Labor journalist Steve
Early has penned an interesting article
about SEIU’s ongoing assault against union democracy.
No… it’s not about Dave
Regan’s show
trials against union members for “disloyalty.”
Instead, the article describes how SEIU’s civil lawsuit
against NUHW’s founders has rewritten federal case law so as to strengthen the
Purple Palace’s top-down control over union members.
The legal ruling stems from SEIU’s disastrous trusteeship of
SEIU-UHW. Back in 2009, SEIU’s head honchos in Washington, DC ordered UHW to
transfer 65,000 of its members to a corrupt union headed by Tyrone Freeman, who was later convicted
of 11 criminal counts.
In January of 2009, SEIU seized control of UHW and sued its
leaders after UHW’s 100-member Executive Board voted unanimously to oppose the
transfer unless the affected union members were first given a right to vote on
the transfer.
Here’s where SEIU’s harmful legal precedent comes in.
In court, UHW’s former leaders -- who subsequently helped create
NUHW -- said they acted properly
because they simply followed the explicit directions of their union’s members,
who overwhelmingly opposed the undemocratic transfer. The former leaders argued
that their first responsibility was to the local members who elected them to
office, served on the union’s 100-member Executive Board, created UHW’s
constitution, and paid their salaries.
The Purple Palace argued the opposite… basically saying, “Screw
the members. We call the shots!” SEIU claimed that local union leaders’ primary
responsibility is to SEIU’s headquarters in D.C. -- some 3,000 miles away! Here’s how
Early describes it:
The gist of SEIU's case was that the connection between a national union and any of its local affiliates is just like the Bank of America's relationship to branch banks. If the parent company (in this case, SEIU) wants to reorganize a local branch or change its management in any way, there's no legal basis for objecting. Despite being elected by the members, local officers owe a greater “fiduciary duty” to the international union than to anyone else. They must comply with any headquarters directive, even if the workers they represent are opposed to it.
And that’s what the court decided, thereby dealing a big
setback to the cause of workers and union democracy.
Dan Siegel, a
lawyer who’s handled similar cases since the 1970s and defended NUHW’s leaders
against SEIU’s lawsuit, put it this way:
"This is really a very nefarious decision. It turns the law of fiduciary duty on its head. Local union officials can be accused of breaching their fiduciary duty if they disobey directives from national union officials contrary to the interests of their members."
Siegel fears that:
“more local union officials will be faced with a conflict of interest when their national union and their members tell them to do different things. If they stick with the workers, they could face a lawsuit for damages, measured by the entire budget of the local.”
Another legal observer describes the court’s unhelpful
judicial "preference for a top-down style of unionism, favoring
hierarchical, organizational discipline over the principles of internal union
democracy and member control of unions."
And here’s another indication of how bad the court’s
decision is: The court said UHW’s former
leaders violated their “fiduciary duty” by resisting the transfer of the 65,000
workers... even though SEIU itself has NEVER EVER transferred the workers since it seized control of UHW in 2009!
What about NUHW’s leaders, who are personally on the hook as
a result of the court’s horrible decision? Here’s what John Borsos, Secretary-Treasurer of NUHW, told Early:
“I wasn’t elected by the international union. I was elected by the rank-and-file members. That, in my opinion, is who I owed my duty to, which is why I don’t have any remorse about listening to the voice of our members at the expense of the international union. If we had to do it again, we’d do the same thing.”
Here’s a link to the full
article on ZNet.
