Subject: SEIU investigates top official
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:52:00 -0400

Categories: Labor
SEIU investigates top official

The Service Employees International Union has filed internal charges against a prominent official after an investigation found that he abused his expense account, the union confirmed today.

Bruce Raynor, the high-profile former president of the garment workers union UNITE, is now an international executive vice president at SEIU and president of its Workers United division, which represents the elements of UNITE that joined the service union after the collapse of a disastrous merger between UNITE and the hotel workers union HERE.

"Based on information received by the International Union Legal Department from multiple sources, an investigation was conducted which has led to the filing of internal union charges of financial misconduct against Bruce Raynor for violations of the SEIU Constitution and Bylaws," union spokeswoman Inga Skippings said in an emailed statement. "The charges will be referred to an outside independent hearing officer who will hear the case and make a report and recommendation to the Union's International Executive Board. These charges involve one individual only and will be handled under our internal union procedures in a fair and just manner."

SEIU is known in labor circles for its relatively tight internal ethics procedures and its new president, Mary Kay Henry, has stressed internally that nobody is "above the law." Two SEIU sources said Raynor is accused of having misrepresented the expenses for ten or more dinners with another SEIU official, Alex Dagg, which were reported in the SEIU's online expense system as business expenses when they were, it is alleged, social. 

Raynor's alleged breach is something many unions would handle without a formal investigation -- particularly against a senior official. However two SEIU sources said the union's executive board discussed the matter in closed session Monday, and is in the process of hiring a hearing officer to oversee the probe.

Raynor, who didn't respond to an email seeking comment on the investigation, is a legendary, and sometimes polarizing, figure in the labor movement. He came to prominence in the late 1970s amid the bitter battle to organize the J.P. Stevens textile company in North Carolina, which was dramatized in the film "Norma Rae." 

Now, union insiders see the situation as a distraction from the giant union's attempt to regroup and turn what has been an intensely anti-labor tide.

"During these difficult times for working families, SEIU members and leaders continue to focus on confronting the growing inequality of wealth and preserving the middle class for all workers in this country," Skippings said.

UPDATE: Raynor tells POLITICO that all the meals in question were union business, with a union official -- but that he was protecting that official from political retaliation within the union by keeping her name off of expense reports and receipts.

"There was absoultely no misappropriation of one cent of union funds," said Raynor. "What is going on here is an ugly, naked exercise in political retaliation"

Eric D. Schwerin
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