In 2023, the 96-year old trucking company Yellow Corporation filed for bankruptcy in the midst of a dispute with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Yellow attempted to restructure in the face of high debt levels in a bid to keep the company afloat, but the Teamsters blocked the plan and threatened a strike. 

Yellow shut down and 30,000 people – including 22,000 Teamsters – were left unemployed. 

In its final months, Yellow filed a lawsuit against the Teamsters, seeking to hold the union accountable for the bankruptcy. The lawsuit alleged that the Teamsters agreed to the first step of the restructuring plan in 2022, but then stonewalled the second step in 2023 – just when Yellow needed it most. 

All the while, the Teamsters seemed to celebrate the Yellow’s bankruptcy. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien called Yellow’s CEO a “greedy piece of sh*t,” and spent the company’s last days sending him insulting and childish text messages – even though the jobs of 22,000 Teamsters hung in the balance. 

Here’s how Yellow described the Teamsters actions in the original lawsuit: 

“Despite his obligations as President of the Union to its members, Mr. O’Brien plainly does not care about the 22,000 Yellow IBT employees whose jobs now hang in the balance as a result of the Union’s contractual breaches, nor does he care about the damage he will cause to America’s supply chains and the economy, or the higher consumer prices that will result from loss of competition in LTL freight shipping. He and the Union are focused instead on the bigger prizes of negotiating with UPS and unionizing Amazon.”

A US District Court dismissed the initial lawsuit brought by Yellow, but a Court of Appeals just overruled that dismissal, reviving Yellow’s legal action against the Teamsters in a unanimous ruling.

In a statement on the ruling, Yellow’s lawyers wrote that the Court “held that Yellow’s ‘factual allegations supported [its] overarching theory that the Teamsters’ ultimate plan was to ‘stall the Phase 2 [restructuring plan], blindly decline all proposals by Yellow, and foment an illegal strike.'” 

Yellow’s lawyers also reiterated the company’s desire to hold the Teamsters accountable for over $1.5 billion in alleged damages. 

For its part, the Teamsters published social media posts blaming the company “alone” for going out of business, and released a statement calling the lawsuit baseless. 

Now that the lawsuit is back on, we’ll soon know if that’s true.

SEIU-UHW is pushing a ballot measure in California called the “Clinic Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.” What’s in the proposal? A mandate that would require clinics spend least “90% of their total revenue on direct patient care and ‘mission-related services.’” 

One union spokeswoman defended the measure by saying it would ensure that funding goes to “the core mission”of the organization rather than to overhead. That’s a standard that SEIU-UHW is nowhere close to following itself. 

The core mission of a labor union is representing its members. Fortunately for the public, labor unions file publicly-available documents detailing exactly how much they spend on “representational activities” every year. In 2024, SEIU-UHW spent just over a third of its revenue on “representational activities” – the union’s “core mission.”

That’s a pretty far cry from the 90 percent rule that SEIU-UHW wants hospitals to follow. 

So where does the other two-thirds of the union’s money actually go? 

Our affiliate website, SEIUExposed, has a comprehensive breakdown of red-flag-raising spending by the union. Here are the lowlights: 

• $15 million in donations to politically and ideologically motivated organizations 
• $19 million on hotels and events
• $4.8 million on travel 
• $20.8 million on public relations
• $2.5 million on restaurants
• $1 million on merchandise 
• $4.6 million on lawyers

Some of the individual expenses are particularly indefensible. Last year SEIU-UHW gave $2.75 million in donations to the political activist group “The Fairness Project,” which didn’t even operate in California that year. Other examples include a staff retreat at the Langham Huntington (read our full investigation here), a luxurious five-star hotel whose workforce doesn’t appear to even be unionized. 

Ironically, the hospitals that SEIU-UHW is criticizing with the ballot initiative have a far better ratio of “core mission” spending to overhead. United Health Centers of the San Joaquin Valley – one of the clinics that the union singled out in its campaign – reported spending 70 percent of its total revenue on “program (core mission) services” in its most recent tax return. 

That’s almost twice the percentage that SEIU-UHW spent on its core mission of representation.

Perhaps SEIU-UHW should get its own spending priorities in order, before trying to set the rules for everyone else.

Activists and members of the labor union Workers United have sounded off against recent immigration enforcement actions. They might be singing a different tune if they knew that their own union is the largest shareholder in a bank that invests in ICE contractors. 

Workers United is the largest shareholder of Amalgamated Bank, which bills itself as a progressive organization and “America’s socially responsible bank.” Two years ago, a CUF investigation exposed the bank for reporting hundreds of millions of dollars to the SEC in investments in fossil fuels, private prisons, firearms, and tobacco.

In light of recent immigration enforcement actions, Workers United and its affiliate, the SEIU, have sharply criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The SEIU’s official website even demands that ICE “end the raids and stop unjust detentions.” However, almost ten million dollars worth of Amalgamated Bank’s investments are in ICE contractors. 

In Amalgamated Bank’s Q1 2025 holdings report, these reported investments to the SEC included: 

• 38,481 shares worth $1,124,000 in the GEO Group, which manages holding centers for ICE. 
• 31,184 shares worth $633,000 in CoreCivic, which operates ICE detention centers. 
• 15,429 shares worth $8,115,000 in Axon Enterprises, which provides tasers and other equipment to ICE. 
• 902 shares worth $27,000 in Cadre Holdings, which has provided tear gas to US Border Patrol. 

Since CUF’s 2023 report, the value of Amalgamated Bank’s investment into ICE facility operators GEO Group and CoreCivic has increased by 44 percent. Both GEO Group’s and CoreCivic’s stock prices ballooned after last year’s election, as almost 90 percent of ICE detainees are held in private prisons. CoreCivic and the GEO Group operate most of the top ICE facilities in the country, including the two largest.

Amalgamated Bank appears to have cut its total number of shares in Axon Enterprises in half in Q2 of 2023 – shortly after CUF released its report blasting the bank for its hypocritical investments. 

On June 17, the UAW’s court-appointed corruption Monitor released a report on the ongoing investigation into Shawn Fain. The report found that Fain wrongly retaliated against UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, as well as providing insight into Fain’s leadership style and behavior.

According to the report, Fain and a cadre of inner-circle staffers coordinated to produce a list of unfounded charges against Mock, ambushed her at an executive board meeting with no prior notice, and removed her of responsibility for various departments and board assignments. The report suggests that Shawn Fain did this after Mock pushed back on approving expenses requested by Fain’s Chief of Staff Chris Brooks and Communications Director Jonah Furman.

The report also gives us insight into Fain’s behavior behind closed doors. According to the report, Fain has threatened and belittled UAW staffers. This likely has contributed to a “culture of fear” that recent audits of the UAW’s staff have found. 

Here is how the Monitor described Fain’s behavior:

“Numerous interviewees told the Monitor about a staff meeting attended by SecretaryTreasurer Mock, other IEB members, and approximately 300 other UAW personnel around October 2023, at which President Fain told the UAW staff present that he would ‘slit’ or ‘cut’ the f****** throats’ of anyone who ‘messed’ with certain members of his inner circle. Nearly all interviewees who recounted this scenario to the Monitor said they interpreted Fain’s words as a serious threat that if they went against him or these referenced members of his inner circle, they would be retaliated against.”

“According to witnesses who asked to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation from President Fain, Fain approached the Head of the Print Shop and launched into what was described as a ‘tirade. He reportedly asked, ‘who told you to put [Mock’s] mother******* photo on there? This is my mother******* membership,’ and yelled, ‘who the f*** runs this mother*******  department?’ According to Vice President Boyer, who spoke with an employee who Fain yelled at after the Print Shop Incident, the employee was ‘visibly shaken’ and ‘crying.’”

The UAW responded to the report by releasing a statement saying that the Executive Board “stands by their decisions” and refused to reinstate Mock’s assignments (despite being urged to do this by the Monitor). The union also published a statement from its lawyer alleging that the Monitor is overstepping his mandate to investigate corruption in the UAW. 

The Monitor’s report notes that the Monitor is not yet taking disciplinary action against Fain due to still investigating the allegations of retaliation against UAW VP Rich Boyer. The Monitor has the authority to bring charges against Shawn Fain if needed – an action that seems more likely to be taken if the UAW’s leadership continues to reject his oversight.

After analyzing SEIU-UHW’s 2024 form LM2, SEIUExposed has released a new factsheet on UHW’s spending. Overall, the union made over $33 million worth of red-flag-raising expenses – including $11.46 million on hotels, over $10 million on advocacy, and almost $3 million on travel. 

Highlights include: 

• Giving $2.75 million (that’s the yearly average dues of about 2,500 members) to The Fairness Project, an organization that funnels money into ballot initiatives – mostly outside of the area that UHW represents.
• $2 million paid to a single political consulting firm. 
• Spending $15,704 on a “retreat” at five-star hotel Langham Huntington.
• Spending $4.5 million on UHW’s political arm. 

SEIUExposed also took a deep dive into UHW’s itemized spending on hotels and uncovered some concerning findings. Hotels tagged as “staff retreats” were almost a full star rating above the other hotels booked by UHW. These “staff retreats” appear to have taken place at places like the Langham or Kona Kai Resort, while regular hotel bookings were at places like the Holiday Inn. 

It raises the question, is UHW splurging on hotels for its staff? 

You can read the full factsheet here. 

A shocking lawsuit filed last month alleged that several student organizations at Columbia University had advance knowledge of the Hamas October 7 terrorist attack. Among the people and organizations being sued are Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), student and UAW member Mahmoud Khalil, and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) – an organization closely tied to UAW Local 2710.

According to the legal filing, SJP had allegedly remained dormant before being suddenly reactivated shortly before the attack, posting seemingly pre-prepared public relations materials. In the case of SJP, the organization started publishing materials shortly before the attack actually took place.

The lawsuit lists several people taken hostage by Hamas as plaintiffs, and includes allegations from them that their Hamas captors “bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses” and “showed [the hostages] Al-Jazeera stories and photographs of protests at Columbia University that were organized by [CUAD, SJP, and the other anti-Israel groups at Columbia].”

SJP would be suspended for its activities in November 2023, and its members immediately started using CUAD as a mouthpiece in its place – an organization that SJP helped found several years ago but remained mostly inactive until SJP was suspended.

One of CUAD’s other founders was Columbia student Grant Miner, the president of UAW Local 2710.

Along with being a founder of CUAD and a UAW local president, Miner has led his union to be a significant anti-Israel force on campus. Under his stewardship, Local 2710 signed on to CUAD’s anti-Israel coalition (alongside SJP), pressured the university to divest from Israel, and took part in the university’s anti-Israel encampment.

Several weeks ago, Miner was expelled from Columbia for his anti-Israel activism. The national UAW union released a statement on the expulsion, calling it a “gross injustice.” Later, UAW President Shawn Fain would personally call out the expulsion in a union livestream.

Perhaps the union should have kept a closer eye on what its campus members are up to before writing them blank checks of support. Or perhaps the increasing proportion of UAW membership made up of college student employees is pushing the union towards radical campus activism.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has made it their mission to unionize California hospitals saying it will “lead to safer conditions for our patients.”

The data tells a different story.

Today, the Center for Union Facts released a new, first-of-its-kind report showing that hospitals that employ nurses who are unionized with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) statistically have worse patient outcomes. 

The report analyzes the ratings of hospitals in the state of California by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The CMS scoring system summarizes a variety of patient outcomes, including mortality rates, readmission rates, complication rates, and provides a score between 1-5 based on each individual hospitals’ performance. The report focused on California, as that is where the SEIU has a large concentration of unionized hospitals.

CUF’s analysis shows that, when compared to non-unionized hospitals and hospitals where nurses are represented by other unions, SEIU-affiliated hospitals correlated with lower overall hospital ratings . 

The SEIU has a controversial history of harmful hospital strikes and allegations of abuse and harassment from the union’s own employees. The SEIU has had to pay out millions in response to legal filings and allegations, likely causing the hospitals to suffer further from lack of resources. It’s unfortunate but not surprising that the union seems to be doing much more harm than good for patients at California hospitals.

Highlights from the report include: 

• Service Employees International Union (SEIU) representation for nurses correlates with a lower overall hospital rating by as much as -0.95 stars (out of five stars) compared to hospitals with nurses represented by no unions or other unions. 
• Despite accounting for less than 11% (271 out of 251) of California hospitals, SEIU unionized hospitals account for 26.7% of all 1-star hospitals in California. 
• SEIU-unionized hospitals failed to record a single 5-star rating in California, while 17.4% of non-unionized hospitals and 12.3% of hospitals represented by other nurses’ unions achieved a 5-star rating.
• SEIU-unionized hospitals are responsible for a disproportionate share of the lowest-rated hospitals: 11.8% of Los Angeles hospitals were rated 1-star, while 35.3% of SEIU hospitals in Los Angeles County scored 1-star. 
• Instead of caring for patients, many hospitals are forced to utilize resources and money towards mitigating damages of any strike the SEIU may impose, this has included hiring a backup registered nursing staff to reduce its risk in the case of an SEIU strike.

The union is working relentlessly to expand their presence at hospitals and healthcare facilities across the country, and it’s our responsibility to call attention to the negative consequences of associating with an organization that makes the lives of patients harder, not better. 

Last year, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union was riding a wave of positive press in the wake of its high-profile strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers… 12 months later, it seems the union and its president Shawn Fain have been thrown off their high horse.

The union’s attempts to escape its corrupt past and unionize new plants have taken serious setbacks this year, and recent layoffs have made the UAW’s “record contracts” with the Big Three lose much of their luster. 

Last summer, the UAW’s court-appointed corruption monitor released a shocking report detailing an investigation into allegations that the UAW Presidents Office was engaged in misconduct and retaliation against other members of the UAW executive board. To make matters worse, the UAW was also accused by the monitor of withholding documents needed for the investigation. Eventually, a federal court needed to step in to force Fain to hand over the documents, and a new report by the monitor this month announced yet another investigation into the UAW’s leadership.

The UAW’s campaign to expand its membership in the South isn’t having much better luck, despite the $40 million committed to it. 

The unionization campaign ran into a brick wall after a humiliating defeat at Mercedes-Benz’s Vance, Alabama plant last May. Since the defeat, the UAW has failed to unionize a single one of the Southern autoplants on its hit list and has made no public announcements of unionization progress in the South.  

It’s no surprise that autoworkers are rejecting the union’s invitations, given how Fain’s members have been treated under the UAW’s “record contracts.” Over the past year, tens of thousands of UAW members have been laid off at Detroit’s Big Three, many of them permanently. At Stellantis’s Warren Truck Assembly Plant alone, over 1,000 UAW members were laid off last October – around a third of the plant’s workforce. 

Even the UAW members who managed to keep their jobs are reporting lower overall pay as they’re scheduled for fewer hours to offset the higher pay rate from the contract. 

Fain recently characterized his term as president as “the most successful year and a half in the history of this union.” Thousands of laid off UAW members likely disagree. After a year like this it would be more appropriate for Shawn Fain to change his name to Shawn Fail.