SEIU-UHW and Hospital Corporation to Stand Trial over Illegal Firing of Worker

A federal judge has ordered SEIU-UHW and Dignity Health to stand trial next month over their roles in the allegedly illegal firing of a California hospital worker, according to court records.

On October 17, a federal courtroom in Los Angeles will offer a picture worth a thousand words: SEIU-UHW and Dignity Health sitting side-by-side in the defendants’ box.

Dignity is a multi-billion-dollar hospital corporation that employs approximately 15,000 SEIU-UHW members. Since 2009, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan and Dignity CEO Lloyd Dean have repeatedly inked backroom deals to slash SEIU-UHW members’ pensions and health insurance, and even impose wage freezes ... despite Dignity’s healthy profits.

Who’s bringing the lawsuit against SEIU-UHW and Dignity?

Starla Rollins, a former Ward Clerk at a Dignity Health’s Community Hospital of San Bernardino for over 20 years.

She alleges that Dignity illegally fired her in 2012, and that SEIU-UHW (her union) sat on its hands and refused to help her as Dignity pushed her out the door.

Since filing her suit in 2013, Rollins has fought her way through a series of appeals filed by both SEIU-UHW and Dignity. Last October, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled in Starla’s favor and ordered SEIU-UHW and Dignity Health officials to stand trial over their alleged violations that cost Starla her job of 20+ years.

The three-judge panel ruled:

“We conclude that… the Hospital has breached the Seniority Agreement and the CBA, and that triable issues of fact exist as to whether the Union breached its duty of fair representation.”

In their ruling, the judges slammed Marcus Hatcher, who then served as SEIU-UHW’s so-called “Director of Representational Excellence.” Later, SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan appointed Hatcher as the director of the union’s Kaiser Division.

 

Starla Rollins

As far as the upcoming trial, it looks like SEIU-UHW and its hack attorney Bruce Harland are running scared.

In recent weeks, SEIU-UHW’s attorneys twice requested lengthy delays in the start date of the trial. Harland proposed postponing the start date from October 17, 2017 until January 2018.

The judge’s response?

“DENIED.”

Check out the judge’s handwritten response on SEIU-UHW’s request, which Tasty has posted below.

Stay tuned for more news.

  Federal Judge Denies SEIU-UHW's Request to Postpone Trial over Failure to Represent Union Member by tastysternburger on Scribd

Hospital Worker Takes Case to US Supreme Court after SEIU-UHW Officials Fail to Protect Pensions for 15,000 Workers at Dignity Health

A California hospital worker named Starla Rollins has taken a fight to protect 15,000 workers' pension benefits all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Last week, Rollins’ attorneys asked the Supreme Court to safeguard the retirement benefits of tens of thousands of workers at Dignity Health, a giant hospital company headquartered in San Francisco. 

Even though Dignity’s pension plan covers more than 15,000 SEIU-UHW members, SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan and other SEIU-UHW officials have refused to lift a finger to defend workers’ pensions.

Here’s what’s going on:

In 2009 and 2012, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan and Hal Ruddick teamed up with Dignity executives to implement sharp cuts to the pension plan covering SEIU-UHW members at more than 30 hospitals across California.

Then, in 2013, Starla Rollins -- a 26-year Ward Clerk at Community Hospital of San Bernardino -- discovered that SEIU-UHW officials had allowed Dignity to underfund SEIU-UHW members’ pension plan by $1.2 billion. (Yes, that’s a “b” for “billion.”)

Because SEIU-UHW officials refused to do anything, Rollins decided to sue Dignity in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of herself and her co-workers. Her lawsuit -- “Starla Rollins v. Dignity Health”-- was filed in 2013. Tasty covered it in this earlier post.

Here’s the latest.

Last July, Rollins and her attorney won an important victory in federal court after doing battle with Dignity’s high-priced lawyers for three years. (See below the decision issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.) 

Dignity, rather than accepting defeat, appealed the court’s decision to the US Supreme Court.

Last week, lawyers for both sides argued their case in front of the Supreme Court.

Starla Rollins

The case centers on the following question: A federal law (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act) requires corporations to adequately fund their employees’ pensions so workers actually receive the pension payments they earned when they retire. 

Dignity acknowledges it has underfunded workers’ pension. But company executives claim they’re exempt from federal law because Dignity is a “religious organization” …even though Dignity has bought up many non-religious hospitals. It even changed its name from “Catholic Healthcare West” so it could re-brand itself as a non-religious company.

What happened during last week’s oral argument at the US Supreme Court?

According to a transcript (see copy below), Judge Sonia Sotomayor grilled a lawyer representing Dignity. Here’s an excerpt from her questioning:

[Dignity is] the fifth largest healthcare provider in the nation. They have 60,000 employees. Do you believe that Congress's vision was to let, what is essentially, a corporate entity opt out of protecting all of those employees?

Kick their asses!

So what happens next?

The Supreme Court justices will publish their decision sometime in June.

What about SEIU-UHW? It continues to do absolutely nothing to protect its members’ retirement benefits. Apparently, “Wall Street” Dave Regan is too busy polishing the CEO’s shoes.

So... huge props to Starla!

In fact, Rollins has been waging not one but two important legal battles against SEIU-UHW for its failure to support its members.

In the second case, Rollins won a giant victory last October when a federal court ordered officials from both SEIU-UHW and Dignity Health to stand trial for illegally laying her off from her 26-year job and then refusing to honor her union contract’s seniority agreement. Rollins was part of the union’s leadership team prior to SEIU’s 2009 trusteeship, when NUHW President Sal Rosselli led the union.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the Supreme Court’s June decision! Stay tuned.

  US Supreme Court's Oral Argument on Starla Rollins v.  Dignity Health pension case: 3-27- 2017 by tastysternburger on Scribd

  Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: Opinion on Starla Rollins v. Dignity Health pension case: 7-26-2016 by tastysternburger on Scribd

Court: SEIU-UHW Officials Must Stand Trial for Failing to Represent Union Member

SEIU-UHW has suffered yet another embarrassing legal judgment for failing to back its own members.

Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ordered SEIU-UHW officials to stand trial for denying basic union representation to one of its members, which caused her to lose her job of more than 20 years.

Elsewhere on this blog, Tasty has catalogued countless instances of SEIU-UHW’s backroom deals with hospital bosses and its failure to defend workers’ rights on the job.

In fact, so many SEIU-UHW members complained that SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan -- who deploys disinformation and deception as regular tools against his union’s members -- attempted to quiet workers’ criticism by creating a so-called “Department of Representational Excellence.” 

So what happened in the latest case?

According to court records, Starla Rollins worked as a Ward Clerk at a Dignity Health’s Community Hospital of San Bernardino for over 20 years. In 2012, Dignity executives implemented a “reduction in force” and tried to lay off a number of workers including Rollins.

 

Starla Rollins

When Rollins asked SEIU-UHW to enforce a seniority agreement that should have allowed her to continue working at the hospital, SEIU-UHW refused. When Rollins prepared a grievance against the hospital, SEIU-UHW ignored it.  

So… Rollins tragically lost her job of 20+ years.

Rollins, however, is not one to give up.

She sued both her employer and SEIU-UHW for failing to honor the seniority agreement. As far as SEIU-UHW, she sued the union for failing to fulfill its “duty of fair representation” to provide basic representational services to union members.

After Rollins filed her suit, Regan spent massive amounts of money on lawyers, including on hack attorney Bruce Harland, to try to knock Rollins' lawsuit out of court.

Earlier this week, however, the Court of Appeals handed Rollins a giant victory. 

The court ruled: “We conclude that… the Hospital has breached the Seniority Agreement and the CBA, and that triable issues of fact exist as to whether the Union breached its duty of fair representation.” 

In other words, the court has ordered SEIU-UHW officials to now stand trial in front of a jury over allegations that they failed to provide basic representational support to Rollins.

Bruce Harland, SEIU-UHW attorney

In the ruling, the panel of three judges slams SEIU-UHW officials for failing to defend Rollins. They write: “First, the Union never seriously considered Rollins’s rights under the Seniority Agreement.”

Second, after she was laid off, SEIU-UHW only pretended to help Rollins by lumping her into a group grievance that had nothing to do with her situation and was completely unsuccessful in restoring her job.

Third, when Rollins filed her own grievance against the hospital, SEIU-UHW officials refused to process her grievance for bogus reasons.

In the decision, the judges go on to trash Marcus Hatcher, SEIU-UHW’s so-called “Director of Representational Excellence.” Here’s a quote from the ruling:

The Union's Director of Representational Excellence, Marcus Hatcher, claimed to have reviewed the Seniority Agreement. But he asserted that the Seniority Agreement was "not relevant to the MOU" and unenforceable because "it can't supersede a contract." There are two problems with Hatcher's reasoning…

The judges then execute a take-down on Hatcher.

Congratulations to Starla Rollins! 

Here’s a link to a Bloomberg article on the Rollins case. And immediately below is a copy of the judges' ruling issued October 26, 2016.

  Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: Starla Rollins vs SEIU-UHW (October 26, 2016) by tastysternburger on Scribd

Worker Sues Dignity Health over $1.2 Billion after SEIU-UHW Fails to Protect Workers' Retirement Benefits

Here’s an interesting story. At Dignity Health in California, SEIU-UHW continues to fail to protect workers’ retirement benefits. So... a worker decided to take matters into her own hands and filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of herself and her co-workers!

The lawsuit, filed last month in federal court, seeks to force Dignity to fix the massive underfunding of workers’ retirement benefits. The plan is underfunded by $1.2 billion(!). And the suit asks the judge to force Dignity to comply with a federal law that’s designed to safeguard workers’ benefits. Below, Tasty posted a copy of the lawsuit.

There’s another interesting detail to this story. The lawsuit was filed by Starla Rollins, who worked at a Dignity hospital in Southern California for 26 years until recently… when she and hundreds of other Dignity workers lost their jobs due to a layoff deal negotiated by SEIU-UHW’s Hal Ruddick. 

Ruddick’s deal conveniently gave away workers’ rights to file grievances over the company’s layoffs. That’s how Starla Rollins, an employee with 26 years on the job, lost her job.

So why haven’t Dave Regan and Hal Ruddick been protecting the retirement benefits of SEIU-UHW’s 15,000 members at Dignity? No shocker here. Dave and Hal are the purple pocket puppets of the company’s top execs.

Back in 2009, Regan and Ruddick eliminated workers’ defined-benefit pension plan and replaced it with a cheap “cash-balance” plan, which allowed Dignity to save $217 million in just one year, according to its financial statements.

Last June, Regan and Ruddick negotiated more benefit cuts and a wage freeze for workers. Since then, Dignity spent an estimated $500 million to buy another company and the company has pocketed $626 million in profits, according to recently released financial reports.

Here’s the class-action lawsuit against Dignity for under-funding workers’ retirement plan:

   Starla Rollins v. Dignity Health -- class-action lawsuit over Dignity workers' retirement plan. Filed April...