California health clinics accuse influential union and its leader of racketeering in civil lawsuit

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Set us as preferred SACRAMENTO — The California Primary Care Assn.and five clinics filed a civil lawsuit in federal court Friday accusing SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West and its president, Dave Regan, of racketeering and using ballot initiatives to “shake down” community health centers.The association alleges that Regan and his union orchestrated a “multi-year campaign of coercion, threats, and economic pressure” to “extort” what the lawsuit describes as “valuable property rights” and “labor-organizing terms” from CPCA and the health centers the association represents in California, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Times.The suit says Regan pushed Proposition 44, which if approved by voters in November will restrict spending at nonprofit community health clinics, as political leverage against the industry.

Regan then offered to call off the measure if CPCA agreed to support the union’s efforts to unionize 25,000 industry workers, the lawsuit states.In the complaint, CPCA estimates that 25,000 new union members would generate $2.37 million in monthly revenue from dues paid to UHW.

“This is about Dave Regan and UHW in particular adopting a strategy to create harmful legislation and harmful ballot initiatives to force people to the table to negotiate favorable agreements that will benefit them financially and then when those agreements don’t go through, they allow these initiatives to go through to create punishment for the organizations that can’t come to terms, and then they keep coming back, over and over and over again,” said Brandon Thornock, chief executive of plaintiff Shasta Community Health, echoing claims in the lawsuit.“It’s a complete waste of resources and it’s amoral.”A spokesperson for UHW did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the...