Organized labor, to nobody’s surprise, is standing with Kamala Harris. For decades, unions have been an engine of Democratic Party fundraising, lobbying and voter outreach. Given that Harris wants to be our next president, it’s time to recall a series of events of nearly a decade ago in which she used her position as California attorney general to cut corners on behalf of an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Harris, currently in a tight race against former President Donald Trump, readily admits she’s a union gal. “When unions are strong, America is strong,” she told a Labor Day crowd in Detroit.
Knowing a friend when they see one, the SEIU and several other major unions have endorsed her. They include the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the United Steelworkers of America (USW). The AFL-CIO, which represents 60 unions and over 12.5 million workers, likewise has her back. Federation President Liz Shuler puts it this way:
From day one, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history. At every step in her distinguished career in public office, she’s proven herself a principled and tenacious fighter for working people and a visionary leader we can count on. From taking on Wall Street and corporate greed to leading efforts to expand affordable child care and support vulnerable workers, she’s shown time and again that she’s on her side.
Harris is indeed partisan toward unions, and in ethically-challenged ways. Consider her thwarting of a purchase of several health care facilities in 2014-15 while serving as state attorney general for California.
Back in 2014, a Catholic sisterhood had been seeking a buyer for five financially troubled California hospitals and a nursing home it owned and operated through an affiliate, Daughters of Charity Health System (DCHS). After a lengthy bidding process involving hundreds of applicants, the Daughters of Charity made its choice: the Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare Services, which runs dozens of such facilities nationwide. That October, the two parties agreed to a sale.
Not so fast, said United Healthcare Workers West (UHW), an Oakland, Calif.-based, 150,000-member SEIU affiliate. If Prime Healthcare assumed ownership of these facilities, it would downsize their union work force and jeopardize pensions. UHW leaders called upon California Attorney General Kamala Harris to block the $843 million deal.
Under state law, Harris had that authority. And she used it. In February 2015, she approved the transaction but with a stipulation: All facilities had to be kept open for at least 10 years. Prime Healthcare believed that compliance with this requirement would make it impossible to operate these places profitably. Company officials personally met with staff members of the attorney general’s office to convey their concerns. But for Kamala Harris, a 10-year minimum was non-negotiable. The company pulled out of the deal the next month, much to her displeasure.
The Daughters of Charity Health System, which later would change its name to Verity Health System (which in turn filed for bankruptcy in 2018), would find another buyer in a New York-based hedge fund, BlueMountain Capital Management. In December 2015, BlueMountain agreed to pay $260 million to manage the facilities for three years, after which it would have the option to buy so long as it observed the 10-year minimum threshold rule. Harris quickly approved the deal.
Prime Healthcare, having gotten wind of the transaction, did not take it well. The company sued Harris in federal court, accusing her of conspiring with SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. Harris hadn’t simply acted within her delegated powers, argued Prime Healthcare, but also had a blatant conflict of interest. UHW, which had donated substantial sums to Harris’ 2010 and 2014 attorney general campaigns, also allegedly promised to make large contributions to her 2016 U.S. Senate run contingent upon her blocking Prime Healthcare’s acquisition.
Operating on information, Prime Healthcare stated that SEIU-UHW promised Harris $25 million in contributions to her Senate campaign “if she denied Prime’s acquisition or imposed conditions that would effect a de facto denial of the…sale.” Moreover, the union “advised Harris that the union would support Harris’s opposing candidates if she refused to comply with the union’s demands.” UHW also aired television ads and initiated a phone campaign opposing approval.
This was a shakedown from any angle. And apparently it wasn’t the only instance of Harris doing the union’s bidding.
Back on September 20, 2011, read the complaint, Harris had denied consent to Prime Healthcare Foundation’s proposed acquisition of Victor Valley Community Hospital (VVCH), the first and only time she did so. SEIU-UHW had much to do with this. It opposed the sale at a bankruptcy hearing and at a public hearing. Immediately after the rejection, and again in 2014 during contract negotiations with Prime Healthcare, SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan publicly claimed credit for her decision on VVCH.
It wasn’t just Kamala Harris who felt the union’s pressure. According to the complaint:
Prime alleges that SEIU-UHW threatened to withdraw its support for any Democratic politician who accepted contributions from Prime. SEIU-UHW issued a press release announcing that twenty-seven legislators had submitted a letter to Harris asking her to stop the sale of Prime. SEIU issued a subsequent announcement that thirty-eight state legislators, two United States representatives, and other elected officials had signed the letter to Harris.
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Dave Regan, the president of SEIU-UHW, repeatedly informed Prime and DCHS that Harris would approve Prime’s acquisition only if Prime agreed to allow SEIU-UHW to unionize workers at Prime’s hospitals. Regan boasted to Prime that “he has the influence with Harris to either make or break Prime with respect to the Prime-DCHS sale transaction,” that Harris “would do what she was told and nothing more,” that a “SEIU-UHW deal was the price for doing business in California and obtaining a sale approval from Harris,” and that Regan “control[s] Harris and the political process in California.
Interestingly, Harris’s application of a 10-year minimum operating requirement upon Prime Healthcare was a one-time event. She normally adhered to the national standard of five years in such transactions.
Reading all this, can anyone doubt that Kamala Harris, aside from her own radical sensibilities, served as a union sock puppet to advance her political ambitions? Rule of law seemed an afterthought with her.
None of this made an impression upon U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, Southern District of California, an Obama appointee. On October 31, 2016, he denied the plaintiff’s claims. Harris’ 10-year ban on closings, concluded Judge Curiel, was “discretionary state decision-making” and rooted in the public’s stake in health care “access.”
In response, Prime Healthcare filed another suit, claiming that now-ex-Attorney General Harris and her successor, Xavier Becerra (who since March 2021 has run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), engaged in “governmental overreach.” It would be to no avail. On August 16, 2017, Judge Curiel threw out that complaint as well.
SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, of course, was elated. President Dave Regan already had stated after the initial decision that Prime should stop wasting money on “fringe conspiracy theories” that could have a “devastating financial impact.” Actually, what was “devastating” was the existence of a law granting state officials leeway to void a contract at will.
Harris’ acceptance of campaign funds from a powerful California labor union in return for breaking a business contract in the union’s favor was certainly unethical and likely illegal. There is every reason to believe that if elected president, arbitrary decision-making such as this will serve as a model for governing the nation.
