Another Chapter in "WTF is up with SEIU?"

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

I'm an early riser. So, the fact that I happened to be up in time to catch an email that advertised a 9AM EST conference call is no real surprise. While I get lots of invitations to conference calls that I ignore, this one seemed to good to miss, even at 6AM. The invite was shrouded in mystery. It was sent at 3:35 PST, and offered only very limited details. The vagueness of the invitation left me too curious to miss it.

SEIU International said they were holding the call to discuss a local union, but I had a hunch which one it was: SEIU-UHW. "The purpose is to announce the findings of our investigation into financial improprieties by the leaders of a local union.  We?ll also announce our next steps." Oh sure, it could have been to discuss the an article in the Las Vegas Sun about an improper transfer of funds between two unions in violation of labor law. But that involved Stern-confidante and SEIU 1199 chief Dave Regan, and considering that I was getting this invite, I knew it was UHW.

The call began with a mention of a previous call like this, where they went after another "gotcha" moment. This time it seems the International didn't like the way that UHW was organizing its various non-profit 501 containers. So, they're suing.  The complaint is here.

It is not clear to me that any thing that SEIU was alleging was a)illegal b) against the SEIU constitution or c) a bad thing. A NYT reporter asked a question on the call about what was the meat of this complaint, and I, even as a lawyer, didn't see much "there there".  

UHW, when contacted for comment, indicated that the fund in question was given about $225,000 to educate members and the public about healthcare issues. The International claimed that much of this money was spent to run an internal straw poll on whether their long-term care members wanted to stay in UHW (the members said yes). In fact, that poll was run with UHW general funds. About $50K of the fund was used to send mailers to members and publicize the poll, but that seems at least tangentially educational.

But, in the end, this seems more like a game of gotcha than a discussion of union democracy. Here's hoping for that actual discussion that both sides say they want actually comes to fruition.