Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

After the Barbara Bullock scandal (see Item #2 here), the last thing anyone expected to see from the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) was more allegations of fraud and financial mismanagement. But union vice president Nathan A. Saunders has made those claims against president George Parker and other WTU officials in a lawsuit filed in federal court yesterday.

The Washington City Paper reports:

“Named in the lawsuit are Parker, WTU Chief of Staff Clay White, Al Squires and Edward J. McElroy of the American Federation of Teachers (the WTU’s parent organization), four members of the WTU executive board, and three unnamed DCPS employees. The various defendants are charged with offenses including fraud, racketeering, and breach of fiduciary duties. In the complaint, Saunders says he has been exposed to “direct intimidation and retaliation impacting employment benefits, rights and privileges” for speaking out on labor issues, including [DC school chancellor Michelle] Rhee’s attempts to reclassify central-office employees as ‘at-will.’”

Saunders claims WTU officers “embezzled, stole, or unlawfully and willfully converted WTU money and funds to their own use or the use of others,” including a “diversion of WTU funds, though an out of state company, to a family member over a protracted period of time,” and an “undecipherable $10,000 finder’s fee.”

Saunders has credibility because he is in a position to know what is going on in his union. At the same time, because his first action was to file suit, rather than notify law enforcement of his suspicions, we should be very cautious about accepting his version of events without further evidence.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 10:29 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.