.

Meanwhile, consumers lose, health care workers lose and democracy loses.