For the Second Time in a Year, A California Union is Trying to Muscle In on Arizona

For the second time in 2025, a California Union is attempting to muscle its way into Arizona through a political initiative. According to the Arizona Capitol Times, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, a California Union with zero Arizona members, has launched a new voter initiative in Arizona to impose a state-level restriction on the compensation of hospital administrators, tied to the minimum wage. 

The new measure would prohibit hospitals from paying their executives more than 15 times the state minimum wage. With the current minimum wage in Arizona at $14.70, that translates to $458,640 a year.

The proposed initiative is currently in the signature-gathering stage and requires 255,969 signatures to qualify for the 2026 ballot in Arizona. It would impact most forms of executive pay, including base salary, bonuses, severance packages, and other incentives.

According to reporting from AZ Capitol Media, the lobbying group spearheading the effort with SEIU-UHC West is reportedly known as “Arizonans for Responsible Healthcare,” a presumably new organization with an unverified online presence, represented by spokesman Rodd McLeod, a Democrat political strategist who also wrote for the AZ Mirror in 2022. 

McLeod told AZ Cap Media that Peter Fine, the CEO of Banner Health, reportedly earns a $14 million salary and pointed to seven-digit salaries for top leadership at Mayo Clinic, CommonSpirit Health, and Barrow Neurological Institute.

He told the Capitol Times, “We believe that people are being overcharged and are in pain,” he said. “And one of the reasons is you’ve got people at the top making gazillions of dollars.”

According to the outlet, McLeod joined the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2007 and has held roles connected to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton in 2016, as well as those of Congress members Ron Barber, Kyrsten Sinema, Ann Kirkpatrick, Tom O’Halleran, and Senator Mark Kelly. He is also “a longtime adviser to former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, serving as her campaign manager and running her district offices.”

Brittney Kaufmann, CEO of the Health System Alliance of Arizona rejected the notion in a statement to AZ Cap Media, “The proposal by a California-based union would make it harder to recruit and retain the top-tier talent our state relies on and would hinder our ability to ensure residents can access the innovative and lifesaving services they need and deserve.” 

She warned that the healthcare system of Arizona is already under “unprecedented strain.” 

“And it is unfortunate that instead of working together to protect access to care for Arizonans, the union has elected to introduce policies that would only jeopardize care,” she added.

Dr. Thomas C. Rothe, commenting on a post regarding the initiative on the Arizona Medical Association’s newsletter, called the proposal “a non-starter.”

He explained, “Corporations and government have forever controlled the reallocation of money in medicine, and this is a reflection of the perceived value of those steering the boat. While we may agree about ‘excessive compensation’, particularly in comparison to physician reimbursement, where does one start in our capitalistic society?” He added, “Maybe the legislature could start with Arizona college athletic directors and coaches making $1 million plus.”

The intervention of the California Union in Arizona politics mirrors an attempt in early 2025 by Worker Power, the political arm of the California-based labor union UniteHere, to strong-arm the City of Glendale, as reported by AZ Free News. The ballot propositions would have forced the city to impose radical restrictions on hotel and public accommodation businesses, including a $20 minimum wage, and stringent regulations adding caps on productivity, such as limiting hotel cleaning staff to working on an area of no more than 3,500 square feet, or about 10 hotel rooms per day.

These moves could represent a new thrust by California unions, which are pouring millions of dollars into Arizona voter initiative campaigns to bypass the state’s legislature and existing Right-to-Work laws, thereby imposing their policy goals.

Per the AZ Capitol Times, the SEIU has spent $2.1 million in 2016 attempting to impose a $450,000 cap on Arizona’s hospital executives after failing to do so in California in 2014, where the initiative was pulled from the ballot for violating the terms of its agreement with the California Hospital Association to negotiate over a variety of issues, including hospital compensation.

In 2020, an Arizona judge dismissed the initiative for failing to gather the necessary signatures. Another corresponding effort in California is also getting underway to get the initiative on the 2026 ballot.