UFCW Boss Picketed For Allegedly Retaliating Against Union Organizer For Supporting Sexually-Harassed Co-Workers

She’s not going to take it: UFCW boss mired in sexual harassment lawsuits allegedly retaliates against organizer for supporting women accusers.

A United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union boss in Southern California is being sued by two of his UFCW employees for sexual discrimination, including one who claims she was “forced” into a “years-long, sporadic sexual relationship that she relented to out of fear that she would lose her job” (see background here).
Now, the same UFCW boss, Mickey Kasparin of SoCal’s Local 135, has allegedly retaliated against another female UFCW employee—UFCW organizer Anabel Arauz—for purportedly supporting her co-workers’ claims, according to the Times of San Diego.
As a result, Ms. Arauz and others picketed a meeting where her boss was overseeing a meeting and called for his resignation.

Wednesday night, Arauz and two dozen others were out picketing her boss, Michael “Mickey” Kasparian. 

They called on him to resign as president of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, where he was overseeing a monthly meeting.

Arauz, summoned to the meeting via email Monday, said she was told less than two hours before it began that she was not welcome.

Arauz called it retaliation for siding with two former UFCW workers — Sandy Naranjo and Isabel Vasquez — whose lawsuits accuse Kasparian of sex harassment or a hostile work environment. And also for filing her own retaliation/discrimination claim.

“At 4:45 today, in the office, Mickey Kasparian came downstairs and said that I’m no longer a delegate,” Arauz said on a sidewalk outside the International Association of Machinists lodge on Kearny Mesa Road.

“No reason given to me why,” said the 35-year-old Chula Vistan. “He just said I’m no longer a delegate, and I’m not needed at tonight’s meeting.”