Seiu

A high-ranking Midwest officer of the Service Employees International Union, who had been serving as trustee of a financially troubled local, has resigned after being accused of billing the labor organization for $9,000 in personal expenses. The Chicago-based Byron Hobbs, who also sat on the union's national board, is the latest of several SEIU officials to lose their positions or otherwise come under scrutiny for alleged financial improprieties.

SACRAMENTO — A labor union that pushed a pair of ballot measures that would have reined in excessive hospital billing and expanded healthcare for the poor has dropped them — in exchange for an agreement that enlists the hospital industry in the union's organizing efforts. The agreement, announced late Wednesday, ends a months-long public battle between the Service Employees International Union and the California Hospital Assn. Private hospitals had accused the union of using the initiative process as leverage in contract negotiations to expand its membership, a charge the union strongly denied.

Over the last 12 years, the Service Employees International Union has led the fight for the political reforms that America's working people need. On issues ranging from healthcare to immigration to corporate responsibility, we have pressed our clear and consistent view that America must change in order to win. Now it's our turn to make some changes. Recent reports in The Times have raised serious questions about how money from a local chapter may have been misused. The stories accuse Tyrone Freeman, president of Local 6434, of steering payments and contracts to companies owned by his relatives and other financial improprieties.

One of Los Angeles' largest public employee unions is lashing out at Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, claiming he has been "flying all over the country, managing his image and trying to secure his next job" while city workers struggle to serve Angelenos. Service Employees International Union Local 721 emailed City Hall members over the weekend, criticizing Villaraigosa for pushing City Hall layoffs and a hike in the retirement age for newly hired city workers. Titled "Mayor Two-Face is at it Again," the email offers a statement from city equipment mechanic Ray Rice, demanding to know whether Villaraigosa, who has traveled out of Southern California 11 times so far this year, views city employee unions as partners or as enemies.

A federal labor board decision this week has given a major victory to a breakaway union vying with the giant Service Employees International Union to represent tens of thousands of California healthcare workers. On Tuesday, the National Labor Relations Board called for elections to determine who has the right to represent some 2,300 Kaiser healthcare workers employed at various sites in Southern California. An SEIU affiliate currently represents the workers, but the breakaway group filed a petition in February challenging the SEIU.

Re "Labor's real fight," Opinion, Feb. 1, and "Bay Area health union seeks vote on members," Feb. 3 I find it ironic that the Service Employees International Union is opposing the request of the petition signers to be represented by a different union. Sounds as if the SEIU, one of the biggest proponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, isn't willing to extend free choice to its own union members when those members want to secede from the SEIU. If the Employee Free Choice Act is such a benefit to the working person, then the SEIU should be eager to abide by the same principles it demands business and employees abide by. If not, then this act should not be passed by Congress.

I was surprised to read that leaders of the state's biggest union — the SEIU — had decided to endorse Proposition 19, which would allow Californians to legally grow and possess marijuana. Any patrol officer, judge or district attorney will tell you that Proposition 19 is a flawed initiative that would bring about a host of legal nightmares and risks to public safety. It would also make California a laughingstock. Leaders of the Service Employees International Union say they support Proposition 19 so the state can avoid cuts to healthcare, home care, education and elderly care programs.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his top budget advisers thought they negotiated a labor contract last week that would begin to address the steadily rising cost of employee healthcare benefits. But that deal, reached with the 4,800-member Engineers and Architects Assn., has come under attack from members of another civilian employee union, which contends that the agreement contains "unprecedented and dangerous" concessions and should be rejected. With the Engineers and Architects voting on the tentative agreement this week, organizers with Service Employees International Union Local 721 have begun warning that the proposed pact is part of a larger effort to "divide and conquer" the city's civilian employee groups.

The top-ranking Republican on the House labor committee called Friday for immediate hearings on a spending scandal at California's largest union local. In a statement, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) suggested that the committee's Democratic chairman intended to delay an inquiry into the Service Employees International Union local because of the labor group's political support for Democrats. The Bay Area-based chairman, Rep. George Miller, announced about two weeks ago that the Education and Labor Committee would examine the local because of Times reports on its spending practices.

Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers throughout Southern California have voted overwhelmingly to quit the giant Service Employees International Union and join a smaller rival union. The National Labor Relations Board, which tallied secret ballots cast earlier this month, said Tuesday that about 2,000 nurses and healthcare professionals voted more than 6 to 1 in favor of ditching the SEIU. They are affiliating with rival National Union of Healthcare Workers, a breakaway faction. The defeat is a major setback for SEIU, the largest hospital and healthcare workers union in California, with about 150,000 members.

As healthcare workers gathered outside California hospitals recently to collect signatures for two proposed ballot initiatives, they told voters the measures would rein in excessive hospital billings and expand healthcare for the poor. Unspoken in the public pitch was the fact that the measures, backed by the Service Employees International Union and aimed at private hospitals, would have a major effect on facilities the union has tried unsuccessfully to organize, while exempting those where many of its members work.

Reporting from Los Angeles and New York -- Hundreds of people were arrested across the country Thursday in a series of sometimes confrontational street demonstrations protesting efforts to break up Occupy Wall Street-inspired camps. In New York City, where protesters were evicted from Zuccotti Park earlier this week, at least 200 people were arrested and several police officers and protesters were injured as demonstrators marched in the streets and across the Brooklyn Bridge to mark the two-month anniversary of the movement's birth.

Alejandro Stephens, a longtime Los Angeles County union leader who went to prison for misusing funds from a labor nonprofit, died June 13 of complications of prostate cancer. He was 67. Stephens, who worked for the county for more than three decades and spent 15 years as president of Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union, died at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles, his niece Amber Harris said. Stephens pleaded guilty in 2009 to federal mail fraud and tax evasion charges stemming from a 2004 scheme in which he steered $52,000 from a voter outreach program to his union reelection campaign.

Leaders of a California labor group battling the giant Service Employees International Union alleged in a lawsuit Tuesday that the SEIU engaged in a pattern of violent threats and strong-arm tactics against dissident unionists. The suit, filed in Superior Court in San Francisco, is the latest salvo in the bitter intra-union clash pitting the SEIU against the breakaway National Union of Healthcare Workers. For two years, the rival group has been trying to woo SEIU members at California hospitals and healthcare facilities.

In the biggest private-sector labor election since 1941, the giant Service Employees International Union has decisively defeated an insurgent group to continue representing about 43,000 Kaiser healthcare workers in California. The SEIU received 18,290 votes to 11,364 for the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which was launched last year by several former leaders of the larger organization. The mail ballots went out in mid-September and the count was completed late Thursday.

As part of a lengthy corruption investigation, federal authorities have been examining $150,000 in consulting fees paid to a disgraced former Los Angeles labor leader under a confidential agreement signed by Andy Stern, then president of the powerful Service Employees International Union, according to documents and interviews. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles had considered filing embezzlement charges against Alejandro Stephens, who headed the SEIU local for county government workers, in connection with the payments, records obtained by The Times show.

In the biggest private-sector labor election since 1941, the giant Service Employees International Union has decisively defeated an insurgent group to continue representing about 43,000 Kaiser healthcare workers in California. The SEIU received 18,290 votes to 11,364 for the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which was launched last year by several former leaders of the larger organization. The mail ballots went out in mid-September and the count was completed late Thursday.

Culminating a fierce election battle, about 700 workers at USC University Hospital in Los Angeles are scheduled to vote this week on whether to join a new union in a bitter campaign that has highlighted a deep rift in the labor movement. USC has been accused of harassing union backers and coercing employees to vote against the union. The university declined to respond directly to the charges, instead issuing a statement saying "USC values the right of employees to choose union representation."

I was surprised to read that leaders of the state's biggest union — the SEIU — had decided to endorse Proposition 19, which would allow Californians to legally grow and possess marijuana. Any patrol officer, judge or district attorney will tell you that Proposition 19 is a flawed initiative that would bring about a host of legal nightmares and risks to public safety. It would also make California a laughingstock. Leaders of the Service Employees International Union say they support Proposition 19 so the state can avoid cuts to healthcare, home care, education and elderly care programs.

The tense scene inside the cafeteria at Kaiser Permanente's sprawling Los Angeles Medical Center illustrated the bitter, long-in-the-making battle that is about to culminate in the nation's biggest private-sector labor election since 1941. In bright red T-shirts promoting one of two unions vying to represent Kaiser employees, a few healthcare workers stood out in the sea of white smocks at the lunch tables. Across the room, a supporter of the rival group videotaped the workers in hopes of catching them breaking any rules that limit union soliciting at the Sunset Boulevard hospital.