Kaiser Permanente Blows Smoke; NUHW Lands Body Blow

Remember the saying, “It's not the size of the union in the fight, but the size of the fight in the union”?

Well, on Monday, 4,000 of NUHW’s members launched a week-long strike against Kaiser Permanente across California to protest the HMO's chronic understaffing of its mental health services and the horrible impact on patients, including tragic suicides.

The strike -- which NUHW says is the largest strike by mental health professionals in the nation-- is quite remarkable.

NUHW’s members are giving the U.S.'s biggest HMO a run for the money… and have already left their multi-billion-dollar employer with a black eye and a bloody nose!

In response to workers’ strike, media outlets have published more than a thousand stories about Kaiser's underfunded and failed mental health services. Three elected officials have stepped forward with accounts about how their family members committed suicide after Kaiser delayed their access to mental health care.

Kaiser, now playing defense, is running daily full-page ads in newspapers across the state along with a steady flow of radio ads in a desperate effort to repair the damage.

So why has Kaiser blundered so badly?

According to observers, Kaiser's fatcat executives decided to ignore the well-documented problems affecting their mental health services and instead proceeded to carefully insert their heads even deeper inside the posterior end of their gastrointestinal tracts.

Kaiser's John Nelson

One of Kaiser's chief idiots is John Nelson, the Vice President of Brand Management. 

Before joining Kaiser, Nelson worked as "a strategic communications professional” for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the utility that was fined $1.4 billion for killing 8 people and blowing up multiple city blocks in a firestorm that resulted from PGE’s greedy refusal to fix its leaky, underground natural gas pipes.

Nelson, like a rabid "climate denier," loves to issue vociferous denials of any criticism of Kaiser's mental health services... even though, just four months ago, Kaiser paid a $4 million fine to state regulators for multiple mental health violations, including imposing lengthy illegal appointment delays on patients and falsifying appointment records by employing a parallel set of books.

Last month, SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan delivered one of his more pathetic performances by working hand in hand with Nelson to spout Kaiser's corporate talking points against Kaiser's patients and workers. 

Yesterday, an award-winning columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle penned a piece that sent Nelson's head spinning. It turns out the columnist, Jon Carroll, is a Kaiser member and has personally had problems with the HMO's mental health care. Carroll skillfully clowned Kaiser for its dishonest media campaign by publishing a column entitled: "This Just In: Patients Know Stuff Too."

Carroll writes:

...some of us are not ordinary outsiders -- some of us are Kaiser members. We watch the bureaucracy yawn and shift. We understand the virtues and hate the flaws. And here's a true thing: Kaiser mental healthcare facilities are really not very good.

He goes on to describe his own experiences at Kaiser and then launches a frontal assault on Nelson’s bald-faced lies:

So Kaiser can throw around as much smoke as it can find. It already paid a fine for its scheduling practices. The paucity of its mental health services is pretty well known locally. If it's going to consciously gut the programs, it should just say so and move on. But it can't pretend that black is white.

Ouch!

For more info, here's a link to photos and news coverage of the strike on NUHW’s website.

SEIU-UHW’s “Gag Clause” Turns Heads at Football Stadium

Dave Regan’s cozy relationship with the hospital industry is turning heads -- this time inside a football stadium.

In a recent article ("Dignity Health Spends Big at Levi's Stadium," September 14, 2014), the San Francisco Chronicle describes the public outrage after Dignity Health shelled out $2.5 million for a luxury skybox at the San Francisco 49ers’ new football stadium. 

Inside the air-conditioned suite, Dignity’s overpaid execs are gorging themselves on trays of food and bottles of liquor as athletes battle it out on the gridiron below.

Consumer Watchdog, a leading consumer rights organization, told the Chronicle it’s “scandalous” that Dignity Health -- a nonprofit hospital corporation -- is "wasting millions of dollars on luxury skyboxes rather than putting those charitable dollars towards patient care..."

Damn right!

Dignity’s skybox scandal appeared to offer a perfect opportunity for SEIU-UHW to attack Dignity's pinstriped priorities. To use a baseball metaphor, Dignity had served up a proverbial "softball" that SEIU-UHW could hit out of the park. After all, Dignity recently demanded -- and Dave Regan accepted -- a wage freeze for all of SEIU-UHW’s 14,000 members at Dignity.

Why, then, has SEIU-UHW been quiet as a church mouse about Dignity's skybox scandal?

Sources say it’s typical of Regan, who has implanted himself firmly in the Boss's pocket instead of at the side of workers. During recent contract negotiations, Regan helped Dignity eliminate workers’ defined-benefit pension and impose a wage freeze on 14,000 SEIU-UHW members.

Sources also point to a second interesting explanation for SEIU-UHW’s deafening silence:  the gag clause in Regan's new “partnership” deal with the California Hospital Association, signed in May of 2014.

In an internal SEIU conference call leaked to Tasty, Regan said the gag clause bans SEIU-UHW from expressing any criticism or doing any "negative campaigning" against hospital corporations. Here's what Regan said:

The Code of Conduct requires that in all of our interactions -- whether they're in the public realm, in the realm of advocacy, in the realm of media relations or press relations or political work as well as in the realm of non-union workers deciding whether or not to join our union -- we will eliminate and prohibit all negative campaigning.

To reinforce the deal, Regan brought a top Dignity exec -- Wade Rose -- to speak about the terms of the "partnership" agreement at one of SEIU-UHW’s recent Executive Board meetings.

Hmmm… So how, exactly, are Dignity's workers supposed to get any kind of justice from their

Skybox at the 49ers new stadium

multibillion-dollar employer if they can't utter a single criticism about sky-high executive salaries, wasteful spending, off-the-hook profits, and short-staffing?

Good question! It's like fighting a 300-lb. bully with both hands tied behind your back.

And that's the bottom line. Regan has fixed the fight in the Boss's favor. Which helps explain why Dignity workers' wages and benefits are suffering while their company's profits are booming. 

Several weeks ago, Dignity reported $913 million in profits for the year ended June of 2014… with one economist criticizing nonprofit Dignity's sky-high profit margin of 8.3%. (Sacramento Business Journal, "Dignity Health Sees Healthy Growth in Profit Margin," September 25, 2014).

So... for all you 49er fans out there -- keep your eyes out for SEIU’s Dave Regan. Tasty bets dollars to doughnuts he’ll soon be partying with Dignity's execs inside their $2.5 million skybox!

Dave Regan Assigns Ex-Cop Busted for Elvis Fraud to Campaign for SEIU-UHW at Kaiser

It looks like Denver Henderson, the faux journalist from Montana, is just the tip of the iceberg among Dave Regan’s standout recruits working on SEIU’s Kaiser campaign. 

Tasty has learned that Regan has assigned John Solis (another pillar of integrity) to work as an organizer trying to convince workers at Kaiser Walnut Creek Medical Center in Northern California to vote for SEIU-UHW in the upcoming NLRB election. 

Solis is reportedly a former cop in the San Francisco Police Department who got busted for grand theft after he defrauded Elvis collectors of an estimated $32,000. By the way, Solis happened to commit his felony while serving as a cop!

Oh... and Solis was also reportedly busted for shop-lifting toys at Costco while wearing his police uniform, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

How did Solis swindle the Elvis merchants?

According to Solis’s wife, he’s been fascinated with “The King” since he was 10 years old… and even built an Elvis shrine at the couple’s home in Hercules, California. 

Here’s how the San Francisco Chronicle tells the next part of this pathetic, strange-ass story:

Hercules police say Solis ordered hundreds of Elvis compact discs, videos, books, watches and other collectible items, and in many cases claimed he never received them so he could get his money back from the shippers.

It is a case that Hercules Police Detective William Imboden called ''nothing like I've ever seen before."

Solis was arrested Monday and more than 800 items were seized from his home after more than four months of investigation, Imboden said yesterday.

At the time of his arrest on suspicion of grand theft and forgery, Solis was already facing misdemeanor charges in San Francisco in connection with a shoplifting case.

Prosecutors say Solis twice went to a Costco store in his police uniform in June, took toys from the shelf, claimed to have bought them and then tried to exchange them for similar, less expensive toys to get cash for the difference.

After his arrest on eight counts of grand theft and forgery, Solis was held on $100,000 bail and later pleaded ‘no contest’ to grand theft.

In this article -- “S.F. Cop Could Face ‘Jailhouse Rock’ If He Defrauded Elvis Fans” -- the Chronicle describes how “Solis defrauded an Arkansas man out of 90 rare Elvis videos worth $2,700” and “scammed a Texas woman for $3,700 worth of books, CDs and other items.” Quite a guy.

Hmm... perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea for Regan to give Solis access to Kaiser workers’ social security numbers and personal information, including their employee ID numbers.

So what kind of stolen items did Solis display in his shrine to “The King?” 650 CDs, 160 videos, 38 books, framed posters, plaques, gold records, signed photos, wallets… even an Elvis eyeglass case.

Apparently, Solis used multiple aliases during his Elvis-inspired crime spree, including “Alex Alexander,” which is reportedly taken from his middle name. Here's how Solis is listed on SEIU-UHW’s 2011 report to the U.S. Department of Labor (what's called an "LM-2").

Interestingly, Solis continues to be a topic of heated conversation on Elvis fan sites, including ElvisNews.com and elvis-collectors.com, where Elvis devotees have posted messages with titles like this: “Jailed Elvis Ripoff artist on the prowl again!”

But wait… that’s not all. 

Regan’s felonious storm-trooper is also a less-than-stellar trade unionist! According to the monthly journal of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, Solis was suspended from the union after he failed to pay his dues for a whole year! Check out the excerpt below.

Sounds like Solis will be super successful at convincing Kaiser workers to vote for SEIU-UHW! Who else has Regan recruited to chase Kaiser workers down hospital hallways??

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. 

A Yolk in the Eye for Journalist Chris Rauber and SEIU's Steve Trossman

It looks like Steve Trossman (SEIU-UHW’s Communications Director) and Chris Rauber (a reporter at the San Francisco Business Times) have egg on their faces… again! Readers might remember Rauber from an earlier episode, when he published an article -- peddled by Trossman -- that got the facts all wrong on SEIU-UHW’s contract with Tenet Healthcare.

Apparently, Rauber is SEIU-UHW’s favorite go-to journalist because he simply re-prints SEIU’s press releases as full-blown articles without doing any fact-checking. (Talk about lazy journalism!)

How did Rauber accomplish his latest faceplant? This summer, NUHW and the Courage Campaign (an advocacy organization) asked California’s governor to investigate double-digit insurance rate hikes that Kaiser Permanente imposed on more than 300,000 California consumers. In letters to the governor, the two organizations pointed out that Kaiser failed to justify its rate hikes, as required by California law.

After the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the complaints, Rauber printed his own SEIU-inspired article trashing the San Francisco Chronicle and its reporter. Rauber simply dismissed the complaint against Kaiser as “a bargaining ploy” and called the Chronicle’s article “odd.” (Hmmm, Tasty wonders why it’s "odd" for a newspaper to write about giant companies ripping off the public…)

Well, here’s the latest news. Government officials just finished their investigation and… guess what? NUHW and the Courage Campaign were right! Kaiser was over-charging California consumers by as much as $30 million. And Kaiser, which is swimming in $5.7 billion in profits, has agreed to partially roll back its rate hikes on the 300,000 consumers.

So what is SEIU’s "dynamic duo of disinformation" saying about these latest developments? As far as Tasty can tell, there’s not a peep from Trossman and Rauber. Must be busy cleaning all that egg off their faces.

Fighting for the Big Boss: Dave Regan and Leon Chow

As Andy Stern pushes for tax cuts for the Fortune 500, SEIU’s trustees in California have teamed up with the Chamber of Commerce to block important health reform efforts in San Francisco. Check this out.

In 2006, San Francisco passed a landmark universal healthcare law that requires the city’s business owners to give health coverage to their workers. What a concept!

The cutting-edge law then survived a multi-million legal assault by the Chamber of Commerce, which sued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to block the law. After the Chamber lost its last appeal, the law was finally put into effect. Hooray!

This year, however, city officials discovered that businesses have been exploiting a giant loophole in the law. You see… even though many businesses are setting aside money in special accounts to pay for their workers’ healthcare needs, the businesses are conveniently forgetting to tell workers that the money is there for them to use! And if workers don’t use the money, then all the unspent funds go back into businesses owners’ pockets at the end of each year.

Here’s how the San Francisco Chronicle describes it:

A recent city report found that 80 percent of the $50 million San Francisco businesses paid last year into city-required health care reimbursement accounts for their uninsured workers was never used and instead went back to employers.

Fortunately, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors came to the rescue by introducing a measure to close what the SF Chronicle dubbed the “business-friendly loophole.”

So… wouldn’t you expect the city’s largest union of healthcare workers (SEIU-UHW) to back the Supervisors’ efforts? After all, SEIU supposedly supports universal health coverage, right? Well, gentle readers, welcome to another trip down SEIU’s highway of hypocrisy…

As Supervisors prepared for a vote on a measure to close the loophole, SEIU-UHW and the President of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce co-signed this letter (see below) calling on the Supervisors to suspend the vote. Who signed the letter on behalf of SEIU? None other than scab extraordinaire Leon Chow, who last year appeared on mailers backing the Chamber’s candidates in city elections.

What about the other unions on the letterhead? Well, Tasty hears that SEIU sent the letter without giving the unions a heads-up. And, as you might guess, the unions are now plenty angry at SEIU.

That’s why the San Francisco Central Labor Council, which represents dozens of unions across the city, sent this letter reaffirming labor’s support for closing the loophole. Check out the subtle dig at SEIU (aka ‘the Chamber’s ill-informed ally’) at the end of the labor council’s letter:

Please pass Supervisor Campos’ legislation without watered-down amendments promoted by the Chamber of Commerce and their ill-informed allies. Restore the promise of this watershed legislation that promotes healthcare coverage for all San Francisco workers.

So how’d it all end up? Tasty hears that SEIU-UHW’s sell-out maneuver caused the Supervisors to feel uncertain about labor’s support for the measure, so they pulled the item before it could be voted on, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bottom line?…Thanks to SEIU, San Francisco’s business owners will continue pocketing $40 million a year that’s supposed to pay for workers’ health care. Way to go, SEIU. Integrity in action.

Wonder how SEIU’s low-wage members and frontline healthcare workers feel about their union’s top officials teaming up with big business to sabotage workers’ health coverage.

Is SEIU Fighting for a Fair Economy??? Seems more like it's Fighting for the Big Boss.

SEIU and Chamber of Commerce's Letter To San Francisco Board of Supervisor Urging Tabling of Health Ordinan...