Excerpt: A major California health care workers' union and its parent union are locked in a barbed and distracting struggle that could end early next year in a takeover, with the state labor leaders dismissed and replaced by leaders of the larger group.

If that is the outcome in the fight between California's SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, representing 150,000 health care workers, and Service Employees International Union, the nation's fastest-growing union, the ramifications may be messy - just as labor is reveling in November election results that give members more reason for optimism than they've had in many years.

SEIU, the international union whose president is the driven and provocative labor leader Andy Stern, is attempting to consolidate three locals representing home health care workers into one. That would strip 65,000 members from Oakland's United Healthcare Workers-West, and seriously dilute members' contract negotiating power and erode union standards, says the group's president, Sal Rosselli, who is Stern's equal in passionate advocacy.

That is the battle on one front. On a separate front, SEIU is alleging that Rosselli and others in United Healthcare Workers-West are guilty of financial mismanagement and fraud, largely by diverting $3 million in dues to a fund critics allege was for personal and political benefit of the leadership. Rosselli says that charge is "100 percent bogus" and is SEIU's bludgeon to try to break his local.

Still, last month, SEIU held six days of hearings to look into the charges and to consider whether United Healthcare Workers-West should be taken over in a trusteeship. The hearings were overseen by Ray Marshall, the secretary of labor under President Jimmy Carter, who will report his conclusion on Jan. 15, leaving the final decision whether to take over the 150,000-member local to Stern and his 60-member executive board.

"This is worse than any 'boss' campaign we have ever been through," said Rosselli. "It is like a strike."

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