Soren Dayton has a great piece over at The Next Right on the dangers of the SEIU as this campaign season begins.
++++++
I have been meaning to write about this for a while, but just haven’t gotten to it. One of the more politically frightening things that I have read recently was Todd Beeton’s write up of SEIU’s Secretary-Treasuer Anna Burger’s speech to the SEIU convention in Puerto Rico two weeks ago. I can’t find the text of the speech anywhere, but Todd has excerpts. It focused on “Card Check” or the “Employee Free Choice Act” which would end the use of secret ballots in the votes to unionize shops. From Beeton:
Beeton: And the key reason it is so important:
It is the fuel — the opening — for SEIU to change our growth curve from 100,000 to a million or more workers a year.
Which ought to be enough to scare anyone. More union members means more union dues spent on politics. It is clear that the unions get this incremental approach. Read on after the jump.
What seems like a minor technical change is actually something that gives them political access to potentially transformational political power. Back to Beeton:
Beeton:That in itself, Burger argues, makes the Employee Free Choice Act larger than any one single issue, even more important than healthcare.
We are the leaders of the fight for healthcare. We are the biggest healthcare union in our three nations because we fight for it every single day. It’s time that the United States and Perto Rico join our sisters and brothers in Canda and win quality, affordable healthcare for every man, woman and child in 2009!
And:
Beeton:The passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, Burger argues, will make the difference between incremental change and transformational change, because it will allow the creation of a movement that will not only demand that change, but enable it. So, the Employee Free Choice Act is more important than healthcare because without it, there is no healthcare reform, or at least not the real reform we want and need. Same goes for every other progressive legislation we hope to pass in the post-Bush era.
Imagine a world where five years after the Employee Free Choice Act is signed into law, SEIU is organizing a million or more workers a year and the labor movement has added 20 million members to its ranks. Through the Employee Free Choice Act we’ve built a principled, permanent workers movement that will redefine politics for the next century.
This is permanent majority language. However, when we were talking about permanent majority, we were talking about moving assets into the hands of more Americans. (this is the ownership society that Barack Obama belittles) This vision is about coercively moving more and more Americans into political organizations which use their precious financial resources in a way that they neither control nor even understand.
Given what is likely to happen in the Senate this cycle, this should be taken as dire warning of what an Obama presidency would mean for our society and our economy.
In addition, it is a call to arms both in the 2008 election for Senate seats and the White House, but also for analysis and data collection. The unions and their lackies in the Demcratic party are intent on a path that will destroy our productivity for a significant period of time. We need to document where we are and what happens
Several years ago, the New York Times thought they had a major story of Walmart working behind the scenes with several conservative think tanks and pundits to create Walmart policy. It happened that Walmart had asked groups such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute to guide them.
Of course, who could either be surprised or even alarmed at these facts? After all, Walmart has the right to consult anyone they want to help them create their own policies. They ARE a company, not a government. For that matter, why should anyone get all up in arms by such a thing, even a government?
Still, the Times thought they had some outrageous scoop and this non-story, story even appeared on the front page of the business section.
Flash forward three years. Now the Times is finally fessing up that the anti-Wal-Mart group called Wal-Mart Watch has secretly been assisted behind the scenes by one of the most powerful, extreme leftwing union in the country, the SEIU.
Over the last several months, a confidential report has circulated within the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores, proposing sweeping changes to its employee health care plans.
It looks like a typical corporate planning document, but it is not. The nine-page report, written by an Emory University professor, Kenneth E. Thorpe, was commissioned, paid for and given to Wal-Mart by its longtime foes, the Service Employees International Union, and a group the union finances, called Wal-Mart Watch. They are known for attacking the chain, not cooperating with it.
But after waging an aggressive public relations campaign against Wal-Mart for three years, the company’s full-time, union-backed critics, who once vowed never to let up, are putting down their cudgels.
Of course, we are belatedly presented this SEIU meddling in Wal-Mart’s affairs in a strictly matter of fact way by the Times, here. No amazing revelations of secret backroom deals, no similar sensational reporting style with which they reported on Wal-Mart’s conservative allies.
But, there we have it anyway. Even as the Times attacked Wal-Mart for having conservaitve ties, they make no such accusation for Wal-Mart Watch and its extremist, leftist ties.
Ah the hypocrissy looms.
(H/T Clay Waters of Times Watch)
Looks like the Center for Union Facts is hitting a little too close to home for some union thugs in Maine, eh?
+++++++++ Brewer: Union head slams ads
By Eric Russell
Saturday, June 07, 2008 - Bangor Daily News
BREWER, Maine — Local union representatives are hitting back at a national nonprofit agency that has been running targeted television advertisements, including some in Maine markets, slamming labor practices.
Jack McKay, president of the Eastern Maine Labor Council, said the Center for Union Facts of Washington, D.C., claims to support workers’ rights but “everything they do undermines workers.”
“The biggest thing, I think, is that these ads are deceitful and they misrepresent what unions are asking for,” McKay said Friday of the ads, which ran on local NBC, ABC and CBS affiliates in recent weeks but have since stopped. “Truthfully, they know what we want and they are deliberately misrepresenting that.”
One of the ads in question portrays children voting in a class election and then depicts union bosses hijacking the process. Read the rest of this entry »
The last order of business for the Service Employee International Union ended with the election of the next slate of SEIU leaders. Andy Stern did not expect any “democracy” to take place in this election, though. You see, no ballots were prepared for the membership to vote upon.
It seems that the ballots prepared ahead of time only had Andy Stern’s nominees on them. Yet, when the floor was opened for nominations from the actual membership, 13 other members were nominated to run for one position or another. 13 members that Andy Stern did not have in his back pocket.
And, then everything bogged down to a crawl as Stern’s minions ran about trying to figure out how to print ballots with the nominees that Stern didn’t approve of printed thereupon. It is even reported by Maya Morris that Stern’s toadies were heard to say that they “weren’t prepared to print ballots” showing that Andy Stern didn’t expect to have any other members running for office. Obviously Stern imagined that he had his iron fist successfully beating down any other opinions. To heck with democracy.
As Maya said:
But when confronted with real democratic processes, Stern’s team was woefully unprepared. SEIU scheduled elections for its International Executive Board and its International Vice Presidents as the last agenda item on the last day of the convention. After five days of misinformation and disinformation, Stern’s management team apparently felt so confident that the Stern-approved slate of candidates would run unopposed that they did not even bother to plan a process to prepare ballots.
Nothing highlights the arrogance we’ve witnessed here at the convention more than this moment. Our message is that the union is about members; their message is that leadership rules. This election process proves our point.
Like I’ve said before, if Andy Stern is determined to eliminate democracy even among his own membership, what the heck do you think he’s going to try with the rest of us and with his influence in our government? This is a man that despises the American way of democratic participation. He believes solidly in autocratic, tyrannical rule of the elite over the rabble… and, in case you missed it, Stern thinks you and I represent the rabble.
Stern wants to do to us what he has done to his own people. Beat them down, ruin their relations with others, and destroy their reputations so that he can get his despotic will enforced.
This is the lesson of the SEIU convention. My fellow Americans, I urge you to understand that now that Andy Stern has eliminated his internal dissension inside his union, you and I are his next targets.
SEIU insurgent leader Sal Rosselli scolds Andy Stern over his campaign to destroy the UHW. This has been a vicious fight and some very underhanded tactics were perpetrated by Stern and his henchmen.
Ah, the politics of personal destruction raises its ugly head again. And, let me remind you, THIS is how union folks treat each other! Imagine how ruthless, uncaring, and cutthroat they will be with the rest of us!
Here is a radio interview with UHW member and executive board member Rosie Beyers who is voicing her displeasure at her union being summarily eliminated and folded into another local by the SEIU Washington office without the support of the UHW membership.
Why is the SEIU ignoring the vote of the members in the local? Because President Andy Stern has a plan and that plan doesn’t need any agreement by the members. Stern’s royal pronouncements don’t need any old concepts of “democracy” to get in the way.
So, what place does a union have to even discuss national war policy, much less make “resolutions” against same?
In this video a self-loathing Vietnam vet who came home to become a Vet against the war, rails about Vietnam and Iraq and makes the false claims that only poor kids fight in the war to make “the rich, richer and richer.”
This graying, ponytailed, oldster is exactly the sort of radical, anti-American that fills the SEIU right up to the brim. A union has no place discussing national war policy.
Bacack Obama spoke to the SEIU yesterday and here is the video of that appearence.
Some highlights: Obama says he “has SEIU to thank” for his campaign. Says that he agrees that he is his “brother’s keeper” and his “sister’s keeper” (excuse for big government). Barack also promises to “take back” the labor relations board which is a sly way to say that he will eliminate union oversight to allow union corruption to run amuck. And he also promised universal healthcare.
One of the nation’s largest unions revamped its constitution at a convention in Puerto Rico yesterday. Among the changes at SEIU is system that will send more money from locals to union headquarters in D.C. SEIU Leaders say will use that to launch an unprecedented campaign to help elect Barack Obama president and send pro-union lawmakers to Congress.
In Washington state, the Service Employees International Union is the largest active unions. But the new union rules will see more dues money from members here going to finance campaign activities in states more likely to decide the presidential election. David Rolf, president of SEIU Healthcare 775NW, said:
I think there’ll be an exporting of resources and talents to some of the swing states to mobilize union members.
Rolf says SEIU will still be active in campaigns here. But, he said, “We aren’t seeing competitive races emerging all over the state.” That means money and resources can be sent elsewhere.
Rolf is a strong backer of SEIU International President Andy Stern. Stern pushed through an agenda at the quadrennial convention, called Justice for All. The Wall Street Journal reports that “will further consolidate bargaining and organizing efforts across industry lines, a move that could limit the power of local unions but give the union greater leverage with big employers.”
There was an organized, but small, group opposing Stern’s plan. That opposition grows out of what The Nation calls “ The biggest union feud since the AFL-CIO split three years ago.” Read the rest of this entry »
It looks like Andy Stern is steamrolling the internal SEIU dissenters in San Juan this week as his rubber stamp convention has thus far easily passed his extreme agenda.
For instance, his plan to bleed the Strike and Defense fund to pay for his inaptly named “Justice for all” program was easily approved. This takes money from being used to help the members with strikes, etc., and diverts it to Stern’s pet project.
An amendment was also offered to firmly assert that the SEIU is against the Federal government instituting any guest worker programs now or in the future, changing language that allowed for guest worker programs in the past. As Michael Rivera reports in his convention notes today, “SEIU also rejects initiatives that expand or create guest-worker programs.” This amendment also adds to the meddling that the SEIU intends to continue on the National immigration issues.
Once again, we see Andy Stern’s capacity for taking his business far beyond where he belongs. Why one would expect a labor union to be making pronouncements on Federal immigration policy, or to decide to meddle in that field is definitely a question. Stern and his cohorts seem to imagine THEY have been elected not just to offices inside the labor union, but to Congress as well.
At about 10:30 or so, Barack Obama spoke to the convention via video conferencing, too. The SEIU has announced that they are lining up behind the most leftist Senator in the country, to be sure.
And to recap what happened to the folks in the UHW branch of the union… well, they’ve been sliced, diced, and cooked by Stern’s culinary arts. The insurgent UHWers are very unhappy that their democratic rights have been summarily eliminated.
UHW member Anita Wiltz has expressed her bitter disappointment over the whole thing.
Delegates to the convention voted to split me and 65,000 other California nursing home workers and homecare workers away from our local union. This will divide us from our brothers and sisters that work in hospitals and clinics, and put us into a different local union in California. That’s going to make us weaker, not stronger.
Sadly, the UHW members had no say in the matter.
Splitting us up will make us weaker, and that will make it harder to win the justice we’re all fighting for. That doesn’t seem to me like “justice for all.”
Standing in the way of the Stern juggernaut certainly explains why your union has been sliced and diced, Mrs. Wiltz. Keep that in mind next time you go thinking that there is such a thing as democracy in the SEIU!
The Union Label Blog has non-stop coverage of the SEIU convention this week. You’ll want to subscribe to our RSS feeds to get the updates as they happen.
SEIU President Andy Stern got an earful from the insurgent members of the UHW at the San Juan convention today. It got so heated that the UHW members staged a walkout in protest of Stern’s re-election.
UHW member Michael Rivera, reporting from the convention floor reports that at about 6:00 PM, “We walked out to boycott Andy Stern’s re-election because we don’t agree with the direction he’s taking the union.”
Rivera also reports that there was quite a bit of debate and dissension in the ranks during the convention.
Local 1000 member moves to extend debate 40 minutes. Motion is defeated but locals are divided within their ranks as members from 503, 1000, 521, 49 and 1199 and several others rose to extend the debate. Michael Fennison, UHW delegate, rises to ask that the debate be extended 15 minutes and the motion divides the delegates almost evenly; so much so that members from almost every local are represented in favor of continuing the debate. There is so much commotion around the motion and the call for a role call vote that Andy Stern cedes and extends debate 15 minutes.
But it seems that President Stern really has no interest in what the UHW folks have to say about their union being dismantled and folded in with a new local. Even as Rivera reports one member’s passionate plea for the assembled delegates to “put themselves in our place. We chose our union. We chose where we wanted to be.”
It looks like the dissenters might be doomed, though. As the day came to a close, the “‘Stern team’ was nominated, ran unopposed and were elected,” as Rivera reports.
Looks like Stern’s ruthless consolidation of the various locals into one, monolithic organization controlled by the main office in Washington is proceeding apace. So much for democracy, eh?
Last month, the UAW got their overalls in a bundle over a smoking ban instituted at the Caterpillar manufacturing plant in East Peoria, Illinois. The union got so mad they filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that the “60 year privilege” of smoking at the plant had been unfairly broken by the plant management who instituted a smoking ban that will be imposed on all U.S. properties.
The United Auto Workers union filed an unfair labor practice charge against Caterpillar Inc. over a smoking ban that goes into effect at all of its U.S. properties on Sunday.
The union claims the ban goes against
Where is the irony? Well, here we have a union that traditionally claims to have everyone’s
interests at heart, claims to be more interested in the worker’s health and safety than management is, even desires to have control over what management does to make sure everyone is happy, safe, and healthy.
Yet, here they are upset over a management decision that will positively affect the health of the workers?
So, do we have a management that cares more about the worker’s health than the union does?
The last order of business for the Service Employee International Union ended with the election of the next slate of SEIU leaders. Andy Stern did not expect any “democracy” to take place in this election, though. You see, no ballots were prepared for the membership to vote upon.
