Will Senate Vote to Gag Right to Work Allies?
If he is still majority leader in 2025, Chuck Schumer could, with help from cohorts like Tammy Baldwin, Jon Tester, and Jacky Rosen deploy the “nuclear option” against Right to Work.
After a four-year investigation, federal authorities have charged the former powerful SEIU union boss with corruption. The Los Angeles Times describes Tyrone Freeman as “a rising young star in the national labor movement, already the head of California’s biggest union local and a force in Democratic politics from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.” The Times reports:
Freeman’s quick climb up the ranks of the powerful Service Employees International Union burnished his reputation as an effective advocate for the disadvantaged, a man who helped improve the lot of about 190,000 workers paid about $9 an hour to provide in-home care for the infirm.
On Tuesday, however, Freeman was indicted on federal charges of stealing from those workers to enrich himself, including by billing the union for costs from his Hawaii wedding.
The 15-count indictment secured by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles also alleges that Freeman violated tax laws and gave false information to a mortgage lender. If convicted on all counts, he could face maximum prison sentences in excess of 200 years.
The charges resulted from a nearly four-year investigation by the U.S. Labor Department, FBI and Internal Revenue Service that grew out of a series of reports in the Los Angeles Times on Freeman’s financial dealings as president of SEIU Local 6434. The resulting scandal spread through the 2-million-member SEIU and cost several other union officials their jobs.
Citing records and interviews, The Times reports showed that Freeman, 42, funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of his union members’ hard-earned dues to his relatives and lavished similar sums on golf tournaments, expensive restaurants and a Beverly Hills cigar club.
Last month, his wife pleaded guilty to an income tax charge in connection with more than $540,000 she received in union consulting payments at Freeman’s direction.
Under Freeman, Local 6434 grew dramatically, largely because of a consolidation campaign spearheaded by SEIU’s then-president, Andy Stern, who had nurtured Freeman’s rise in the union. The local had 160,000 members during Freeman’s tenure–it now lists 180,000–and remains SEIU’s biggest California chapter, the second largest in the nation. It has more members than many international unions.
If he is still majority leader in 2025, Chuck Schumer could, with help from cohorts like Tammy Baldwin, Jon Tester, and Jacky Rosen deploy the “nuclear option” against Right to Work.
California’s Big Labor-concocted A.B.5, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019, made it almost impossible for workers and firms to bounce back after 2020’s COVID-19 lockdowns. Now Biden bureaucrats want to federalize A.B.5!
Mr. Fain undoubtedly knows full well that there is a complete disconnect between the UAW hierarchy and the UAW rank-and-file on the Biden presidency and whether workers will benefit from its extension for another four years.