Employers, more than ever before, need to protect themselves against accidents and crimes committed by their employees. With negligent hiring, lawsuits, training costs, workplace violence and theft on the rise, pre-employment screening as well as taking the correct pre-employment screening steps are no longer an option, but rather a necessity for businesses.

Jaime E. Feliciano, SEIU Local 1000 District Labor Council 784 president, was arrested September 9 on charges of suspicion of possessing child pornography and violating his probation as a registered sex offender. He was convicted in 1993 for a lewd or lascivious act with a child under the age of 14 years, which is a felony.

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department received a tip from police in Reno that Feliciano allegedly had inappropriate contact with a juvenile there. This information was turned over to a high-tech crime task force, who then initiated a compliance check at Feliciano’s home as he is on probation. While searching his home, the task force found thousands of pornographic pictures of children on his computer.

In trying to discover the union’s stand on this incident, we discovered their website (http://www.dlc784.org/) has been temporarily disabled. The union represents employees at various state agencies such as the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Social Services.

The union’s spokesman, Jim Zamora, did issue a statement via email which stated that Feliciano was elected by his fellow workers and other nearby agencies. The position was unpaid. He went on to say that no background check or criminal-records search of internal candidates for union elections has ever been required.

The statement went on to say:

“Obviously this case raises the issue that perhaps more vetting should be done in the future. That is something that would be reviewed by Local 1000 attorneys, our president and other senior leaders. But at this time, everyone is waiting to learn more about the criminal investigation.

He was first elected in late May and was sworn into office in mid-July. The only major meetings he attended as an elected official were on the July weekend he was sworn in. (Local 1000′s main council meets 4 times a year) Prior to his election in June, I’m not sure how active he was in Local 1000 or how well known he was to workers outside of his colleagues at the Department of Insurance. His elected position did not put him in contact with children or teenagers.”

The union plans on removing him from his position and banning him from membership. We were able to obtain Feliciano’s criminal record in a matter of minutes. One hopes that in the future, this union will institute background checks as part of their employment and election process.

Tags: registered sex offender, sex offender, union leader arrested

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 3:22 pm 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.