Sacramento Bee April 29, 2008
The nasty internal battle between the national leadership of SEIU and Sal Rosselli, president of one of SEIU's largest California affiliates, is heading to federal court, as the national union filed suit against Rosselli's United Healthcare Workers West on Tuesday.
The national union is accusing ten leading officers of UHW-West, including Rosselli, of diverting members' dues into an outside fund under their control and out of the reach of SEIU's national leaders.
"The highest ranking UHW-W officers used millions of dollars in members' dues money to run a shadow operation off the books and they intentionally deceived their own members and the federal government about how the money would be used," said SEIU spokesperson Andrew McDonald in a statement.
Rosselli, who is president of a 140,000-member chapter, called the lawsuit a "PR circus."
"That's what is an inappropriate use of member's dues dollars," he said.
Rosselli has sparred for months with Andy Stern, president of SEIU International and one of the nation's top labor leaders.
In December, Rosselli was forced out as president of the SEIU state council, the umbrella organization for all California SEIU affiliates, which total 600,000 members. Rosselli accused Stern of engineering his ouster, writing in a letter, "Your actions concerning the State Council have created a major distraction from maintaining the unified focus needed to achieve our objectives."
More recently, SEIU national has ordered all its local chapters to stop paying dues to state and local labor federations to protest the California Nurses Association. Rosselli has refused to follow that edict.
The repeated confrontations between Stern and Rosselli have led to rumors that Stern would put Rosselli's union in "trusteeship," which would suspend the local leaders' access to members' dues.
In the lawsuit, SEIU calls that fear "unfounded."
"The defendants' real purpose for creating and transferring UHW-W assets to the so-called "education" fund operated by this small band of individuals was to establish a well-financed entity with access to a ready source of funds beyond the reach of SEIU's auditing, oversight, and trusteeship powers," reads the lawsuit.
The suit goes on to outline the significance of a trusteeship. "Any displaced local union officers wishing to challenge the trusteeship will, by definition, lack access to the union's funds and be required to finance their challenge with their own personal funds."
http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/capitolalertlatest/012218.html
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm