TITLE: Doug Caine fired!,\u2026 but why?<\/p>\n
There has certainly been a great deal of discussion in our
\nLocal concerning what happened at the Board meeting this
\nlast Tuesday, May 14th. At last Tuesday\u2019s Board meeting
\nmembers presented evidence that led directly to the dismissal
\nof Local 47 Office Manager Doug Caine.<\/p>\n
I.THE BACKGROUND
\n\tII. THE INVESTIGATION
\n\tIII. THE BOARD MEETING
\n\tIV. THE MAIN FELONIES (Forgery and Grand Theft)
\n\tV. THE AFTERMATH
\n\tVI. THE FUTURE<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At the Local membership meeting of April 24th, a motion was
\npassed requiring the Board to investigate whether someone within
\nthe Local created the false e-mail address attempting to pass
\nitself off as this Committee. The email sent from this imposter
\ncontained a letter sent from Local 47 member Charles Fernandez
\nwhich was initially sent to only eight officers of the Executive
\nBoard. The email sent by the copycat also contained President
\nEspinosa\u2019s reply to that letter, which was never received by Charles Fernandez by Post Office or email. Presumably the letter was
\nintercepted before getting out of the Local, but this is only a theory.<\/p>\n
The imposter had to have access to Mr. Fernandez\u2019 letter, President Espinosa\u2019s reply AND the email addresses of Local 47 members.
\nThis was a small circle of people including those on the Board, those
\nwho work within the offices of the executive officers and, IF both
\nletters happened to be left at a copy machine, someone else within
\nthe Local. No one outside of the Local received President Espinosa\u2019s
\nreply until the imposter email was sent to a large number of the members
\non March 15th, 2006.<\/p>\n
The person who created the email showed a willingness to misuse
\nprivate correspondence and private member information to attempt to discredit another entity.<\/p>\n
Though the implication was that someone WITHIN THE LOCAL was willing
\nto do this, the Board was seemingly willing to \u201csit on their hands\u201d
\nfor three weeks, until the President returned from two weeks in Europe.
\nThe fear that the person would use members\u2019 info again didn\u2019t seem to
\nbe of serious concern to them.<\/p>\n
This likelihood WAS of paramount concern to the Committee and other
\nMembers however. <\/p>\n
We decided not to wait.<\/p>\n
II. THE INVESTIGATION <\/p>\n
Combining forces with a number of members inside and outside of the Committee, we made a short list of those we felt would have had the expertise and desire to perpetrate the false email. After an
\nexhaustive search of public records, a Local 47 employee was discovered
\nto have an extensive record of criminal conviction. The accuracy of the information was verified by a second source.<\/p>\n
We also were informed by legal counsel that until we turned over the information to the Local, WE would be liable should the suspected perpetrator do anything else illegal. We were legally obligated to
\nturn over our information to the Board.<\/p>\n
Please note that according to Federal Labor Law, a convicted felon cannot work in any capacity at any Union Local until 13 years after the conviction date. The employee in question was convicted in 1999.<\/p>\n
III. THE BOARD MEETING<\/p>\n
This past Tuesday members spoke at the Board meeting. <\/p>\n
David Schubach spoke eloquently and effectively in reminding the
\nBoard that the membership mandate on the location of the referral service
\nis NOT AN OPTION. The Board has no choice but to put the office back to the membership mandated position or be guilty of breaking their oaths of office to uphold and respect the membership of this Local. It\u2019s been over 20
\ndays since the meeting and NO action has been taken to fulfill their obligation. <\/p>\n
Lisa Haley then discussed an e-mail the Overture refused to print that
\nsang the praises of the upswing in SELA contract submissions to the
\nreferral service (Before Errol Henry was fired) in the last 2 years and encouraging younger musicians to join. Serena was reminded yet again
\nthat the only two reasons a letter can be denied publication, according to Article V, Sec. IV(i) of the Local 47 bylaws, is if it constitutes a violation of Federal Law or might involve the Local or any member thereof in litigation or bring either into disrepute. Neither of these arguments applied to Lisa’s letter and they had to agree to print it. One would wish this problem wouldn’t repeatedly crop up with letters to the
\nOverture that give info some in the administration don’t want out there. <\/p>\n
**IMPORTANT POINT**
\nWhen the appointment with the Board was made the previous week, it was
\nmade clear that the two subjects for the agenda were membership concerns
\nand personnel issues. At approx 10:25am Tuesday morning, AFTER the Board meeting had begun, The members were called and told that personnel issues was being taken off the agenda and we could not talk about them. <\/p>\n
From virtually the moment Charles Fernandez stood up, the Board attempted
\nto prevent him from speaking. He had to force the issue, arguing that few things concern the MEMBERSHIP more than the safety and security of their personal information and that their information was vulnerable. Together with the other speakers the members persisted and the evidence was presented. <\/p>\n
The Board didn’t want to hear a word, but having the information made
\nTHEM liable if anything else happened. <\/p>\n
President Espinosa had no choice but to contact the Local’s legal
\ncounsel Lewis Levy. Mr. Levy informed President Espinosa that they
\nmust ask the employee directly. When asked about the information, Doug
\nCaine admitted the convictions were his. <\/p>\n
According to President Espinosa, Doug Caine was immediately fired, his
\noffice closed and his belongings removed.<\/p>\n
IV. THE MAIN FELONIES
\nThough the explanation currently on the local website intimates that the \u201cfelony\u201d that got Caine fired was related to drugs, the Felonies on his three page rap sheet of convicted and dismissed crimes that bothered US were his convictions for Felony Forgery and Felony Grand Theft (Not-auto).
\nWe did not have the intension of mentioning his specific crimes, but since the President is trying to mischaracterize the severity of Doug Caine\u2019s crimes, we felt no choice but to ONCE AGAIN set the record straight for the Local.<\/p>\n
V. THE AFTERMATH<\/p>\n
The administration never did a background check on Mr. Caine, so for
\nthe past several years a convicted felon has had access to the personal
\nand private information of all 9000 members. The intimidation, games, threats and harassment of our employees by Mr. Caine had been appalling
\nand inexcusable but he was seemingly given carte blanche. He was never disciplined by the current administration in any serious way for ANY of
\nhis inappropriate actions. Our officers are ultimately responsible for the actions of all our employees. <\/p>\n
The employees that Doug Caine fired and disciplined were never given
\nthe opportunity to defend themselves in front of the Board. The Board accepted Doug Caine\u2019s evaluation of the employees\u2019 job performances
\nand allowed them to be fired. Most recently Mr. Caine\u2019s intimidation resulted in nine-year employee John McMahon (The Directory Office)
\nquitting.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the Board honestly did not know the extent of Doug Caine\u2019s
\nactions, but the increased number of firings should have been a red
\nflag.<\/p>\n
For all the negative actions committed by Doug Caine to our employees
\nand members while he was at our Local, please keep in mind that he
\nhad to have been acting on directions from one of the executive
\nofficers.<\/p>\n
VI. THE FUTURE<\/p>\n
All Local 47 members should be very concerned that our personal
\ninformation including social security numbers was so vulnerable for
\nso long. We should be equally concerned that the Board seemed to have
\nno problem letting weeks go by with no investigation knowing that
\nsomeone, possibly within the Local, was able and willing to misuse
\nmember information.<\/p>\n
As always the Local is more than welcome to comment or attempt to
\nrefute anything they do not believe is a fair description of what transpired.
\nWe will print it verbatim.<\/p>\n
It is a shame that Local 47 members themselves had to spend there
\nown money and donate their own hours (and still are) to do what
\nthe Board should have been more than anxious to do.<\/p>\n
If you have questions, please write to us AND\/OR call the Local and
\nspeak to the officers. The more you know about the situation from
\nboth sides the better you will be able to judge what transpired
\nimpartially.<\/p>\n
One threat to our Locals\u2019 members has been removed, but there
\nis much more work to do. We have a membership meeting on July 24th,
\nplease make plans now to be there.<\/p>\n
Thank you for reading!,<\/p>\n
THE COMMITTEE FOR A MORE RESPONSIBLE LOCAL 47<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TITLE: Doug Caine fired!,\u2026 but why? There has certainly been a great deal of discussion in our Local concerning what happened at the Board meeting this last Tuesday, May 14th. At last Tuesday\u2019s Board meeting members presented evidence that led directly to the dismissal of Local 47 Office Manager Doug Caine. I.THE BACKGROUND II. THE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-committee-newsletters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.responsible47.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}