A supporter
of SEIU Nevada’s former president has filed a lawsuit challenging SEIU
International’s recent trusteeship of the local union, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal (Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Union
member suing to restore local control of SEIU Nevada chapter,” May 16.
2017).
On Tuesday, Cherie Mancini (the union’s former
president) appeared alongside ten supporters in a District courtroom seeking a
court order to return control of the union to its recently disbanded executive
board, according to the newspaper.
The lawsuit is now headed to federal
court.
Last month,
SEIU President Mary Kay Henry removed
Mancini and Sharon Kisling (SEIU
Nevada’s former executive vice president) from their positions and then had two
of her lieutenants conduct a nighttime meeting with SEIU Nevada’s remaining executive
board members, who reportedly voted to ask Henry to place the union under an “emergency
trusteeship.”
The lawyer suing
SEIU International told the Review-Journal
that the trusteeship is invalid because SEIU Nevada’s executive board members
were led to believe they had no choice but vote for trusteeship.
The
Review-Journal quotes Mancini as saying the following:
"There was a manufactured emergency by the removal of myself and the vice president at the same time. I think that the membership needs to determine whether there needs to be a trusteeship or not.”
The
newspaper also reports that following the trusteeship, SEIU officials “fired
the local’s chief financial officer Robert Clarke, communications director Dana
Gentry and [Peter] Nguyen, the director of organizing and representation.”
Stay tuned.
