Union abandons California ballot measures in deal with hospitals
SACRAMENTO — A labor union that pushed a pair of ballot measures that would have reined in excessive hospital billing and expanded healthcare for the poor has dropped them — in exchange for an agreement that enlists the hospital industry in the union’s organizing efforts.
The agreement, announced late Wednesday, ends a months-long public battle between the Service Employees International Union and the California Hospital Assn. Private hospitals had accused the union of using the initiative process as leverage in contract negotiations to expand its membership, a charge the union strongly denied.
Under the new pact, called a Partnership for a Healthy California, the hospital association pledges to facilitate meetings between the SEIU and chief executives of hospitals and health systems employing 100,000 nonunion workers. (Those hospitals, the document notes, are not bound to sign organizing agreements.) In turn, the SEIU agreed not to file petition signatures with county election officials and the secretary of state’s office.
On Wednesday, both parties downplayed the organizing component of the deal, portraying the agreement as the product of an unprecedented partnership dedicated to tackling the most pressing issues in modern healthcare. The SEIU and the hospital association vowed to form a labor-management task force to find ways to lower costs, improve quality and expand access.
“This agreement is not a labor-relations agreement,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. The deal is a vehicle “to make durable, lasting, meaningful change to a system that everybody understands has to change dramatically and quickly.”
Opponents of the proposals had noted that the measures would have had a major effect on facilities the union has tried unsuccessfully to organize, while exempting those where many of its members work.
Dignity Health, the state’s largest hospital chain, and Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO, would not have been subject to the proposals. The measures would have prohibited their private competitors from charging more than 25% above the actual cost of providing care and required nonprofits to devote at least 5% of their patient revenue to free care for the poor.
The union, which represents nearly 60,000 workers in those two systems, countered that Kaiser and Dignity are model providers.
Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter
Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond. In your inbox three times per week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
