Capitol Watchdog has been closely following the disintegration of the corporate collaboration between Dave Regan, president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), and the California Hospital Association (CHA), the industry's lobbying group, and now it has apparently reached its nadir with dueling lawsuits and allegations of violence.
According to the Stern Burger with Fries Blog, which has documented Regan's misadventures for years:
"Sources report that SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan was arrested after breaking the arm of a process server who served legal documents, authored by the California Hospital Association (CHA), on Regan at his home in Kensington, California.According to a reliable source, the Kensington Police Department will soon forward Regan's arrest records to the District Attorney for possible criminal prosecution."
UPDATE: Here's a news segment on the incident.
While Regan's past actions have always reminded us of the bully in middle school who forced kids to hand over their lunch money, this even surprised us. But considering the repeated unruly behavior of UHW during his reign, maybe it shouldn't have. He must be under a lot of stress. Regan's "historic" bargain with the hospital industry -- cuddling up with hospitals' management to keep patient problems quiet and receive more than 60,000 new hospital workers -- has collapsed. This has surprised no one except maybe for the unfortunate workers who believed that Regan knew what he was doing.
Now the recriminations have started, and the secrets have been spilling out to the public. Lawsuits between CHA and UHW have been flying back and forth:
"One of the CHA's suits -- filed last week -- says SEIU-UHW's original lawsuit should be tossed out because Regan, in his secret deal with the CHA, signed an "arbitration clause" that prohibits him from taking disputes to the courts. It also asserts that Regan violated the deal's "gag clause," which SEIU-UHW famously denied even existed."
We have posted about Regan's slow - most likely painful - downfall. Aside from the now dead, and litigious, deal between UHW and CHA that was supposed to garner the union new members, he had 70,000 of his 150,000 members stripped from UHW. Recently, he was pushed aside in discussions about extending Proposition 30 taxes.
Every move Regan makes, the fates seem to intervene against him. Now let's see if the law will catch him as well.
