Putting Members at Risk
How Sal Rosselli and other former officials of UHW-SEIU misused union dues money, undermined union democracy, canceled union contracts, stole union property, and destroyed critical union records for their own personal interests
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
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 UHW-SEIU 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 UHW-SEIU 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 UHW-SEIU 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 UHW-SEIU's members decrying the charges in the trusteeship notice as false and trumped up, were themselves false and trumped up.