On February 17, Pamela Williams, former travel/procurement coordinator for Service Employees International Union Local 880, was charged in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois with one count of embezzling $6,080. The amount allegedly taken was modest, but the case has national significance. The Chicago-based SEIU Local 880, now known as SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, was founded some 30 years ago as a subsidiary of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, the scandal-plagued nationwide nonprofit network set to go out of existence on April 1. Pamela Williams may be little more than a small-time thief, but she’s given critics of the leadership of ACORN, and the SEIU, another reason to believe that organized labor and street radicals shouldn’t mix.
