Nursing Home Lobbyist Quits After He Predicts SEIU Powerplay

I worked at a Beverly Enterprises place in Santa Barbara back in the early 70's. One of the orderlies forgot to chart an enema, and a second one was given to the patient, killing him. Covered up. Of course, this was a patient who routinely went into the developmentally disabled children's ward to "play doctor" with them, and very little extra watch was given to keep him from doing that... Business as usual.

As I expected when first contacted by this reporter, he had every intention to continue being the leading source of inaccurate news about the California Alliance to Advance Nursing Home Care. I had not bothered correcting his past inaccuracies and unfounded attacks because the publication is a free, weekly, alternative tabloid with limited circulation. Yet, since receiving a copy of his latest article from an SEIU email distribution list and also seeing it posted on various websites, I feel some obligation to point out the following.

A quick google search on this author reveals a vast body of work of the same type of attacking hit piece. Prior targets have commented that the author is well known for being unreliable and untrustworthy. They have questioned whether his reporting errors are based on malice or ineptitude. Instead, below I point out ten specific false allegations and request retraction. Where possible, I direct the reporter and reader to specific documents that support the stated facts.

1. As a labor-management committee engaged in all aspects of labor relations except collective bargaining, no Alliance representative has ever negotiated a labor contract. All collective bargaining involving SEIU local unions and nursing home companies has occurred outside of the California Alliance to Advance Nursing Home Care, Inc.

2. I am aware of no labor contract (ie, collective bargaining agreement for a defined bargaining unit) executed between SEIU and any nursing home that contains any provision limiting a bargaining unit members right of free speech. State/Federal law requires all nursing home employees to be mandated reporters of patient abuse/neglect. The same laws protect such whistle-blowers regardless whether their reports are true or false, or whether they are subject to a labor contract. This article's reporter has repeatedly claimed that he has a copy of a collective bargaining agreement that prevents nursing home employees from reporting bad patient care. He is instead deceiving readers about the Alliance Agreement. It is not a labor contract. It does not bind unionized employees working in nursing homes. He should retract the false allegation and stop claiming otherwise.

3. Just because a local union denounces one business collaboration on "moral grounds" doesn't mean that the local now sets the bar for ethical behavior. That same local union has since been proposing a new quid-pro-quo business collaboration for the past year where they broker patient referrals to the highest bidding nursing home employer. The local union's president describes their latest organizing strategy in page 3 of a June 1, 2007 letter to Stern posted on seiuvoice.org. He wrote "Over a period of 18 months, we will organize 50 nursing homes by employing a 'referral model' that leverages our relationships, with acute-care hospitals, which refer thousands of highly reimbursed patients to nursing homes for sub-acute care." Legal counsel to solicited nursing homes has advised that the local's "referral model" organizing strategy is likely an illegal kickback arrangement that violates both state and federal law. Specifically, it likely violates the federal anti-kickback statute 42 U.S.C. Section 1320a-7b(b), California Business and Professions Code Section 650, and California Health and Safety Code Section 445. In doing so, it places participants at risk of criminal penalty for violating such state and federal anti-kickback laws. Physicians who owe a duty of care to their patients are in the best position to determine discharge needs for post-acute care, not local unions seeking to enter into ethically questionable employer collaborations.

4. The reporter does not present a complete picture of SEIU local unions material self-interest in the fight over SEIU jurisdiction franchise. Readers who seek balanced reporting and truth should instead read the entire June 9, 2006 hearing transcript (posted on seiuvoice.org) and try to find any testimony from any participant that would fall under the category of "moral grounds." Instead you will find testimony from one local union that they should continue representing contested home care and nursing home SEIU members because such members needs are best served by a North/South representation split; as opposed to the statewide one industry/one employer model proposed by the parent union. Yet, in regard to the identical jurisdiction question of whether all SEIU members working for acute care hospitals throughout California were best served in a similar North/South representation split, the same local's representative testified that such SEIU members needs are best served by the statewide one industry/one employer model implemented by the parent union in an earlier jurisdiction decision. The hearing officers point out the inconsistency in the local union's logic and there is no rebuttal from the local's representative.

5. Nursing homes are not "waiting in the wings in hopes of fulfilling Carlson's March 19 prediction." Future collaboration between responsible stakeholders does not depend upon parent union action to resolve SEIU's franchise conflict between rival local unions. There is nothing preventing nursing home companies from collaborating with either SEIU local union, or any willing consumer group. Why else would one of the local unions still be seeking such business collaboration by proposing it's "referral model" to any willing nursing home company? My optimism about future collaboration--expressed in my email to the four consumer group leaders--was based on knowing that no material political progress is possible for any stakeholder in the area of long-term care unless it occurs with bipartisan cooperation and support. There exist many examples of past partisan failures like SEIU's pre-Alliance WARP legislation, but only one recent change in the Medi-Cal reimbursement program passed with near unanimous bipartisan support. Also the claim by "some" that the new program delivered $3 billion is wildly exaggerated. The purpose for my March 19th email to the four consumer groups was to provide them with the just released Vanderbilt University AB1629 analysis that they had helped produce through participation in an advisory workgroup. The reporter does not mention this, although he must have also received the report along with my forwarded email. The reports' analysis of AB1629 by the university-based research team is inconsistent with the reporters' claims in the article.

6. My resignation from the Alliance had nothing to do with this reporter's March 31st inquiry, nor the alleged "prediction" in the article's title. The Alliance Board planned to dissolve the labor-management committee from late December 2007 and accepted my resignation at a March 10 Board meeting. There is nothing left to administer. After reading all of the material posted on seiuvoice.org, a person needs no additional information to state what I did in the email that the reporter found suspicious and worthy of a feature story. Again, the reason for my March 19th email to consumer groups was to deliver the just-released analysis of AB1629. I never imagined that the email would later be the sole evidence for a reporter's paranoid conspiracy theory.

7. SEIU's internal conflict is not primarily about one local union's effort to protect nursing home consumers. Unionized nursing home workers currently make up less than 2% of SEIU's total membership in California. It would be highly unusual for any labor union to use the resources and political capital of 98% of their members to fight for the rights of consumers served by only 2% of their members. SEIU's internal conflict is primarily about material SEIU franchise rights; whether SEIU's 65,000 home care members currently represented by one local union (with 135,000 total members) stay, or move to a rival local union (with 150,000 total members). A local union president losing 65,000 home care members to a rival peer would have less power to control how SEIU's State Council uses the political capital of its 650,000 California members. In contrast, changing the representation of only a few thousand private sector nursing home workers would not upset the current balance of power between SEIU's California local unions. Internal desires for power and control drive the SEIU conflict, not the worthwhile goal of protecting nursing home consumers.8. The Alliance collaboration between SEIU and nursing home companies was the best thing that happened to SEIU-represented private sector nursing home workers in 70 years. Two years ago, such SEIU members received the largest wage/benefit increase that they have ever received. Likewise, according to the Vanderbilt AB1629 report, consumers of nursing homes now benefit from the operators improved ability to fund essential operating expense with new revenues from Medi-Cal.

9. Shame on this reporter for using a tragic suicide to deceive readers. I was not serving as California-based vice president of operations for the Beverly La Cumbre nursing home when Mary Hochman killed herself on August 31, 2000. I had never met her, nor--to my knowledge--has anyone ever claimed that she tried to communicate anything to me about poor patient care. In fact, I was not questioned by anyone in the investigation that took place after her suicide. A simple google search will reveal that the investigation of the suicide led to civil lawsuits for patient care incidents that occurred after the suicide. True, Beverly later sold off nursing homes in California, but they sold them in many other states at the same time as part of a major national restructuring. I did not then take on the "consulting role as head of the California Alliance for Nursing Home Reform." I have never worked for CANHR.

10. When the reporter contacted me about my email, I requested that he identify the basis of fact for the following quoted statements from his February 20, 2008 article on the Alliance. "A nursing home pact (first described in SF Weekly's 2004 story) between the union and home operators took away the right of patients and their families to sue those operators in cases where patients are injured, raped or killed. Subsequent contracts obtained by SF Weekly showed these deals stifled workers' free speech rights while also curbing their ability to earn decent pay." The reporter ignored my request. The reporter's quoted statements remain as false today as they were when he first made them.

I now appear to have at least one thing in common with SEIU local president Sal Rosselli, assuming the reporter quoted him accurately in the article. We both apparently feel that someone else is trying to intimidate us. Also, we both apparently believe that the other person is used to being able to crush people who speak out against him. Yet, despite publication of the deceptions identified above, I do not intend to file a defamation suit. People who know me well will not recognize the bad-faith-actor and callous monster alleged in the reporter's article. The most effective penalty for telling lies and untruths is loss of credibility. I believe that people should take responsibility for their statements, have the opportunity to make corrections and apologies, and lose credibility if they are repeatedly exposed as untrustworthy.

Yet, I also realize that it only works when people have roughly the same capacity to broadcast their views. Unlike this reporter, I don't write whatever I want in a weekly newspaper column. It is therefore more difficult for me to rebut prominent defamatory statements made in the mass media. I would therefore appreciate the following from any champion of free speech and dissent. Please help disseminate this counter-speech to every place on the web that broadcasts this reporter's hateful article about me.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Scott Carlson