Orange County Business : Subcontractor Sues UAW-Tied Training Program : Courts: O.C. complainant Rands Systems Inc. contends that the jobs project deliberately placed ineligible participants with the trainer.
A statewide job-training organization affiliated with the United Auto Workers union is being sued by an Orange County subcontractor for allegedly accepting state employment-training money and then deliberately placing ineligible job trainees in the program.
In a lawsuit filed this week in Orange County Superior Court, Rands Systems Inc. alleges that the union affiliate, UAW-Labor Employment and Training Corp. in Bell, failed to pay Rands at least $1.5 million for conducting job training over the last several years.
Rands said in the suit that since late 1989 the UAW affiliate has won contracts from the California Employment Training Panel, a state job-development agency, to administer various employment training projects.
Rands said it was hired as a subcontractor to conduct training for eligible participants, and it asserts that the UAW affiliate was paid in full by the state but that it “intentionally placed ineligible trainees in the project.”
The suit did not specify how the workers were ineligible.
Patricia Williams, president of the UAW training organization, declined comment Friday, saying she was unaware of the lawsuit.
Williams said her organization was no longer doing any business with Rands.
The UAW-Labor Employment and Training Corp. is a nonprofit organization that counsels and trains displaced workers to help them find new jobs.
The organization is supported by public funds and has field offices throughout the state, including one in Santa Ana.
Ted Dutton, chairman of the state Employment Training Panel in Sacramento, said Friday that he was aware of the dispute between Rands and the UAW affiliate.
However, Dutton said he did not believe the UAW training program intentionally placed ineligible trainees, as Rands contends in its suit.
Rands was incorporated in 1984 in Santa Clara, but the lawsuit states that its principal business office is in Orange County, without specifying in which city.
Kenneth Burgi, a Westminster lawyer, filed the suit for Rands, but he did not return calls Friday. Rands’ president, Robert Rapkin, could not be reached.
Burgi also filed a separate lawsuit against the UAW-Labor Employment and Training Corp. this week on behalf of Dennis Jones, a Santa Ana resident who was a vice president at the organization from 1986 to 1993.
In that lawsuit, also filed in Orange County Superior Court, Jones alleges that the UAW affiliate intentionally interfered with contractual relations that Jones had with Rands as an independent contractor by, among other things, making false allegations about Jones to state officials.
The UAW employment organization said it has not been served a copy of that suit either.
