New York Times: Union wins damages

NewsApril 10, 2010

By Steven Greenhouse

A federal jury in San Francisco awarded more than $1.5 million in damages to the Service Employees International Union on Friday in a lawsuit that accused a breakaway union local and its leaders of illegally undermining the S.E.I.U. The jury ordered the breakaway unit, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, to pay $724,000 and ordered several of its leaders, including Sal Rosselli, its president, to pay $30,000 to $74,000 each. The S.E.I.U., which put its large Oakland health care local into trusteeship 15 months ago, prompting the breakaway, said the verdict showed that the Rosselli group had illegally used union money and salaries to finance the breakaway. Saying it would ask the judge to overturn the verdict, Mr. Rosselli’s group noted that 12 defendants had been cleared of all charges and that the jury award fell far short of the $25 million the S.E.I.U. was seeking.

Source: The New York Times