California Nurses Association today called on SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West President Dave Regan to resign following media allegations of inappropriate, aggressive behavior and threats targeting other labor staff to support the Prop. 40 billionaire tax initiative.

“The labor movement has no space for this behavior,” said CNA Executive Director Puneet Maharaj. “At a time when we are in an existential working-class fight to protect workers from the Trump administration, the billionaire class, and employers aligned with them, we need labor leaders who are a model of the kind of just and caring society the labor movement wants to build. Regan represents the antithesis of this model, he should step down, immediately.”

“As an organization that predominantly organizes and represents women, and works to develop women leaders in the labor movement, Regan’s misogynist behavior against women is particularly offensive,” she added.

Maharaj said CNA endorses the statement from SEIU California. “Like so many others in our movement, SEIU California will always demand respect, fairness, gender equity and racial justice – period,” SEIU California said in a social media post. “Our movement is bigger than any one person. It's about the millions of workers building power to put food on the table, care for their families, and change things for the better.” Others in the California labor movement are reportedly preparing similar statements.

Quoting a number of sources, the San Francisco Chronicle Friday, September 11, reported that Regan “bullied, intimidated and attempted to extort fellow labor leaders in his quest to marshal support for the ballot measure.”

The Chronicle said it determined from its own investigation that Regan sought “to extort an endorsement for the billionaire tax from the SEIU State Council,” and attempted to “defame and bullied Tia Orr, SEIU’s executive director.”

Further, the Chronicle said Regan has had a history of physically harassing behavior, including a 2009 incident in which he reported challenged a top SEIU state official for not complying with his wishes about an earlier ballot measure. He “kicked in her office door, and ‘jacked’ her ‘against the wall,’” the Chronicle report says.

CNA has a long history of differences with Regan’s political machinations, including deals cut with employers seeking to cut back California’s safe staffing law and requirements for upgraded hospital seismic safety standards. “His cynical actions have repeatedly prioritized his narrow self-interest at the risk of harm to patients and other health care workers,” said Maharaj. “When he is also engaging in personal acts of bullying, intimidation, and physical aggression, we have all seen enough. It is long past time for him to go.”

California Nurses Association/National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the nation with more than 100,000 members in more than 200 facilities throughout California and more than 225,000 RNs nationwide.