Times exposes home-care union

In a front-page story, The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday (Aug. 9) that the largest union local in the state—whose president, Tyrone Freeman, also heads the union that represents more than 2,000 Butte County homecare workers—had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by Freeman’s wife and mother-in-law.

The L.A.-based local, which represents some 160,000 low-wage, in-home health-care workers, is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union.

Freeman’s local also “spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse” and a consulting contract with a Hollywood talent agency, the Times reported. It also “paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee,” among other questionable expenditures.

Freeman (shown here during a 2006 conference at Chico State University) said he and his union have done nothing wrong. “Every expenditure has been in the context of fighting poverty,” he told the Times.

In addition to the SEIU local, Freeman heads California United Homecare Workers, which represents 30,000 in-home workers, including those in Butte County