Day 9 of NUHW trial: Where Is the Defense Case?

April 1, 2010, Day 9 of the Civil Trial of NUHW, Sal Rosselli, Joan Emslie, Daniel Martin, Andrew Reid and others.

WHERE IS THE DEFENSE CASE?

Cross examination of Sal Rosselli continued today. They showed the ending of a video that only part of was shown to the jury yesterday. In it, Sal’s comment was now it’s time for the next steps. Then we saw a video of the mega-meeting on January 24, 2009. John Borsos is speaking to members and telling them they can stop paying dues, can stop paying into the union’s COPE political action fund, and possibly form a new union if the trusteeship happened.

As always Sal wants to do his speeches and the judge had to remind him to answer the questions. He is good at saying “I don’t recall, can you repeat the question,” etc. He never seems to be able to answer a direct question with a simple yes or no. I wonder why???

On February 5, 2008, Sal acknowledged that $2 million was transferred from UHW to the PEF (patent education fund). A document was shown to him of the money transfer and Kohlman asked if it was true that he didn’t consult with anyone else before this transfer. Sal at first said he wasn’t sure, then admitted to consulting with Jorge Rodriguez and Joan Emslie. They began looking for office spaces, setting up legal assistance, paying staff and also phones for staff on February 21, 2008. Sal was asked about an email from Dan Martin, called special project update. The memo said three sites had been found in the north and they were working on L.A. sites. They were buying Blackberries. A computer was set up at Dan Martin’s home by an outside consultant and was set up without UHW’s IT department knowing about it.

The office sites that they had obtained prior to the trusteeship became NUHW offices on January 28, 2009. An email from Jorge Rodriguez to Sal dated April 16, 2009 was entered in to evidence. It had an attachment with a list of more than 20,000 Kaiser members. Sal claimed he never opened the email and told Jorge that they couldn’t have that and forwarded it to the international. (???).

When asked his problem remembering emails and documents with his name on them, he said he gets hundreds of email a day, and has meetings scheduled every 15 minutes with staff in the offices so he can’t remember. He said there was lots of email he didn’t personally read and many times on letters an electronic signature was used so he might not see them before they go out. He implied that he didn’t know everything that was going on. I got the impression that he was trying to take the blame off of himself and put the blame on Jorge Rodriguez and Dan Martin on several issues. Can’t wait to hear what they have to say when they take the stand.

Witness #2, Jonathan Siegel, an attorney for NUHW who was hired by Sal and staff while they were still employed by UHW. Yes, he is the brother of the defense attorney Dan Siegel. After the testimony today by Jonathan, he was either lied to about everything or he just played DUMB. He did transfer back to UHW the $200,000 that was left in him trust account. I guess that makes sense since the money didn’t belong to him.

Witness #3 Andrew Reid said he was asked by leaders to see if his co-workers would be willing to stay at night in the offices back in March 2008 so that SEIU couldn’t enter the offices. (Excuse me didn’t Sal say they weren’t concerned back in the early part of 2008)? There was an email telling ABC Security not to let SEIU representatives in the buildings.

Witness #6 Beverly Griffith, said she became an employee of NUHW as of today. But in federal reporting forms she is listed as an NUHW employees and earned $10,000 in 2009. Hmmm. She testified she was a leader of 50-60 people who broke in at the Alameda SEIU office. The security guard told them they could not enter but they pushed their way in and knocked the security guard to the ground. She first said they were there 5-10 minutes then later said 10-15 minutes. She testified that Glenn Goldstein and Gabe Kristal were present, but she doesn’t remember if John Vellardita was there.

Witness #7 Joan Emslie took the stand just before stopping for the day. So we’ll hear more from her tomorrow.

Don’t forget to give me your comments. See you tomorrow.