Hospital Workers Deliver Loss to SEIU-UHW during Sweetheart C.H.A. Election

Here's some breaking news.

Remember Dave Regan’s sweetheart deal with the California Hospital Association?

That’s the deal where hospital executives welcome SEIU-UHW into their hospitals to unionize up to 60,000 workers. In exchange, SEIU-UHW gives political favors to the Bosses and commits to force workers into pre-negotiated labor contracts with cheap wages and benefits.

Well, last night, the workers at a Southern California hospital rejected SEIU-UHW in one of the first elections run under the CHA deal... and despite the fact that hospital execs gave SEIU- UHW every possible advantage! The final tally at Mission Hospital, a 552-bed hospital in Orange County, was...

SEIU-UHW: 329

No Union: 409

What kind of help did execs give to SEIU-UHW?

SEIU-UHW got complete access to the hospital's break rooms and conference rooms to try to convince workers to vote for SEIU. A list of every employee’s home address and telephone number. An order from hospital execs to every manager and supervisor that prohibited them from saying anything negative about SEIU-UHW. 

In addition, hospital execs agreed to a rush-job scheduling of the election so that no other unions would be able to get on the NLRB ballot.

That left SEIU-UHW as the only union on the ballot… but SEIU-UHW still lost!

Sources say workers are overjoyed to get rid of the SEIU-UHW organizers, who they affectionately called "the purple clowns." Apparently, workers were literally tripping over purple organizers camped out in their break rooms, knocking on the front doors at night, phoning them relentlessly, and stalking them in hospital parking lots and the cafeteria.

SEIU mailer from Mission

Quite a story, right?

Well, here's the kicker.

On Monday, the NLRB counted the ballots in a separate union election initiated by workers at Redwood Memorial Hospital, who petitioned to join NUHW. 

Interestingly, the hospital is owned by the same company that owns Mission Hospital -- that is, St. Joseph Health System.

At Redwood Memorial, however, there was no sweetheart deal... and the Boss fought workers’ efforts to join NUHW. Nevertheless, on Monday workers voted by more than a three-to-one margin to join NUHW!

That's not all. This is the fourth hospital owned by St. Joseph Health System to vote to join NUHW.

Apparently, this rising wave of support for NUHW has caused some serious heart palpitations for St. Joseph's execs. So the company’s top execs decided to invite SEIU-UHW into their remaining non-union hospitals in hopes that the purple company union will blocking workers from joining NUHW.

This isn’t a new tactic. In the 1960s and 1970s, agricultural growers invited the Teamsters into their fields to keep the United Farm Workers out.

This is what SEIU’s Dave Regan calls "strategic collaboration" with the Boss, as he did in this recent TV interview with NBC news!

PS. Sources report that the SEIU-UHW organizers on the Mission Hospital campaign have become increasingly suspicious about Regan’s deal with the California Hospital Association (CHA). During the campaign, workers repeatedly asked the organizers about the sweetheart deal, the pre-negotiated contracts, etc… but Regan refuses to show the agreement to staffers or even the union's elected Executive Board. When they were asked about the CHA deal, SEIU-UHW organizers were instructed to recite a couple of canned talking points and then redirect the conversation towards a different topic.

Where Is She Now…? SEIU’s Angela Hewett

SEIU's Hewett inside Kaiser cafeteria

When readers last sent news of her, Angela Hewett had quit her job at SEIU-UHW and taken a position as the Organizing Director at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

In an earlier post, Tasty described Hewett’s dramatic makeover. 

At SEIU-UHW, Hewett was best known for thuggery. Under Dave Regan’s guidance, she instructed SEIU-UHW’s stewards to turn Kaiser Permanente’s hospitals into “World War III” battlegrounds to try to stop workers from discussing their choices in an NLRB election between SEIU-UHW and NUHW.

Later, Hewett was captured on film as she screamed and beat her fists on tables inside the cafeteria at Kaiser Baldwin Park Medical Center in Los Angeles. Hewett was trying to stop 82-year-old labor legend Dolores Huerta, a co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union with Cesar Chavez, from talking to workers inside the hospital’s cafeteria filled with patients, family members and off-duty workers.

Well… it looks like Hewett’s job at the AAUP hasn’t turned out so well. Just months after she took the professorial job, Hewett is no longer an employee.

Tasty doesn’t have any details on Hewett’s departure… although he speculates that her Regan-inspired fist-pounding might have rubbed some of the professors the wrong way. Who would've guessed!

Angela Hewett during a quieter moment at the AAUP