Next Up at SEIU Local 99? Scott Washburn

SEIU's Scott Washburn

On her way out the back door, Courtni Pugh -- the recently departed Executive Director of SEIU Local 99 -- announced that Scott Washburn would be taking over as the union’s "Interim Executive Director."

So who’s Washburn and what's his track record?

Washburn is a longtime SEIU staffer who in 2006 was appointed as the "Arizona State Director" of SEIU Local 5 and was tasked with boosting SEIU’s membership in the Grand Canyon State. 

Early in 2012, Purple Palace officials created Local 5 out of a top-down merger of three separate SEIU local unions in Texas, Arizona and Virginia. (WTF?)

So, how did Washburn perform in Arizona?

Not so well.

From 2008 until the end of 2012, Local 5's tri-state membership plummeted from 4,069 to 1,010 members. Ouch!

And in Arizona, Washburn did even worse.

For example, in 2011, more than 700 city employees in Tempe, Arizona decertified SEIU Local 5 to join an independent union called the United Arizona Employee Association.

By 2012, things had gotten so bad that the Purple Palace pulled the plug on the multi-state merger by splitting Local 5 back into its three original local unions (Local 5 in Texas, Local 512 in Virginia, and Local 48 in Arizona).

In Arizona, Washburn performed like a...

Washburn’s "growth strategies" had left SEIU with just 425 members in Arizona, according to records from the U.S. Department of Labor.

So what happened to Washburn?

In typical fashion, he pulled the purple ripcord and landed a comfortable job on SEIU International’s payroll pocketing than $150,000 per year.

And there's more.

In addition to Washburn’s underwhelming track record, Scott has also cultivated many enemies by helping Andy Stern and Dave Regan carry out SEIU’s heavy-handed raids against rank-and-file workers.

In 2009, Washburn famously deployed himself and many of his Arizona staff to California to impose SEIU’s trusteeship on healthcare workers inside SEIU-UHW. 

Later that year, Washburn directed Local 5’s staff to conduct an unsuccessful raid against UNITE HERE at Phoenix’s Sheraton Convention Center Hotel. That won't win Washburn any friends at UNITE HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles.

In 2010, Washburn and his staff spent many more months in California working on SEIU’s law-breaking Kaiser campaign, where SEIU’s illegal threats ultimately overturned the election results.

Meanwhile, Washburn has carefully used Andy Stern's trusteeship as an opportunity to secure full employment for his children. Last year, no fewer than three of Washburn’s kids were employed by SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan, including Simon Washburn, Ira Washburn and Hannah Washburn.

Hey Local 99 members -- looks like you got a real winner on your hands!

What's Art Pulaski thinking?

Art Pulaski

Remember Art Pulaski?

He was formerly married to SEIU’s Josie Mooney and is currently the head of the California Federation of Labor.

In 2012, Pulaski famously teamed up with SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan to engineer an "emergency" phone call of the Labor Fed’s board in an unsuccessful effort to roll back the state's landmark nurse-to-patient staffing ratio law.

Well… Pulaski has made another decision that’s left observers scratching their heads.

Next week, the California Labor Federation will hold its biennial convention in San Diego, California. Pulaski has decided to put the presidents of UNITE HERE (D. Taylor) and SEIU (Mary Kay Henry) on the same stage.

As you can imagine, the folks over at UNITE HERE are no fans of Henry and SEIU. Back in 2009, Mary Kay Henry was one of Andy Stern's key lieutenants who launched SEIU’s multi-million dollar hostile takeover aimed at seizing control of UNITE HERE and gobbling it up inside of SEIU. 

SEIU’s disastrous scheme -- a byproduct of purple arrogance and imperial ambitions -- was roundly condemned by the labor movement.

So what’s Pulaski thinking?

Good question. Here's the announcement.

The 2014 California Labor Federation Biennial Convention is only 12 days away, and our speaker lineup is as action-packed as our agenda! We know that in order to win in the long run we must grow our movement and go on the offense. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce two keynote speakers who know firsthand what it means to fight in the trenches, grow their memberships and win.

Be sure to join us Tuesday, July 29 to hear SEIU International President, Mary Kay Henry and UNITE HERE President, D. Taylor as each highlight their unique lessons learned from fighting hard to organize new members, and the importance of expanding our offensive game to maintain a powerful movement for all workers. You won’t want to miss this!

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan Funnels Millions to Lobbyists

Here’s an interesting item.

The "Capitol Weekly," a newspaper that covers the political scene in California’s state capitol, offers yet another glimpse at the ass-backwards changes brought by Dave Regan to SEIU-UHW.

Earlier, Tasty posted internal documents that show how Regan is systematically slashing the union's day-to-day representation of its own members while SEIU-UHW pockets multi-million dollar profits.

At the same time, Regan has been busy funneling millions of dollars to business-suited lobbyists in the state capitol, according to the "Capitol Weekly."

In fact, during 2013 SEIU-UHW became one of the top ten biggest lobbyists in California... along with Chevron, the California Chamber of Commerce, ATT, Southern California Edison and the California Hospital Association.

Regan funneled $1.88 million to a variety of lobbying firms in 2013, causing SEIU-UHW to join the top-ten list for presumably the first time ever.

What kinds of policies did Regan lobby for/against during 2013?

Regan assigned an estimated ten lobbyists to fight a bill backed by UNITE HERE, the UFCW, the Teamsters, Teachers, Longshore Workers… and even SEIU Locals 521, 721 and 1021! The bill would've required Kaiser Permanente to share more information with unions and other purchasers when Kaiser demands premium hikes for its health insurance policies.

The bill's demands were milk-toast modest, basically saying: "Hey Kaiser, show us the numbers before you jack up our premiums."

But instead of supporting workers' demands for more transparency, Regan pimped for Kaiser and the California Hospital Association by hiring lobbyists to kill the worker-backed bill.

Regan also teamed up with the California Hospital Association to lobby against Assembly Bill 975, which would’ve required nonprofit hospitals to spend more money on "charity care" for low-income, uninsured patients.

It's no wonder “Wall Street” Dave is on the short-list for the Chamber of Commerce’s ‘Employee of the Year' award.

Here's the full article from the Capitol Weekly entitled "Top 10 Lobbying Firms Bill More than $40 Million.”

Source: SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan Signed "Unpublished Side Letter" to Force Cuts on Kaiser Workers

It's been widely reported that SEIU-UHW and the other "partnership unions" have already signed a deal that allows Kaiser Permanente to slash their members' defined-benefit pensions and health benefits.

Now, for the first time, sources are providing details about the secret deal. Here's what they say.

Sources say the deal was inked during the final hours of the partnership negotiations in 2012. At that point, Regan and John August (Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions) signed an "unpublished side letter" that requires SEIU-UHW and the other partnership unions to eliminate their members' pensions and slash their health benefits.

Because the deal is memorialized as an "unpublished side letter" attached to workers’ contract, Regan and Co. believe they can hide it from the membership.

And that's not the only detail to emerge from Tasty’s sources.

They also describe the precise moment when Regan and his pals inked the dirty deal.

During the final moments of the negotiations, a handful of the partnership union’s fatcat officials met privately with Kaiser's execs. Rank-and-file workers were specifically excluded from the room. And when Regan and August emerged from behind closed doors, they announced that the contract negotiations were done.

This insider’s account matches up perfectly with workers' previously published descriptions of the final hours of the negotiations. Check out an excerpt from a 2012 video-taped interview with Sophia Sims, a rank-and-file member of SEIU-UHW’s bargaining committee who was at the negotiations when Regan, August and other officials stepped behind closed doors to ink the secret deal.

Since that day, Kaiser has attempted to force these same cuts on the members of NUHW and UNITE HERE, who’ve waged multiple strikes against Kaiser with the support of the California Nurses Association. According to sources, Kaiser will soon try to push SEIU-UHW’s cuts on the CNA when 18,000 nurses begin negotiations with Kaiser later this year.

Here’s the video.

Hey SEIU-UHW members… it's time to tell Dave Regan: “Show us the unpublished side letter!”

Union Staffer's Tweet Offers Window into SEIU's Secret Deal with Puerto Rican Governor

Bruce Raynor

From time to time, little fragments of information sneak through the internet to offer us interesting glimpses into the lives of SEIU’s top officials.

Here’s one.

A former staffer from the Change to Win Coalition recently tweeted the following message about his experiences with Bruce Raynor and Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, the former governor of Puerto Rico. Raynor, of course, is the guy who famously teamed up with SEIU President Andy Stern to unsuccessfully raid UNITE HERE.

Translation? 

This unfortunate union staffer was assigned to serve at the beck and call of Raynor and then-Governor Acevedo Vila… including fetching them icecream bars during the 2008 Democratic National Convention at Denver’s Mile High Stadium.

Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila

At that moment, Acevedo Vila had been indicted on 24 counts of campaign finance violations.

He'd also been doing lots of dirty deeds for SEIU. 

Earlier that year, Acevedo Vila worked hand-in-glove with SEIU’s Dennis Rivera in an effort to take over the largest and most militant union in Puerto Rico: the 42,000-member Puerto Rican Teachers Union (La Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico or “FMPR”).

SEIU got the governor to issue a declaration decertifying the FMPR and then suspended the union’s right to collect membership dues. Next, the governor scheduled an election to allow the island’s 42,000 teachers to choose a union... but Gov. Acevedo Vila carefully rigged the election so that SEIU was the only union on the ballot!

So... it's no wonder that SEIU/Change to Win assigned its staffers to race through Mile High Stadium to buy icecream bars for the corrupt governor and SEIU officials!

What happened to Puerto Rico's teachers?

SEIU's Dennis Rivera

Fortunately, the teachers could smell a rat a mile away. When the ballots from the rigged election were counted in October of 2008, the teachers trounced SEIU… and sent Dennis Hickey Rivera and hundreds of purple-shirted staffers scurrying for the first flight back to the U.S. 

Quite a story... whose latest chapter was written by the tweet from the union staffer!

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...