Those who think government employees live life on a gravy train haven’t spent time examining labor unions’ racket. As a recent Politico investigation showed, one labor leader has been using his members’ dues to finance his lavish lifestyle.
While efforts by the putative Department of Government Efficiency have yet to examine labor unions, the federal government can, and should, play a role in helping to clean up this corruption. Rank-and-file members tired of being ripped off by someone who claims to be their “leader” can also vote in a new union head or, better yet, disaffiliate from the union entirely.
Lavish Expenditures
The Politico story examined the leadership of George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU United Health Care Workers East. Gresham, who has headed the union since 2007, is facing an electoral challenge from an opposition slate this year. With the union having its first competitive election since 1989, the investigation revealed the corruption that decades of uninterrupted power by a single individual and ideology can bring.
The list of questionable, dubious, and/or outright wasteful spending — spending that seems focused more on Gresham and his coterie than union members as a whole — reportedly runs the gamut:
- A total of over $86,000 was spent on two flights to South Africa, in 2014 and 2018.
- A total of approximately $92,000 was spent on a 2019 live-music event held in rural Virginia. The concerts, part of an event titled “Raise Our Voices,” were billed as part of a get-out-the-vote effort. But this event, and the others like it, were all held in the 500-person town of Urbanna — and all happened to occur when Gresham’s relatives were hosting family reunions in the same location.
- Hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of which was handed over in cash, was directed to Gresham’s former driver, who arranges entertainment for 1199SEIU parties and events, and Gresham’s son, who served as a DJ for union parties on several occasions.
- Over $60,000 was spent to “cover his daughter’s room, board, and transportation to accompany him on business trips as his caregiver,” on top of two logistics officers serving as his personal drivers and attendants.
- Over $17,000 was spent on a Residence Inn in the Bronx next to Montefiore Medical Center — even though Gresham owns his own residence in the same borough.
The largesse reportedly extended beyond Gresham’s immediate family to more extended members of his circle. The Politico story began by recounting how civil rights leader Jesse Jackson received a $50,000 “legacy award” from the union two years ago when Jackson “found himself facing a mountain of medical bills.”
Out of Touch and Unaccountable
The union attempted to explain away some of the above spending by claiming it needs to accommodate Gresham’s medical disabilities. But while we should all have grace for individuals experiencing short-term health issues, that does not and should not justify leaving someone in office who is no longer up to the duties of the job. Given that the report also noted that Gresham “shows up late to meetings, often logging on virtually while hooked up to a dialysis machine, then falls asleep in the middle of them, according to screenshots shared with POLITICO and four people who’ve witnessed it,” the latter scenario seems far more likely than the former.
More importantly, federal law requires labor unions to spend money “solely for the benefit of the union,” not just its leader nor a select group of cronies associated with the leader. A former Department of Labor official quoted in the story said the examples cited within it do not pass that test: “All of them are red flags.” If 1199SEIU members do not throw Gresham and his bunch out in the pending election — and even if they do — the Labor Department and Congress should follow up on the Politico story with investigations of their own.
The exposé into George Gresham makes the 1199SEIU leadership look like a microcosm of the current Democrat Party as a whole: out of touch, insulated from their own membership, and focused more on preserving benefits for a select elite than considering the needs of working-class Americans. It serves as another example of why so many blue-collar families have abandoned a labor movement and a Democrat Party that have spent the past several decades abandoning them.
Jesus Christ is King
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