Day 3 of the NUHW Civil Trial

Day 3 of the NUHW Civil Trial:

To start the day off, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup addressed some issues that we had with Mr. Dan Siegel, the lawyer for the defendants. There was concern that Mr. Siegel was violating some of the ground rules that had been set prior to the start of the trial. Ultimately, the judge reminded both sides That he was to keep his case inside the scope of the trial. Mr. Siegel was not to talk about differences of opinion between Andy Stern and Sal as this is not the issue.

Oriana Saportas testified about Santa Rosa organizing. She said after the trusteeship was announced Peter Tappeiner told her to copy files off the UHW computer system, go to Kinko’s and make copies of organizing lists, and purchase 4 boxes of copy paper and to charge it to the SEIU-UHW account. The lists were names, address, phone numbers, e-mails address and what level of support the person had for supporting the organizing.

Denny Henriques from Sutter Delta testified how he was he was told NOT to engage with SEIU and to start collecting decertification cards. He collected cards and returned them to Sue Finley, he testified. Jennie Edney from Kaiser Vallejo testified to the same situation – that she collected cards after the trusteeship and using UHW lists but then turned her collected cards in to Ralph Cornejo.

Mary Kay Henry, SEIU International executive vice president, was on the stand and was walked through the timeline of the events leading up to the trusteeship. In the International Constitution and By-Laws there is a 7 member rule. Mr. Siegel wanted to know if she thought it was fair that 7 out of 150,000 members could stop a disaffiliation vote, and wasn’t that anti-democratic. Mr. Siegel thought that was a pretty good point until UHW attorney Gary Kohlman pointed out to the jury that the same rule was in the UHW Constitution and By-Laws that the local wrote under Rosselli.

Myriam Escamilla, current UHW Nursing Home Division director, was our final witness for today and she had the fireworks going off. She talked about a select group which had e-mails from Michael Krivosh about how they had time frames to have certain things done by. This included having the data base stored elsewhere and finding funding for after the trusteeship (the so-called Patient Education Fund with $3 million of our dues money). They were told to set up personal e-mail addresses and to forward their UHW emails there and to give those addresses to Mr. Krivosh.

So tomorrow Myriam will be cross examined by Mr. Siegel. So be sure and check back to see how the fireworks are going. Let me hear your feedback and questions.