In April 2009, Sal Rosselli, former president of SEIU United Healthcare Workers – West, and other top officials who were removed from office when the local union was placed in trusteeship, were compelled by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup to begin handing over a wide range of documents they had attempted to keep hidden. The documents, including those from attorneys hired by Rosselli before and after he was removed from office, include e-mails, memos, letters, and other materials concerning operations of the union for more than a year-and-a-half leading up to the trusteeship, which was imposed January 27, 2009. Rosselli and his followers have since formed a new organization, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), with the expressed goal of raiding SEIU-UHW members and bringing them into the new organization. Thus far, NUHW does not represent any members.

Despite the judge's order, only a small, select percentage of the documents has been delivered to the SEIU-UHW trustees, many of them not until June. But even these few documents and records, when combined with other materials obtained before and since the trusteeship, reveal powerful new evidence of deliberate financial wrongdoing, undermining of democratic procedures, misuse of union documents, theft, and a callous disregard for the well-being and future of SEIU-UHW members. They reveal plotting by one of Rosselli's top lieutenants to support Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed $2 an hour pay cut for home care workers. And they reveal that the defense that Rosselli and other former leaders put on at a six-day hearing on the trusteeship in Fall 2008 was fraudulent, and that the flood of communications they directed to SEIU-UHW's members decrying the charges in the trusteeship notice as false and trumped up, were themselves false and trumped up.

The documents show that Rosselli and his followers spent more than a year as leaders of an SEIU local (SEIU-UHW), often not working to represent members as they were required by law, their oath of office, and the most fundamental of union ethics. Instead, they were planning and amassing the records and materials – and attempting to amass millions of dollars from SEIU-UHW's coffers – to start up a new union should they be removed from office. This strategy included a scheme to sabotage SEIU-UHW and its members so as to better position themselves to decertify units and build their new organization.

Since 2007 there has been a lot said and written about the issues between SEIU and Rosselli and the other former officials. This paper lays out the information, challenging readers to put aside the "spin" and examine the source documents. Here is what they show:

FINDINGS

1.     FINANCIAL WRONGDOING:

·      New information sheds light on the improper diversion of $3 million in members' dues money to a bogus non-profit organization, which Rosselli and his followers claimed was a healthcare educational fund for members and the public. The fund was actually a scheme to move millions in SEIU-UHW members' dues money off the books so it would be available for the personal use of Rosselli and the other former officials in the event of a trusteeship, and as start-up money for their new organization.

A recently obtained e-mail from Arthur Fox, an attorney who was hired by Rosselli before the trusteeship and continued taking instructions from him afterward, to one of Rosselli's top lieutenants, John Borsos, discusses how using the sham non-profit to finance internal union battles was illegal, but that if UHW's then-leaders were to "play dumb," they might well be able to get away with the illegal conduct. Rosselli and Borsos followed the advice.

·      Financial reports show that Rosselli and other officials spent more than $11.5 million in members' dues money in 2008 on their attempts to maintain their personal power. This represented more than half of the union's net assets and 10 percent of overall spending in 2008. It was money that was not spent to support members, process grievances, negotiate contracts, or provide basic services members needed and expected. These expenditures included a $670,000 catering bill at one of the trusteeship hearings, more than $2.5 million on public relations agencies, and more than $1.7 million (from September 2008 through January 2009) to an anti-union, management law firm that advertises its expertise in "union avoidance" and has often represented Kaiser Permanente, by far the largest employer of SEIU-UHW members.

2.     MEMBERS PUT IN JEOPARDY

·      A top NUHW official plotted with a public relations consultant on how to bolster Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt to cut the wages of home care workers by $2 an hour, from $11.50 to $9.50. A cut in wages gave NUHW an opening to criticize SEIU-UHW and perhaps win a few extra votes in an election to represent Fresno home care workers. They wanted to win the election at all costs, even if home care workers – the people they sought to represent – lost $2 an hour in wages.

·      Members' welfare was put directly in jeopardy when, for their own purposes, the former officials canceled contract extensions on at least 25 labor agreements covering nursing home workers and deliberately failed to negotiate more than 100 contracts in order to prevent members from reaching agreements. These actions left thousands of workers with no union protection, and forced tens of thousands of others to negotiate new agreements in a deteriorating bargaining climate because of the worsening economic crisis.

These actions were deliberately hidden from rank-and-file union members who, had they been informed, surely would have objected. They would not have agreed to put themselves at risk for the personal benefit of the former union officials, whose desire was to form a new union and then be free to decertify the very units where they made sure there were no contracts in force. The activities were kept secret from members despite the claims of Rosselli and his aides that member-controlled democracy is the bedrock of their approach to unionism.

·      Rosselli and his associates raided the members' strike fund, borrowing $3 million in December 2008 to finance their activities and never paying the money back. This left members with a shrunken war chest to take on employers in the worst economy in 70 years. The $3 million taken from the strike fund was a separate issue from the bogus non-profit "education fund" described above.

3.     THEFT AND DESTRUCTION OF SEIU-UHW RECORDS NEEDED TO DEFEND MEMBERS

·      The welfare of members was further put at risk through the theft and destruction of SEIU-UHW property and records, including bargaining and grievance records that made it impossible to address management contract violations and defend members' rights on the job in a timely way. This included the wholesale shredding of paper documents and the erasure of electronic documents that SEIU-UHW's former leaders were under a legal obligation and specifically instructed to preserve.

·      Another recently-obtained e-mail shows that both Rosselli and his top aide, John Borsos, were advised in March 2008 by their attorney, Arthur Fox, on how they could misappropriate SEIU-UHW documents and hide the wrongdoing so as to create plausible deniability were they to be questioned about it and lie under oath. But despite following this advice, Judge Alsup, in issuing a preliminary injunction against Rosselli and the other ousted officials, found that both Rosselli and Borsos failed to testify truthfully when being examined under oath in an April 2009 court hearing about the destruction of documents.

4.     ANTI-DEMOCRATIC ACTIVITIES

·      The ousted officials used front groups to oppose democratic decisions made by SEIU members nationally that Rosselli and his followers disagreed with. Another recently obtained Arthur Fox e-mail advises Rosselli and Borsos on how to "subvert" unquestionably legal SEIU internal jurisdictional rules by engaging in covert, rather than "overt," activities, and by "laundering" transactions through front groups that would appear to be rank-and-file funded. This advice also was followed, demonstrating a pattern by Rosselli and his followers of using the façade of democracy to advance their own interests.

·      Newly obtained e-mails show the former SEIU-UHW officials plotting to give the illusion that members were driving opposition to SEIU nationally by identifying and pushing members forward; putting words in their mouths; writing statements, petitions, and letters for them to sign; creating "unplanned" actions and demonstrations; and other examples of a top-down approach to running a local union that Rosselli and his followers claim to oppose. These actions included paying for members to participate in "spontaneous" actions and rallies.

To further foster that illusion, Rosselli and other former SEIU-UHW officials created a massive public relations campaign, paid for by millions in members' dues money, to "frame" their actions as demonstrating their commitment to bottom-up, democratic unionism. For example, in one e-mail, Paul Kumar, a key member of Rosselli's inner circle, worries about the fact that there are few women or people of color in SEIU-UHW leadership roles and how it will look to the outside world: "We also need to (sic) a plan to deal with the lack of both real and publicly marketable women and people of color among the top rungs of our leadership group."

5.     INTIMIDATION

·      The former leaders unleashed a concerted and widespread campaign of intimidation against employees who chose to work for SEIU-UHW after the trusteeship, carried out through threats of physical violence against them, vandalizing of their automobiles, and placing harassing and threatening anonymous phone calls.

These actions were planned and executed as part of a deliberate strategy developed at the highest levels of SEIU-UHW's ousted leadership to make the union "ungovernable." The plan was described in a September 2008 memo from Barbara Lewis, another top Rosselli lieutenant, on or around September 2008, laying out a plan to undermine the ability of the union to represent members in the event of a trusteeship.[1]

The fact that these new, damaging documents represent just some of the materials still in the possession of Rosselli and the other former officials begs the question of what more will be uncovered once they comply with their duty, as set forth in the judge's order, to return all documents and property taken from SEIU-UHW, since presumably they chose to send the least incriminating materials. What else might Rosselli, Borsos, and their followers be hiding from SEIU-UHW members? And how can those who claim to stand for "bottom-up" and "member-driven" unionism hide their actions from those very same members?