California Hospital Union’s Hypocrisy on Full Display with New Ballot Measure

SEIU-UHW, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, has filed a ballot measure in California, the “Clinic Funding Accountability and Transparency Act,” to mandate that federally qualified health centers spend at least “90% of their total revenue on direct patient care and ‘mission-related services’” rather than spending funds on “management and overhead.”

SEIU-UHW says:

“Healthcare workers say the measure is necessary because too many community clinics are directing funds to executive perks and administrative overhead instead of investing in better staffing, equipment, and services for patients.”

“We’re calling for accountability because frontline workers and patients at community clinics deserve better,” said Brisa Barrera, a healthcare worker at a community clinic in Santa Rosa. “Clinics receive public dollars to serve vulnerable populations, but when that money is siphoned off for bloated administrative costs, it’s the patients and workers who suffer. This measure ensures that resources go where they’re needed most: into the clinics and toward care.”

A union spokeswoman described the measure’s purpose by saying it would ensure that funding goes to “the core mission” of the organization, the Center for Union Facts reports.

However, this is a standard that SEIU-UHW is nowhere close to following itself. A union’s core mission is to represent its members, but SEIU-UHW’s publicly available financial disclosures show that the union only spent 36.5% of its revenue on “representation,” CUF reports.

They make rules for others but don’t require them of themselves. Notably, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) self-describes as “a healthcare justice union of more than 120,000 healthcare workers, patients, and healthcare activists.”

Justice union. Healthcare activists. Rules for thee but not for me.

In a recent article about the SEIU, the Globe reported that the SEIU labor union’s San Francisco chapter shockingly hired a convicted sex offender to a top position after she had served jail time for child sexual abuse at a California high school with four underage boys. SEIU Local 87 hired Noelia Linares, the convicted sex offender, as a business agent, and continues to list her as an officer on its website. Consequently, as we reported, the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee was seeking information from the SEIU about the number of Local 87 employees who are registered sex offenders and their positions within Local 87, among other important information.

The SEIU is one of California’s largest unions–and clearly, one of the most problematic unions.

So what’s the problem with requiring qualified health centers to spend 90% of their total revenue on direct patient care and “mission-related services?”

The union doesn’t even live up to its own demands and “core mission” standards.

SEIU-UHW is only spending 36.5% of its revenue on its core mission of representing workers, according to CUF.

A little further digging from CUF found that the union spent over $15 million on political advocacy, $19 million on hotels and events, and $20 million on PR in the last two years.

The SEIU spends million$$$ of dollars annually on travel, hotels, restaurants, entertainment, merchandise, lawyers, lobbying, and public relations.

In its Constitution and Bylaws, SEIU-UHW says it follows five guiding principles:

• Commitment to Democracy,
• Commitment to Honesty and Accountability,
• Commitment to Justice;
• Commitment to the Highest Standards, and
• Commitment to Uniting More Workers into Our Union

The hypocrisy of a local union pushing hospitals into red-tape guidelines they refuse to follow themselves – say it isn’t so.

The SEIU-UHW is violating their constitutional commitment to honesty and accountability.