Wednesday in court - Wellspring of the members!

Andy Stern, Mary Kay Henry, Anna Burger, Dave Regan, Eliseo Medina, Leon Chow, Steve Trossman, Rebecca Malberg, and SEIU finally rested their case today in federal court!

Readers tell Perez that while the NUHW area of the courtroom is packed with members, staff, supporters, and journalists, attendance on SEIU’s side is down to a skeleton crew consisting of a few senior staffers (staff lawyer Deedee Fitzpatrick and deputy trustee Debbie Schneider have been regulars), PR staffers Steve Trossman and Matt Browner Hamlin (Michelle Ringuette didn’t come back after the first couple of days), someone’s kid, and the “member bloggers”, along with a huge legal team.

Spotted on those sparse SEIU benches today, Mary Kay Henry looking back at the SEIU side and making faces during Sal Rosselli’s testimony. Spotted in the ladies bathroom, Rebecca Malberg frantically snatching handfuls of paper towel and stuffing it in her purse! Maybe that’s where all the UHW documents went?

The day began with cross-examination of SEIU’s email expert (he only makes $250 an hour while the math guy makes $600?!), and the stunning revelation that “double deleting” emails means deleting them and then emptying your trash can! Then came Debbie ssssSchneider, followed by a paralegal from one of SEIU’s law firms, and a security guard from the Sacramento UHW office, all to talk about boxes and data. Perez didn’t hear anything interesting about any of them or about the defendant deposition videos SEIU played.

And then the plaintiffs finally rested their case with about an hour of the day left, and the defense went straight into calling witnesses with Sal Rosselli. As Sal took the stand, readers say there was a palpable feeling of “this is our turn!” in the room, and the energy changed. The jury literally sat up and took notice too, looking more animated, and writing more notes than at any point in the plaintiffs’ case.

Readers say Sal wasn’t in exuberant rally-speech mode, but gave a very sober and clear history of the actions and decisions that led inevitably to the trusteeship – the 2007 SF Weekly article on the nursing home deals, the 2008 convention, the jurisdiction decisions, the trusteeship hearings, and along with it all, the struggle of UHW members to make their international union acknowledge their existence as something more than dues units. Readers say it just sounded like the straight-up truth.

SEIU lawyer Kohlman (“the one with the big ears”) gambled and lost with his cross examination. Faced with a choice between staying calm and trying to subtly steer Rosselli, or going all-out and trying to intimidate him, Kohlman chose the latter strategy (each has its place, there’s no moral judgment here!), sounded out-of-step, and fell flat, failing to get any real concessions from the witness or trip him up.

It’s tricky for the plaintiffs now, because just about any legal concession they might be able to get from a defense witness - for example that UHW’s officers should have obeyed the IEB and not union members - makes SEIU look terrible to the jury, and the defendants look good. It happened today, as SEIU objected repeatedly to Rosselli’s account of democratic processes at UHW on the grounds that they were “irrelevant”, and then turned around and argued in their cross examination that the undemocratic changes to the SEIU constitution made in Puerto Rico (essentially turning all important decisions over to Andy Stern) were an expression of the members’ will! Judge Alsup might insist that appearances don’t matter, but he does so because they do; especially in a case that’s still so legally ambiguous and messy.

Things are getting messier and messier too in the negotiations that happen between the lawyers and the judge when the jury is out. This morning Perez hears the judge accused SEIU of “larding the record”, and called their case “big law firm practice at its worst!”. However, he also insisted that the former UHW staffers must have spent at least a little time planning to be disloyal on SEIU’s dime, or how else would they all have coordinated to quit on the same day? Not a point that make sense to Perez (has Judge Alsup heard of weekends?), but it shows how tense things are getting, as the judge urges the sides to come to some sort of agreement to clarify things for the jury.

The judge wouldn’t give the minute counts he’s given at the end of every other day, but with 200 left in the morning, the plaintiffs must now be very low on time. Just for fun, Perez is going to make a little prediction – SEIU will spend all, or all but a few minutes cross-examining Sal Rosselli. It’s abundantly clear that they’re going to have a hard time making any charges stick, and spending five minutes crossing every witness would just be useless. The real point of all this time and money is to taint NUHW, and winning nothing at all, or just some random finding against a staffer, won’t do that cause any good! That’s why Perez bets they’ll throw it all at Rosselli (who they’ll say is ultimately responsible for everything that happened) and hope they get something they can use!

Now, does anyone want to pay me $600 an hour for my expertise at making semi-informed guesses?

Tuesday in court - Skandalous.

Andy Stern, Mary Kay Henry, Anna Burger, Dave Regan, Eliseo Medina, Leon Chow, Steve Trossman, Rebecca Malberg, and SEIU wasted more dues dollars on their federal suit in San Francisco on Tuesday, as reported by readers...

"Krooked" Alex Espinoza appeared as promised today, and finally achieved what he's been fronting for years - committing a federal crime! Alex perjured all over himself on the stand, and for what? To claim he didn't know where Amado David was in January 2009 and wasn't talking with him, when in fact emails to Alex's "Krooky account" showed the pair were in regular contact. How must that make Amado feel? Well judging by his appearance in court, it makes him feel like an unwashed stoner, but that's not an actual emotion, so who knows?

Readers suggest that Alex also lied when he told defendant Barbara Lewis that he would stay at UHW "for the members". Alex is just the latest in a long list of recently-promoted SEIU staffers on the stand, and his entire testimony was about how he's a big shot with multiple people reporting to him. Asked to describe the structure of his team, he described a pyramid, where as a "working lead" he directed "his" staff, who directed stewards, who finally directed members "on the front lines". One reader writes that union members in the audience were visibly disgusted by Alex's repulsive inversion of their union.

Can someone let Perez know if SEIU has put forward any witnesses who aren't on their payroll? Aside from Alex, four paid staffers took the stand today - Abbie Reeve, Annie Durazo, Lynn Templeton, and Yvonne Shaw. All told pretty much the same story - in 2008 and early 2009 they were asked to update contact information for members, to phonebank to bring members to meetings, and to update charts. Annie and Yvonne claimed they had been told to spend most of their time fighting the trusteeship, and as Annie said, "not to spend any time with the members". Both revealed under cross examination however, that their facilities had been in active bargaining, with actions and one-day strikes throughout January - hard to do in 10% of a work-week! Oh, and apparently Yvonne's supervisor told her to try not to lose her job when the trusteeship happened, and asked her to tell her what was going on inside the local. So damn what? The judge repeats every day that fighting the trusteeship was not illegal. SEIU had better find something much, much, better, and fast!

The other two witnesses in what sounds like a full day were SEIU paid "experts" on computer data recovery (to talk about various emails and lists) and accounting (to present numbers for the damages SEIU want). It's interesting to see the glimpses this trial is opening up into another side of the story of the trusteeship - into the dynamics inside and around SEIU. One thing that's now abundantly clear is that a string of companies and individuals saw the way that SEIU was throwing members' money around, and cashed in!

Take for example, Michael Lasinski, SEIU's damages expert - Lasinski is a specialist in "financial forensics" who works out of Chicago, and starting last year he charged SEIU $600 an hour to take a 23 page list of "assumptions" written by the trustees and information supplied by UHW financial staff, and come up with numbers for how much SEIU should demand in damages. Readers in court today couldn't figure out what Michael did besides work from the presumption the defendants were liable, and divide their salaries and benefits (or the local's operating costs in other cases) by the amount of time the international claim they spent fighting the trusteeship! The international want the jury to just pick a number from a list of options, but the judge was skeptical. Oh, and Lasinski was charging $600 an hour for his appearance in court today too.

Readers describe an interesting legal end to the day (there are always a few minutes of planning and clarification between the judge and lawyers after the jury leave), with Judge Alsup suggesting that both parties agree on a simplified version of the relevant law to present to the jury. The judge is concerned that this case is so complicated that the jury will have too few clear and objective criteria to judge it by, and might reach a surprise verdict that one or both sides "wouldn't like!"

Judge Alsup also chided SEIU for getting close to the end of their allotted time. They only have about 200 minutes left to use for their remaining witnesses and cross examination of the defense. After dropping yet more charges today, they had better have something magical planned for those 200 minutes!

Monday in court - "Our dues paid for this!"

Andy Stern, Mary Kay Henry, Anna Burger, Dave Regan, Eliseo Medina, Leon Chow, Steve Trossman, Rebecca Malberg, and SEIU continued their badly limping lawsuit Monday, as reported by readers...

The morning started out with the continuing cross-examination of security contractor Jerry Bullock, whose initial testimony was apparently all-but demolished by the time he left the stand. The Bush era style paranoia and incompetence Bullock described was shocking even to readers who lived through it all! While Bullock didn't keep any records at all of "incidents" from February 5th 2009 through May or June, he did send SEIU staff regular emails before the trusteeship, and sometimes advised them which "incidents" he thought they should try to exploit for media purposes! Oh, and Jerry didn't bother getting the names of staff who claimed they'd been assaulted, because he thought the police (or the press?) would probably do it. Sounds ridiculous to Perez, and apparently the judge thought so too.

Several of Bullock's report emails were read in court, and they were a creepy combination of inane and chilling - about one of the big pre-trusteeship member meetings he wrote "they have numerous automobiles, and approximately ten children under ten years of age are present" about another "they are wearing purple shirts but do not have signs or other items" How sad that while SEIU members were wearing their union's colors and rallying to try to save their member-run local, their own union was spending their dues money to have ex-FBI agents spy on them.

And then UHW member Nancy Stengel was amazing! Nancy is a Kaiser worker from Orange County who was very active before and around the trusteeship, but followed her scab union rep Tammy to SEIU. Nancy was one of the leaders of the January 21st 2009 "visit" to the shadow SEIU office in Los Angeles, and readers were expecting her to spin a juicy story of defendant-led violence and conspiracy. Sounds like SEIU's lawyers were expecting her to tell that story too, but it's not what happened at all.

I have an in-box full of direct quotes from Stengel's testimony, so I'll tell this story with as many as possible...

Nancy Stengel testified that after being trained by UHW communications staff on how to video and photograph their action, she went with other members to the secret SEIU office "to have a conversation with them, and let them know that we weren't interested in having them take over our union." She and other members were able to enter the office without anyone telling them to leave. Once in the office she saw posters that had "Free the members! Save the members! type rhetoric" and she found it jarring. She also saw a "war room" with charts on the walls. Nancy told a security guard "we have a right to be here, our dues paid for this!" And then she testified how SEIU's security became violent with the members, "shoving girls down stairs" and cutting one badly on the side as they "slammed her against the gate" they were trying to close to trap members inside. Nancy also testified that "one of the guards had flashed a gun at the girls".

She also didn't go along with SEIU's script on other charges, testifying that yes, it was unusual for stewards to be given a list, "unless you had a contract election", that all the staff left the room at the big pre-trusteeship meetings so that members could discuss options by themselves, and that Sal Rosselli told her he couldn't get involved when she emailed him about their discussions at that meeting.

Nancy told how she slept in the union hall and asked other members to come too, she called defendant Michael Krivosh "Mike," she told how she delivered flyers to SEIU staff to "let them know we thought they were scabs for destroying our union, and we wanted them to go home." None of this testimony came out under cross-examination (the defendants' lawyers had no questions at all for her) and readers who were present say it was an honest and moving account of how SEIU destroyed UHW, and how members who loved their union fought back.

Perez hears that when SEIU staff lawyer Deedee Fitzpatrick led Nancy out of the courtroom she was all smiles, but when she returned by herself she had a tight grimace across her face!

Thank you Nancy, for reminding SEIU that the choices members make in this screwed up situation are more complicated than blind loyalty, that seeming to pick a side doesn't mean your real side isn't with your coworkers, and that even choosing SEIU doesn't mean you're a puppet who'll lie for them!

And then the rest of the day was anti-climactic financial and IT related testimony that readers say fell squarely in the "So what?" category. SEIU only have a few more hours left to make their case, and despite their repeated promises to "tighten this noose even tighter" it's just not happening! They still haven't even shown the judge why their claim for security costs makes legal sense. It's now or never guys!

Spotted in the hallway and rumored to be up on the stand tomorrow, homophobic scab wanna-be-rapper, Alex "Krooked" Espinoza. Perhaps he can save the day? Perez can't wait!

Just can't get enough?

Me neither! Here's some more trial coverage to keep you going until tomorrow...

NUHW are doing a pretty detailed run-down each afternoon on their website. As you probably know, I tend not to link to NUHW stuff, because although I'm a supporter, I'm not affiliated with them, and also because I have no interest in becoming a collection of material you can find everywhere else! Their trial coverage however, has a lot of info I didn't get or don't have room for - check it out.

SEIU meanwhile have "member" blogs at Calitics, The Huffington Post, and (big surprise!) Firedoglake. They have a lot I don't have room for too! I'm not going to link, but they should be easy enough to find, and worth reading for the comments at least.

Lastly, if you missed it, here's Carl Finamore's great piece on the trial for In These Times.

Friday in court - In the fetal position.

Andy Stern, Mary Kay Henry, Anna Burger, Dave Regan, Eliseo Medina, Leon Chow, Steve Trossman, Rebecca Malberg, and SEIU* continued their federal lawsuit dramedy on Friday, as reported by readers...



It's abundantly clear that this was (and still is) a real no-expense-spared trusteeship. Why bother taking bids from security companies to get the best deal, when Kaiser members' dues will cover it all in a month? Fly staff in from across the country? Put even the local staff in hotels? No problem, members will pick up the tab! And the same goes for this lawsuit, which is costing at least twice the damages SEIU are demanding. After all, it would be stupid to pinch pennies now, when losing the big Kaiser unit would cost SEIU a billion dollars over the next twenty years.

Leon Chow got more interesting under cross examination on Friday, as he stepped up his "just following orders" act and pretended not to know where the slogan "Yes we can!" originated. It's actually hard to tell how much real agency Chow had in planning for the trusteeship - even Perez can't decide whether he was the second-in-command top official and leader the defendants' lawyers argue he was, or the confused idiot he tries to paint himself as. What is clear is that (as NUHW's lawyers say) if he hadn't run scabbing back to SEIU, Chow would be sitting with the defendants. One last thing about Leon Chow: both sides agree that he's a key witness, as the plaintiffs argue he proves the defendants plotted illegally, and the defendants counter that as a central player in the efforts to resist SEIU, Chow never saw any evidence that a new union was being formed before the trusteeship went into effect.

Then came Eliseo Medina himself, to describe how he was appointed the "external relations" trustee (bad choice) and claim that he was just sent to California to collect information and make sure that all grievances and arbitration were up to date! Perez hears he seemed nervous on the stand - a reader describes how he turned his head in one direction and then another, as if trying to look in control! One of SEIU's lawyers ("the dark haired one") apparently has a flair for the cutesy, and tried it with Eliseo, asking whether locals 6434 and 521 had "a smile or a frown" about the jurisdiction decision, irritating the judge. Overall, Eliseo's testimony mostly just made it abundantly clear that the trusteeship was a done deal way in advance.

And then the court got on to the security cost charges. Supposed to be a big shocker, Perez hears they melted away like a snowman (a straw-man?) in the sun...

Confidential Administrative Assistant (that means she works for management and isn't a member of the staff union) Rashida Anthony did a decent job, but her part was overwritten, and just not supported by the material. It's clear that it was pretty stressful to work in SEIU's secret Alameda office before the trusteeship, but SEIU's lawyers just pushed it all too far, especially given that no one was hurt, nothing was damaged, and no charges were filed in the scuffle Anthony described. Readers say the lawyers repeatedly asked Anthony about "her little daughters", until the judge scoffed that it was too much, and that they tried to put a strange and uncomfortable spin on her testimony that had some weird racial and sexual overtones.

Perez thinks the defendants lawyers should be asking why SEIU hired such crappy security along with why they hired so much! What kind of a former secret service agent curls up into "the fetal position" (as emphasized repeatedly by Anthony), or is left "shaken and scared" when thirty (mostly middle-aged women) health care workers hold a protest in an office? Well, most likely they ended up with such an ineffective team (so ineffective SEIU were withholding payment, remember?), because they just threw some money at Jerry Bullock and told him they wanted what the real corporations have...

Bullock reportedly seemed like a decent enough guy when he took the stand Friday, but he didn't do well as the expert witness SEIU wanted to use him as. Under cross examination he revealed that he is actually the only employee of his (previously) impressive sounding "Bullock and Associates", and provides security services by sub contracting to other companies like the OSO Group. Of course, he also stands to make a lot of money from a successful SEIU lawsuit. Bullock could only remember a few "threatening incidents", almost none in the crucial period before the trusteeship, and the only records he kept of them were emails to SEIU staff. One of the incidents he described was a break-in to cars belonging to SEIU staff when the cars were parked at a hotel for the night. What was stolen? GPS devices and clothing. Left behind? Files and lists! Another "threatening incident" was the time someone allegedly drove past Mary Kay Henry's San Fransisco home and took pictures - in response Bullock and OSO Group provided round the clock personal protection for Henry and her partner through May 2009.

More than one reader was grateful to Bullock however, for the trip down memory lane his testimony provided. Perez himself clearly remembers the paranoia dripping from SEIU in spring 2009, the sense that they expected anything to happen, and were prepared to do anything in return. One reader described a juror as "visibly moved" on hearing the extreme measures SEIU took by hiring a security company (OSO) that specializes in "counter intelligence, asset searches, and investigations". Bullock reportedly looked sheepish as he described how one night he thought he was being menaced by someone in a van with a "firearm", but it actually turned out to be a video camera. Heady days, but so expensive!

The day ended (as they increasingly do) with Judge Alsup asking SEIU to explain just exactly what their legal argument is supposed to be. But of course, this isn't a real trial, it's a play about a trial - written by SEIU, and acted poorly by paid SEIU staff cast into insultingly corny roles. It's not about the truth, it's SEIU's chance to recite every slur and accusation they've made in the past year, and brand it all with the "Federal Court" seal of legitimacy. Anything any witness says can be spun in a flyer as "It was revealed in Federal Court that..." See how it works?

Well that's enough fun for Friday. The trial resumes Monday, when Perez hears SEIU will be bringing the crazy more than ever!

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*Dear fellow union democracy bloggers. Please join me in using the full names of SEIU staff and bosses at the beginning of posts for the benefit of Google indexing.

Perez is partying!

The Friday court report will be online asap Saturday...

Thursday in court - So what? And what?!

Andy Stern, Mary Kay Henry, Anna Burger, Dave Regan, Eliseo Medina, Leon Chow, Steve Trossman, Rebecca Malberg, and SEIU continued their federal lawsuit dramedy on Thursday, as reported by readers...

Readers write that Judge Alsup always tells it like it is, and he kicked off this morning by telling SEIU "This is a problem of your own making! You're overreaching over there, and you're being greedy!" SEIU's lawyers were wrestling yet again with the challenge of demanding money without saying how much and what they want it for, and were bargaining to call in a witness with massive limits on what he would be allowed to speak about. It didn't work out for them, today at least...

As Perez hears it, everything felt messy today, like the court was trying to untangle a snarl of wires to find what was in the center (hint - nothing!). Judge Alsup himself admitted that he'd been confused about the Education Fund and the Patient Education Fund, and the jury asked for a definition of the word "redacted". The judge is constantly clarifying things to the jury, repeating over and over that anything the lawyers claim is not evidence (only witness testimony and exhibits like documents are evidence), and that resisting the trusteeship was not unlawful. But SEIU doesn't want the jury to be clear, their aim is plainly to push the "no smoke without fire" line as far as they can.

But unfortunately, many of their poorly prepared witnesses (were they told this would be a slam-dunk?) leave the stand hopelessly confused and defeated themselves. Witness Fresno homecare member Jackie Peppars (famous for wearing purple camouflage to speak at a rally) unable to say which union NUHW activist Kevin Hall was working with when he allegedly gave her a list to contact other homecare workers after the trusteeship, or where that list came from. Sources say Jackie left the stand looking humiliated - SEIU's lawyers (who likely made more money in the time it took to lead her through her testimony than a homecare worker makes in a week) should not have put her up there.

Mostly, SEIU's witnesses seem to be falling into two categories - first there are the "so what?" witnesses like Miriam Escamilla and scab homecare director Leon Chow, whose late-afternoon testimony was apparently so boring and drawn out that one reader reports: "By the time Chow was done I was freezing cold and my butt hurt from the seat"! These witnesses tell long stories about personal emails and secret meetings that sound juicy and compelling, but turn out to have been totally legitimate. In Escamilla's case, the judge was apparently so bewildered by the hours of pointless stories that he demanded the lawyers explain just what her testimony was supposed to show.

And then there are the "maybe perjury" witnesses, who contradict themselves big time, and get caught out lying! Lisa Gude definitely fell into that second category today, as it came out that she'd been on first name terms with nursing home bosses since mid-January, and had all the files she needed to bargain by the time of the trusteeship, courtesy of those same helpful bosses. The essential files she claimed defendant Mark Kipfer had kept from her turned out just to be a small stack of notes. As a reader writes, that's all while contradicting her earlier deposition that she had exactly no bargaining files, and nothing she needed to bargain - flat out lies.

To add insult to injury (hers and the workers whose union she attacked), Lisa Gude also testified to being director of UHW's CHW hospitals department (everyone's a director of something now!). When asked what CHW stands for, she stumbled a bit then said "Catholic Healthcare Workers" as if it were a union and not an employer... Which I guess is easy to confuse if you're SEIU!

Perez rests his case for Thursday! Keep your testimony coming to perezstern@gmail.com!

Wednesday in court - [Redacted]

Andy Stern, Mary Kay Henry, Anna Burger, Dave Regan, Eliseo Medina, Leon Chow, Steve Trossman, Rebecca Malberg, and SEIU continued their federal lawsuit on Wednesday...

Sounds like it got even clearer today that SEIU are walking a very narrow plank! How can they prove their case without mentioning anything that would clue the jury in on what's really going on here?

The way things work in court, the NUHW defendants can only respond to the evidence and issues that SEIU bring to the room. Because they are defending themselves against SEIU's allegations and not making their own case, if SEIU don't mention something, the judge doesn't allow the defendants to. Yesterday that led to some dramatic cliffhangers, as SEIU's lawyers objected (and the judge upheld) just as some pretty big deal things like Tyrone Freeman's massive corruption and SEIU's payments to Ray Marshall were about to come to the jury's attention.

Readers say that the jury now seem increasingly suspicious and perplexed about just what it is they're not allowed to know that would apparently affect the case in NUHW's favor so much. Perez hears that the judge keeps reminding the jury NOT to go on the internet, and NOT to Google anything (wonder if he's seen Perez?). That's how a jury trial works, but it's super weird and awkward here - this isn't like say, a murder trial, where anything in the press is essentially speculation, this is a situation that has been investigated and written about by serious and neutral (and some not so serious or neutral!) people for two years. There's 1,000x more information available outside the courtroom than will ever come out inside it.

So SEIU are backing off of charges and running rings around themselves trying to keep the juicy stuff out of court while simultaneous smearing the defendants enough to make it all worthwhile, and it's tough!

First thing this morning SEIU read a little of Sal Rosselli's speech to the 2008 convention, but then they ended up being forced to read the whole thing to a visibly moved jury. Then later on, Mary Kay Henry (left) opened the door to her own cross-examination over the undemocratic trusteeship process, and ended up admitting that the long-term-care workers (who such urgent action had to be taken to protect) are still part of UHW, as the trustees haven't gotten around to complying with the IEB's order yet! Almost every document SEIU tried to submit today was heavily redacted (blacked out), but after the judge agreed with the defendants' lawyers, many redactions ended up getting redacted, with the documents going to the jury whole.

So watch out, there's an iceberg under that little visible tip!

And then the rest of the day sounds like it was a parade of lazy mediocrity, as one newly over-promoted and over-dressed SEIU staffer after another took the stand. First, Cass Gualvez (left) admitted that she was MIA as a union rep. Apparently she was so MIA that the member who followed her on the stand was asked if he knew that she became his rep soon after the trusteeship, and he replied "I know now!" Then came Oriana Saportas, grinning horribly and contradicting herself about Kinko's and car trunks, and then finally Miriam Escamilla (who deserves her own post or two for other reasons...), to tell a damning story of how the defendants prepared to help members organize against the trusteeship (which the judge has repeatedly stated is fine), and how she was fully involved at every step.

Isn't it fascinating to see how SEIU hired all these staffers who took part in such terrible treachery against workers, and made them all directors of something or other just a few months later! What could they possibly do to repay SEIU's forgiveness and generosity?

One last gem comes from a reader who found themselves locked out in the hallway in today's crack-down on bathroom breaks (Judge Alsup runs a tight ship, and you had better respect it!). Talking to another observer standing by the closed and guarded doors, Debbie Schneider suggested a little too loudly that she and her team should put on their NUHW t-shirts, and just barge their way in! "What do you mean? Why would we do that?" replied the observer, sounding bemused, and forcing Debbie to explain that the judge would then think NUHW were the ones causing trouble.

Just a tip, Debbie - that kind of joke is supposed to be about an obviously ridiculous thing no one would dream of doing, not something your organization is accused of on a regular basis!

Reader reports to the usual address please, see you all tomorrow!

Tuesday in court - SEIU me if I go too fast...

Well yes, I am mostly retired... and I owe you all a much better sign-off and an explanation of where I've been the past few months. But can we put that all to the side for a moment while we talk about THE TRIAL?

I just got a super detailed report on today's "proceedings", and I bet there's more on the way. So I make no promises about being back for good, but how could I pass up the chance to dish on this one?

But first (for anyone who somehow dodged the avalanche of spam email) here's what's going on in San Francisco right now: this is the week disgraced former UHW leaders will stand trial in federal court to be held accountable! Ok, sorry if I sound flippant, it's just that after a whole year, the shock-tastic word-soup is stale beyond stale, and I could write SEIU spam in my sleep!

But being entirely straightforward about it for a moment, this two week period is the end result of all SEIU's digging and deposing and lawyering over the past year. It's their civil case (NOT criminal, as they'd like to imply) against the leaders and activists who formed NUHW after the trusteeship of UHW, and this is supposed to be where it all comes out and gets cleaned up. All the rhetoric and smears of the campaign they've waged against workers in California have hinged on the case SEIU claim they can make in court this week.

Others have already made the point that this seems to be the incredible shrinking case - after asking for $25 million in damages to start out, SEIU are now down to demanding around $5 million, with multiple accusations and multiple would-be defendants dropped along the way. But Perez thinks that's not just down to incompetence or a weak case. At SEIU the lines between spin and facts have always been more than blurred, and every action is just a little hook to hang a giant sack of PR on. So why not have a trial just for show? SEIU can afford it! If groundless threats of legal action scare members a little, a real trial will scare them a lot, right? Think of this as "Puerto Rico Convention - The Sequel!" Let Perez know when the jumbo-tron of legal costs starts up!

So the trial began this Monday, but there was nothing much to tell you about yesterday (and not enough people had begged me to blog again). Yesterday was all about laying the ground rules and selecting a jury. Things began today for real.

So as Perez hears it, here were the five best moments in court today...

5) Playing Perez bingo.
Sounds like SEIU's section is a who's who of all your favorite characters from the last 14 months! Oh look, there's 'Hands-On-Edgar'! and there's Rebecca Malberg, and there's Amado David (leaning against a wall as usual) And doesn't that look a little like Steve Trossman over there? Reports say the jobs rush pioneers are looking a little worn, but they have new yuppie accessories ($400 purses galore!) to make it all worthwhile.

4) Nancy Herrera Barrett flips hair, rolls eyes.
Perez hears this woman is a star! If you need someone to make faces and purposefully misunderstand, hire her! If you need someone to be an effective union rep, or follow legal directions when under oath, maybe not. When asked if she had any notes on grievances, Nancy apparently replied that she didn't have any handwritten notes! What a cunning legal strategy!

3) Shallow Hal is actually very serious.
For anyone who hasn't heard, Hal Ruddick went to Yale! SEIU lawyers were sure to point that out, just in case anyone had any doubts about Hal's qualifications for taking over a thriving union, lying to members, and canceling bargaining session after bargaining session. Also serious apparently, Hal's hurt feelings when he got a leaflet that called him a union buster - so serious that he took the dramatic step of... telling someone at the office the next day. Apparently Hal "does indeed have a wife" though, so don't get any ideas about trying to slip anything else into his hotel room, if you know what I mean...

2) SEIU only really wants about $5 probably.
Have you heard all about how NUHW activists put members at risk and jeopardized bargaining and grievances? How they sabotaged the work of the union for months for their own gain? Well apparently not so much! Jaws dropped in court today when SEIU's lawyer explained that SEIU is not claiming that any delays or harm were caused to the work of the union by the actions of departing staff and members. It's just the time they allegedly spent planning it all in January that SEIU has a problem with.

1) The judge's "WTF? Then why are we here?" moment!
Perez hears that Judge Alsup was pretty punchy, and snapped at the NUHW legal team a couple times for trying to explain the full circumstances of the trusteeship and tell the story of why UHW fought back against the international. Alsup insisted that the lawyers stick to a narrow response to SEIU's charges (unfair and practically impossible, but that's the legal system for you). Readers say that things felt lop-sided, and the imbalance was frustrating... until SEIU's big moment (see 2) when as the judge asked SEIU to clarify their stunning reversal, a look of disbelief came over his face, and his tone changed. Seems like the judge is realizing that it's not just NUHW who are trying to tell more than the bare facts, SEIU are there for the PR points, and they're the ones filing charges and wasting his time.

So that's my rundown of day one, as reported by my readers. Sorry if I'm a little rusty, I've missed you all!