A major article in today’s LA Times alleges Tyrone Freeman and SEIU Local 6434 routinely misused local funds, including giving contracts to family members:

The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show.

In addition, the union paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee. And a now-defunct minor league basketball team coached by the president’s brother-in-law received $16,000 for what the union described as public relations, according to the union’s U.S. Labor Department filings and interviews.

It’s not clear if there are any legal violations here, and Freeman and his family members deny that there was anything inappropriate in the contracts and spending:

“Every expenditure has been in the context of fighting poverty,” [Freeman] said…. Freeman, 38, said the union’s members have benefited from the money spent on the video production and day-care companies that his wife and mother-in-law operate at their homes, because of what he termed the high quality of the services.

The article goes on to detail the expenditures and flaws with them, some of which went to nonprofits in trouble with the IRS and “entities” associated with former LA Rams star Eric Dickerson that have been suspended from doing business in California.

Labor unions constantly have to battle the usually false perception that they misuse funds, and face a well-funded right-wing campaign that seeks to undermine unions for even the slightest error. Most unions, including those I’ve been a part of, are very scrupulous about how they use money to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, so I am very surprised to hear that this was going on.

And I’m not alone in that. The article quotes Nelson Liechtenstein, one of the nation’s leading labor historians, as follows:

It’s very important for unions not to do this kind of thing,” he said. “Union leadership is a public trust — all the more so when the people being represented are among the lowest-paid in America.”…

Lichtenstein said the [$418,000 golf] tournament spending was troubling under any circumstances.

“I don’t care if they’re making money or not,” he said. “It’s disconnected from the world of the people they’re representing. No one’s playing golf who’s a home healthcare worker.

And Joe Matthews at Blockbuster Democracy blog is even more critical, calling for Freeman’s resignation:

So this is going to be a difficult test of the union movement in LA and nationallly. But it’s a test. Freeman needs to step down and offer a full-throated apology. The union needs to ask for an independent audit of the local. And the public needs to hear immediately from union leadership — Stern, county labor chief Maria Elena Durazo, other top SEIU leaders such as janitors’ union chief Mike Garcia — about how such conduct must not be permitted in the movement. So far, the silence is deafening. Stern, in the story, refuses to address the conduct in question. That won’t cut it.

Why does the action need to be so clear-cut? Because the labor movement is on the rise in Los Angeles. To attend a city council meeting or a mayoral press conference is to watch the labor movement governing the city. As the journalist Harold Meyerson has written, the rise of the LA unions as a labor force has been aided by the widespread perception that our unions are not old-style, corrupt empires. This is supposed to be new labor. The public needs to see transparency and accountability in the response to this.

As for Freeman, I hope he can make amends for this conduct and have a future in the labor movement. But it can’t be as president of this local.

Matthews has it exactly right. The SEIU leadership needs to show that they won’t tolerate this kind of action within their ranks. Union democracy is important, and so is union accountability, union honesty, and union ethics. The misdeeds of one local unfortunately tend to get used to attack the labor movement as a whole – and Andy Stern and Tyrone Freeman in particular owe that movement answers and action.