Cheat Seeking Missiles

Posted by: Laer at 03:45 pm

he United Long-Term Care Workers section of the Service Employees International Union represents, by its own proud admission, “the poor serving the poor” - nursing home workers who earn $9 an hour on average.

Tyrone Freeman, who leads the section was just busted in a major LA Times investigation:

California’s largest union local and a related charity have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization’s president, documents and interviews show.

The Los Angeles-based union … spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show.

In addition, the union paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee. And a now-defunct minor league basketball team coached by the president’s brother-in-law received $16,000 for what the union described as public relations, according to the union’s U.S. Labor Department filings and interviews.

Asked about this, Freeman didn’t offer an apology (which technically precludes him from being the focus of this second “Apologies from Hell” post, but what the heck). Instead, he said:

“Every expenditure has been in the context of fighting poverty.”

Excuses from Hell, then. Every penny Freeman spent came penny by penny from workers who earn so little that their ends rarely meet. How then would a cigar that cost a full day’s wage for the men and women he represents fight poverty, exactly? What advice can William Morris offer to people who empty bedpans for a living?

As this news spreads through the union, I’m sure more than a few of the workers he represents have thought about emptying a few of those bedpans over Freeman’s pampered head.

Share this Logic Bomb with others: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.