-By Warner Todd Huston
SEIU chief Alejandro Stephens not only benefited from some nasty double dipping with his undeserved salary, but he made thousands running a so-called charity that was to benefit union members, even though that “charity” ended up losing money netting nothing for the rank and file members. It’s a sweet deal if you can get it. It just might be, though, that Stephens has finally been caught with his hand in the till enough times that his criminal behavior is at an end.
Stephens used to be a union chief for the largest public employees local in California until the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) merged his local with another. As the consolidation occurred, the SEIU made a deal with Stephens. They would give him a $180,000 severance deal and he would step down. In the agreement he was also required to forego his compensation from Los Angeles Country coffers.
An aside before we continue. It is the perfect example of corruption and graft that the County of Los Angeles pays ANY union operative a salary that the union is supposed to be paying him. It simply does not matter at ALL what this person was doing for the county, there is NO reason the taxpayers should be paying his union salary. Now, if the county has some other job that he can hold at the same time, well that is another matter. But there is no fiscally responsible reason that a county should ever pay a union chief’s union salary. None. Not a one.
Anyway, that aside…
Naturally, when Stephens thief got his separation from the union, he relied on his union chief girlfriend to secretly reinstate his government compensation for a salary that he was no longer entitled to. This accounts for more than $47,500 a year wasted on this criminal.
So how did the criminal union chief girlfriend get the ex-chief his undeserved payments? She set him up as the head of a so-called union charity that supposedly “benefitted” county employees.
The work status Grajeda secured for Stephens was a leave designed for employees who are needed for union business that also benefits the county, such as training sessions for shop stewards, county administrators say. Stephens, however, used the time to work for a union-affiliated nonprofit that he heads. The group stages an annual 5- and 10-kilometer race that is supposed to raise money for an emergency relief fund for union members, and for cancer patients, premature babies and other charitable purposes.
For the last several years, the nonprofit’s tax returns indicate that it has done poorly at that task. In 2007, for example, the nonprofit spent $22,782 on its charitable programs, just 11% of its outlays. Seventy-eight percent of its expenditures went to fundraising costs, and it ended the year with a deficit of $34,429, Internal Revenue Service records state.
The charity netted $6,882 in fundraising returns, spending more than 90 cents for each dollar it brought in. It reported $227,742 in long-term assets and fund balances. Elizabeth Brennan, a spokeswoman for the local, said that money is available for emergency relief and “benefits our members.”
So, with hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted, money that was supposed to go to the rank and file members to help them through health disasters, this creep actually netted nothing for the charity while stuffing tens of thousands in his pocket.
And once again we see a union official that is lining his pockets, not only at the expense of the government, but at the expense of his own union brothers.
When will union members wake up and realize that no union official gives a damn about them — much less cares about their jobs, the government, or even the law?
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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