SEIU Is Sued over Nevada Trusteeship

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.

SEIU's Mary Kay Henry Imposes "Emergency Trusteeship" on SEIU Nevada

Here’s the latest.

Last Friday (April 28), SEIU President Mary Kay Henry implemented an “emergency trusteeship” on 9,000-member SEIU Nevada, according to an announcement on the union’s website and a formal order pasted below. The action removes the local union’s Executive Board and suspends its constitution.

Friday’s action came two days after Henry removed SEIU Nevada’s President Cherie Mancini and Executive Vice President Sharon Kisling and asked the local union’s Executive Board to meet hours later with two of her representatives, Neal Bisno and Deedee Fitzpatrick. 

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, here’s what happened during that private meeting on Wednesday night (Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Nevada SEIU asks parent union to take control of operations,” April 27, 2017):

SEIU Local 1107’s executive board voted Wednesday night to request an emergency trusteeship be imposed, SEIU International spokeswoman Janet Veum said. A source with direct knowledge of the vote said it was 17-to-7, with five executive board members abstaining…

Typically, the international union would conduct a hearing and have a vote of its international executive board before imposing trusteeship, Veum said. But because SEIU 1107 made an emergency request, international president Mary Kay Henry could expedite the process by imposing the trusteeship before the hearing is held.

Who’s running SEIU Nevada now?

Henry appointed Lisa Blue and Martin Manteca to serve as “Trustee” and “Deputy Trustee,” respectively. Blue was the “Chief Elected Officer” (CEO) at SEIU Local 521 in California until May of 2016, when Henry appointed her as one of SEIU International’s seven Executive Vice Presidents. Manteca is the Director of External Organizing for SEIU Local 721 in Los Angeles.

Here’s Henry’s trusteeship order:

  SEIU's Emergency Trusteeship Order over SEIU Nevada: 4-28-2017 by tastysternburger on Scribd

SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry Moves to Put SEIU Nevada under Trusteeship

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry is placing yet another local union under trusteeship.

On April 26, 2017, Henry removed SEIU Nevada’s top two officers -- President Cherie Mancini and Executive Vice President Sharon Kisling -- from office, according to a two-page internal letter signed by Henry and an announcement on SEIU Nevada’s website.

Also on April 26, two SEIU officials (Neal Bisno and Deedee Fitzpatrick, Henry’s Deputy Chief of Staff) met privately with SEIU Nevada’s executive board at Henry’s request. The next day, April 27, SEIU Nevada’s website announced that its board had voted to place the local union under trusteeship. Here’s an excerpt:

Last night, our executive board met with representatives of SEIU to consider the future of the local…  After a thoughtful and extensive discussion, the executive board voted to ask SEIU to help return our local to those roots by taking Local 1107 into trusteeship.  The local’s request is now pending with International President Mary Kay Henry and we expect a decision soon.

Henry’s April 26 letter also announced the appointment of two of her representatives (Steve Ury and Kathy Eddy) to serve as “monitors” of SEIU Nevada.

On Wednesday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on the developments and posted a copy of Henry’s internal letter. (Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Top 2 elected officials removed from Nevada service union,” April 26, 2017)

In earlier posts, Tasty has chronicled the pathetic history of this affair, which has allowed one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital companies to strip 1,000 nurses of union presentation.

• December 16, 2016:  SEIU Officials Perform Three-Ring Circus in Vegas
• April 13, 2017:  SEIU Nevada Performs Circus Act as Employers Feast at Banquet Table

SEIU Nevada is the fourth SEIU local union to be placed in trusteeship or under “monitorship” in recent months.

In August of 2016, SEIU imposed an emergency trusteeship on SEIU Local 73 in Chicago. In December of 2016, Henry removed the president of Los Angeles-based SEIU Local 99 and placed the union under the control of an SEIU-appointed “monitor,” Eliseo Medina. On February 14, 2017, Henry placed SEIU Healthcare Michigan under an “emergency trusteeship” amid allegations of financial corruption.

More to follow.

  SEIU Memo by Las Vegas Review-Journal on Scribd

SEIU Officials Perform Three-Ring Circus in Vegas

In Nevada, SEIU Local 1107 appears to be imploding amid intense infighting between the union’s top officials.

The union -- also known as “SEIU Nevada” -- represents approximately 9,000 workers in public and private hospitals as well as local government workers.

So what’s going on?

It’s kinda hard to track all of the grimy details of this multidimensional sh*tfest, but here are a few tidbits:

• In August, police were called to the union’s offices when the union’s Executive Vice President (Sharon Kisling) allegedly chased and threatened one of the union’s staff directors in what he called “a two-and-a-half-hour reign of terror at our office,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal (“Fight within SEIU Local 1107 shows no sign of slowing down,” December 3, 2016). The staff director later reportedly got the courts to issue a temporary restraining order against Kisling.

• In July, the union’s president, Cherie Mancini, abruptly canceled a contract-ratification vote at Las Vegas’s largest hospital (University Medical Center) so she could supposedly investigate a bunch of vague allegations against unnamed members of the rank-and-file bargaining committee.

What kind of allegations did she want to investigate?

They included such specifics as “violation of fiduciary duty,” “failing to conduct bargaining in a prudent manner,” and “behavior inconsistent with the mutually agreed upon interest-based bargaining process.” Oh, and she apparently had no named accusers.

After 400 hospital workers signed a petition against the union’s president, President Mancini reversed her decision and allowed the membership vote to take place. Nonetheless, the bargaining team was pissed that the union’s president had trashed their reputation by circulating “wildly absurd allegations” in a memo she emailed to all of their co-workers and also posted on the Internet.

• So, on July 31, the bargaining team sent a letter to SEIU President Mary Kay Henry saying they had “lost all confidence” in the local union president. They called on Henry to put the union in trusteeship and remove their president from office. Their letter to Henry reads in part: 

It is unacceptable that SEIU President Mancini has done great and unforgivable damage to the SEIU-UMC bargaining team by publicly making false allegations without a second thought as to what it would do to the members of this union… President Mancini has shown disdain, disrespect and complete ignorance for our duly elected SEIU officers and volunteer bargaining team and for these reasons, we feel that President Mancini is either mentally unable or unwilling to carry out her sworn duties… UMC Bargaining Team is also demanding that Local 1107 be trusteed and reconstructed so that this type of situation, where a Union President publicly attacks its own Union members, will never happen again. Our team and UMC members believe that the organization of SEIU Local 1107 has lost sight of working for our members’ common good and has let personal politics and greed take control and we reject this!

• Next, in September, the union’s President and Executive Vice President filed dueling “internal charges” against one other alleging violations of SEIU’s constitution and bylaws. The charges -- which allege “financial malpractice” and “engaging in corrupt or unethical practices” -- call on SEIU’s International Executive Board to suspend each other from office.

  

  SEIU's IEB on a break?

• In October, just in case this circus-like situation wasn’t whacky enough, SEIU’s International Executive Board held two days of hearings in Las Vegas to investigate the charges. And the Purple Palace chose the perfect setting for their hearing:  the Circus Circus Casino!

• Meanwhile, an independent union called the “UMC-Clark County Public Employees Association” is actively trying to decertify SEIU.

Oh, and that’s not all.

• In February 2017, SEIU Local 1107’s former president, Al Martinez, is scheduled to go on trial in civil court over allegations that he misappropriated approximately $50,000 of union funds, according to a separate article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal (“Gov. Brian Sandoval cites lawsuit for PERS Board member’s removal,” October 3, 2016).

So… if any readers are headed to Vegas, keep your eye out for the next three-ring carnival act (also known as the SEIU International Executive Board) at a casino near you!