A former Service Employees International Union executive is suing the SEIU over his firing, claiming SEIU’s President fired him to “increase her stature, her political visibility, and hide her own transgressions…”
A former executive with the Service Employees International Union has filed a $2 million defamation suit against his former employer, alleging that he was wrongly fired from his job when the union cleaned house during an internal sexual misconduct scandal last year.
According Courthouse News Service, SEIU’s former Detroit Director Mark Raleigh suit (in full below) claims that Raleigh was fired for allegations against him that were never actually made.
Further, Raleigh suggests in his suit that “he was the victim of SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry’s fervor to associate herself” with the burgeoning #MeToo movement.
The union appeared to clean house in October and November after it accepted the resignations of Executive Vice President Scott Courtney, Kendall Fells and Caleb Jennings amid allegations of misconduct toward female staffers. All three men were national leaders of campaigns to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, called Fight for $15.
Detroit Director Mark Raleigh, who was also behind the minimum wage campaign, says he too was swept up in the investigation and fired.
[snip]
Raleigh, who was fired in November while on medical leave, claims he has obtained an investigation file that proves that no women had made sexual misconduct allegations against him. In spite of that, Raleigh was mentioned in news articles published by Politico, Buzzfeed, Fox News, Bloomberg and other outlets as being part of a sexual misconduct investigation, according to his complaint.
“Mary Kay Henry, the president of the union’s two million mostly female membership, apparently decided that this would be a good opportunity to increase her stature, her political visibility, and hide her own transgressions and prior sheltering of alleged misconduct if her union publicly identified and fired male harassers within her organization,” the 12-page lawsuit states. [Emphasis added.]
In response to the lawsuit, the SEIU says it is “without merit.”
SEIU Defamation Suit on Scribd
RELATED:
Top SEIU Exec ‘Had A History Of Sexual Relationships With Young Women Staffers…’
