SEIU-UHW is pushing a ballot measure in California called the “Clinic Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.” What’s in the proposal? A mandate that would require clinics spend least “90% of their total revenue on direct patient care and ‘mission-related services.’”
One union spokeswoman defended the measure by saying it would ensure that funding goes to “the core mission”of the organization rather than to overhead. That’s a standard that SEIU-UHW is nowhere close to following itself.
The core mission of a labor union is representing its members. Fortunately for the public, labor unions file publicly-available documents detailing exactly how much they spend on “representational activities” every year. In 2024, SEIU-UHW spent just over a third of its revenue on “representational activities” – the union’s “core mission.”
That’s a pretty far cry from the 90 percent rule that SEIU-UHW wants hospitals to follow.
So where does the other two-thirds of the union’s money actually go?
Our affiliate website, SEIUExposed, has a comprehensive breakdown of red-flag-raising spending by the union. Here are the lowlights:
- $15 million in donations to politically and ideologically motivated organizations
- $19 million on hotels and events
- $4.8 million on travel
- $20.8 million on public relations
- $2.5 million on restaurants
- $1 million on merchandise
- $4.6 million on lawyers
Some of the individual expenses are particularly indefensible. Last year SEIU-UHW gave $2.75 million in donations to the political activist group “The Fairness Project,” which didn’t even operate in California that year. Other examples include a staff retreat at the Langham Huntington (read our full investigation here), a luxurious five-star hotel whose workforce doesn’t appear to even be unionized.
Ironically, the hospitals that SEIU-UHW is criticizing with the ballot initiative have a far better ratio of “core mission” spending to overhead. United Health Centers of the San Joaquin Valley – one of the clinics that the union singled out in its campaign – reported spending 70 percent of its total revenue on “program (core mission) services” in its most recent tax return.
That’s almost twice the percentage that SEIU-UHW spent on its core mission of representation.
Perhaps SEIU-UHW should get its own spending priorities in order, before trying to set the rules for everyone else.