Dave Regan is president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), one of the largest hospital unions in the United States, with 85,000 members in California. He also is a vice president of the two million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

In 2011, Regan was elected SEIU-UHW president, and along with more than 200 members formed the largest, democratically elected union executive board in California. He was re-elected in 2014.

Regan has steered the union toward becoming a leader in ensuring that all people – whether union members or not – have access to quality, affordable healthcare and are paid living wages.

Regan is a leading proponent of using ballot initiatives to reduce economic inequality and improve the standard of living for working people and their families:

• In 2015, SEIU-UHW spearheaded a ballot initiative to gradually raise California’s minimum wage to $15. In March 2016 it qualified for the November 2016 ballot and a week later Governor Jerry Brown credited the initiative for prompting him and the state legislature to pass a $15 minimum wage benefiting more than five million working people and their families.

• Also in 2015, Regan led SEIU-UHW leaders to provide startup funding for a nationwide organization, The Fairness Project, which is working with state partners across the country to file ballot initiatives to improve the standard of living for millions of workers.

• In addition, Regan led SEIU-UHW to file an initiative to hold California hospital executives accountable to taxpayers by limiting their compensation to $450,000, the same amount earned by the President of the United States.

Regan is also a leader in seeking quality healthcare for all:

• Regan and SEIU-UHW are steering efforts to increase state funding for Medicaid, called “Medi-Cal” in California, notably by supporting a federal civil rights complaint filed in 2015 that contends the state’s lack of funding for Medi-Cal violates the civil rights of more than seven million Latinos.
• He led SEIU-UHW to become one of the most active organizations in the nation in signing up people for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act. Over the first two years of enrollment, SEIU-UHW signed up more than 20,000 Californians.

• Under Regan’s guidance in 2011, SEIU-UHW was instrumental in convincing Governor Jerry Brown to sign an executive order creating a “Let’s Get Healthy California” task force, a high-level group charged with developing a plan to significantly reduce the incidence of chronic disease in California over 10 years.

Prior to joining SEIU-UHW, Regan served from 1996 to 2008 as president of SEIU District 1199, a three-state local union representing more than 34,000 members in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. Under his leadership, District 1199’s membership grew from 13,000 to more than 34,000.

As a member of the SEIU Health Care Division Steering Committee, Regan helps plan and execute the union’s strategic work, including organizing, bargaining and politics nationwide.