California union files for restraining order to remove suspended president from headquarters

A union official asked a judge for a temporary restraining order Tuesday to try to remove SEIU Local 1000 president Richard Louis Brown and a small group of his supporters from the organization’s Sacramento headquarters, where they have been holed up since Saturday.

Brown and his supporters entered the building without a key after three vice presidents locked him out last week. Their lockout followed the VPs’ decision to suspend Brown’s presidency based on their allegations that he had misspent union money, mishandled lawsuits and shut out other union officials from leadership.

Tuesday’s request, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court by Local 1000 board member Bill Hall, says the continued occupation poses “an immediate and serious threat to the Union and its ability to properly serve the approximately 100,000 workers that it represents.” Hall was appointed board chairman in a Saturday vote that Brown disputes.

The filing, which also identifies Local 1000 as a plaintiff, asks the judge to order Brown and his supporters to leave and to return boxes of documents that Brown removed from the building as soon as he entered Saturday.

Brown did not immediately respond to a text on Tuesday. He has said the vice presidents’ suspension of him was illegitimate. He said he suspended their union membership before they moved to suspend his presidency — on grounds they were plotting to suspend him — and that his prior action rendered theirs null. He told police who arrived Saturday that he had the right as president to be inside the building.

One of Brown’s supporters opened a door just before its magnetic lock engaged, seconds after a building maintenance employee had exited the building. After getting inside, Brown’s group drilled out locks to various offices and replaced them with locks to which only that group has keys, according to the filing.

The filing raises concerns that the group might access private, sensitive documents stored in a human resources office or the office of Local 1000 chief counsel Anne Giese. Brown has threatened to enter those rooms, according to the filing.

Brown and Giese engaged in negotiations Saturday in which Brown’s group said they would enter her office unless she “agreed to write out a document by hand resembling a hostage note that contained an apology to Brown and his supporters for describing their actions as a ‘break in,’” the filing says.

Giese wrote the note, but then Brown “escalated his demands on her and suggested their deal was off, with the clear implication being that his confederates might drill out the lock to that suite of offices after all,” according to the filing.

Giese on Monday “received a report” that the lock on the human resources office had been drilled out, according to the filing.

Also on Monday, a U.S. Postal Service truck attempted to deliver mail to the building. Brown and a Local 1000 employee argued over who would receive the mail. The mailman drove away, keeping the mail, according to the filing.

The request for the temporary restraining order was filed by Washington, D.C.-based firm Bredhoff and Kaiser, along with Katzenbach Law Offices in San Rafael and Rothner, Segall and Greenstone in Pasadena.

SEIU International, the parent organization for Local 1000 and other chapters of the Service Employees International Union, is a party to the lawsuit.

The events of the weekend escalated a dispute that began around the time of Brown’s May 2021 election. The union’s board of directors resisted some of his plans to drastically change how the union is operated, including plans to remove the influential organization from politics completely, and they have challenged his attempts to push through changes without board support.

The attorneys wrote in the filing that the vice presidents had properly suspended Brown according to the union’s bylaws based on their allegations of misconduct.

The attorneys addressed Brown’s argument in their filing. Suspending union membership has protections in the California Corporations Code requiring advance notice and the opportunity to be heard prior to suspension. Brown didn’t provide that, according to the filing.

It’s much easier under the law for multiple officers to take action regarding another’s officer position, according to the attorneys.

About 40 members of the union’s board of directors met Saturday in a virtual session. Local 1000 secretary-treasurer David Jimenez, who is a vice president, said at the meeting that the members present had voted unanimously to support the suspension by the three vice presidents.

The board also voted in closed session to change the union’s bylaws to provide for the hiring of a neutral hearing officer to weigh formal disciplinary proceedings against Brown. The union’s policies say a hearing must be scheduled within 30 days of delivering a written grievance to the president.

The group also voted 25 to 11 to ratify changes made at an October board meeting. At that meeting, board members supported major changes to the union’s bylaws that transfer most of the organization’s leadership powers from the president to a board-selected chairperson.

The board on Saturday affirmed Hall as the chairman, and the vice presidents announced Monday they acknowledged Hall as leader.

This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 12:28 PM.