With greater than 700,000 members, SEIU California is among the largest unions within the state, spending tens of millions yearly to advocate for favored political points, like opposing the current failed effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.
And till this spring, the union was doing so underneath the perfidious management of Alma Hernández — who throughout October discovered herself arrested and charged by the state Lawyer Normal’s Workplace with a number of counts of tax fraud, embezzlement, perjury, and failure to pay unemployment insurance coverage taxes.
Particularly, Hernández is accused of underreporting her earnings over a five-year interval by $1.4 million and failing to pay greater than $100,000 in earnings taxes. The longtime union powerhouse additionally stands accused of utilizing a purported political fundraising account to fraudulently pay herself via her husband.
It could be dangerous sufficient if Hernández’s illicit actions had been the outlier union apologists would have you ever imagine. Sadly, it’s par for the SEIU course.
- Cedric Earl Hughes, then an organizing coordinator for SEIU Native 721, was indicted in 2015 for embezzlement from the (unaffiliated) union of union employees (the United Union Professionals of Los Angeles), for which he served as treasurer.
- In 2013, Tyrone “Ricky” Freeman, the ex-president of SEIU Native 6434, representing California United Homecare Staff, was convicted in federal courtroom of 4 counts of mail fraud, six counts of embezzlement/theft of union belongings, and one depend of constructing false statements to a monetary establishment. He was subsequently sentenced to 33 months’ imprisonment.
- In 2010, Alejandro Stephens, the ex-president of (now-defunct) SEIU Native 660, pleaded responsible in federal courtroom to mail fraud and tax evasion, and was sentenced to 4 months’ imprisonment.
- Former SEIU Native 99 President Janett Humphries in 2007 pleaded responsible to conspiracy and embezzlement for a scheme to finance a Los Angeles metropolis council marketing campaign with union funds. She was additionally convicted on state-law expenses of perjury and conspiracy and sentenced to a six-month time period in jail.
The conga line simply retains transferring — all of which leads one to wonder if SEIU is on a statistically not possible run of sad coincidences or maybe it’s the group itself that’s rotten to the core.
The Freedom Basis, a nationwide authorities union watchdog group, has documented a marketing campaign of forgeries dedicated by SEIU throughout the West Coast, by which the union is alleged to have signed purported members’ names on membership playing cards with out their permission or data.
These actions have resulted within the Freedom Basis submitting greater than a dozen lawsuits towards SEIU on behalf of public members, together with two instances in federal courtroom alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Group Act (RICO), a regulation initially supposed to battle conspiracies launched by the mafia and arranged crime.
If the shoe suits, proper?
After all, none of this prison exercise can be doable had been it not for the tens of millions of {dollars} flowing into SEIU coffers from rank-and-file members, a lot of whom both don’t know what the funds are getting used for or who’ve been denied the chance to resolve for themselves how their cash must be spent.
Right here is the way it works:
Public-sector staff are handed a stack of paperwork on their first day of labor and advised to fill it out. Usually there will probably be an SEIU membership card snuck into the combo.
Staff unwittingly signal this card and return it with out ever having been knowledgeable that union membership and dues are 100% voluntary.
And when that tactic fails, California state regulation permits unions to conduct a 30-minute “data” session throughout which paid labor organizers stress new employees to affix, usually telling them that in the event that they don’t ship cash to SEIU their pay will plummet, or their advantages will probably be taken away.
No point out is made from the political spending by the union, after all. As long as these playing cards get signed, SEIU will argue that they will take that employee’s cash and spend it nevertheless they need — the First Modification rights of the employee be damned.
Time and again, it has been demonstrated that unions like SEIU and its former chief Alma Hernández care extra about lining their very own pockets and people of their pet politicians than they do following the U.S. Structure.
Public staff throughout america who haven’t been paying consideration ought to get up and notice that organizations like SEIU are not labor unions advocating for the wages, hours, and dealing situations of their members.
They way back grew to become the funding and enforcement arms of the state, alternately hiding behind legal guidelines handed by their corrupt companions in elected workplace and ignoring them altogether.
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