Carl Finamore writes on the Talking Union blog
The 10-day federal civil trial is over, the verdict is in. The nation’s largest union, SEIU, claimed victory on March 9 after a nine-person jury awarded them a total of $737,850 in damages spread out among 16 former officers and employees of their 150,000-member California local affiliate, United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) and against their UHW rebel offshoot and chief California rival, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
Despite SEIU’s celebration, in the end, the jury exonerated nearly half the defendants and awarded SEIU only 3% of the damages originally sought, requiring 16 former officers and staffers to repay a set of UHW salaries for a brief period of 18 days.
But, clearly, SEIU strongly believes it now has legal justification for their high-pitched cacophony aimed at these former UHW veteran leaders amid accusations that they are completely unethical and unfit to run a union, particularly one challenging SEIU.
However, despite all the hyped accusations of a conspiracy beginning in 2007 to steal money and files, to obstruct the functioning of UHW and to secretly plot to build a new union, SEIU’s actual damage claims were strictly limited to just several weeks in January 2009.
This two-and-half week period of time stretched from January 9 when SEIU’s International Executive Board (IEB) voted to forcibly transfer 65,000 UHW members to another local union, to January 27, when SEIU finally imposed trusteeship on UHW, suspending its constitution and firing all its officers and staff.
During that time, defendants argue, UHW leaders had every right to insist these 65,000 workers be given the opportunity to vote on whether they wanted to remain in UHW or be placed into another local. In fact, during this same 18-day period in question, they attempted to resolve the dispute and certainly did nothing illegal.
Defendants pointed to a January 26, 2009 letter to SEIU president Andy Stern, approved unanimously by the UHW executive board, pledging full cooperation if these 65,000 workers were extended the right to vote on the matter. Stern rejected their proposal and imposed trusteeship the next day.
Read the whole report here