Modern News

Over the last few months we’ve talked about several instances of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) committing vote fraud in elections for in-home helathcare workers tasked with choosing a union. We have also reported on the shaky UHW election in Dec. of 2008. (Here, here, and here) Even with those instances extant we have more SEIU vote fraud to report.

The SEIU is still perpetrating fraudulent elections, intimidating union voters, and trying to strong-arm members into accepting SEIU dominance despite what they may want. Recently the Wall Street Journal had another story detailing the SEIU’s un-democratic actions.

Among other things, the Journal is reporting that SEIU officials working with its sister union, California’s UHW, have been threatening deportation to Hispanic union members that were considering a vote for a new union going by the name National Union of Health Workers (NUHW).

The NUHW is a new union made up of disgruntled members of the UHW that quit to form a new union. These new union folks cite illicit actions meant to force them to accept absorption by the SEIU last year as the reason for starting the new union. And since the birth of the NUHW a fight has been brewing as the SEIU and the new NUHW vie to take each other’s membership in new voting all across California. The NUHW has succeeded in calling “decertification” votes to oust the SEIU out of the healthcare industry and an epic battle has ensured between these unions. It is a battle that the SEIU has been waging with the dirtiest of tricks.

One thing that the SEIU has brought to this fight is a deep pocketbook.

The Journal reports that the, “SEIU shipped in 950 or so staff and spent an estimated $10 million on mailings, advertising, phone banks, door-to-door canvassing and the like.” This is the sort of big money effort that the young NUHW cannot hope to match.

The Journal also reports on some of the intimidation that SEIU operatives were charged to carry out. The Journal found an operative for the SEIU named Carols Martinez who has decided to speak out on what the SEIU made him do to cajole Spanish speaking union members into voting the SEIU’s way.

Speaking in an interview over a sandwich at a hotel in the Bay Area late last month, Mr. Martinez says he was instructed by superiors to tell the workers that if they voted against the SEIU, they could lose their medical benefits, see their green cards or citizenship revoked and possibly be deported. He says he and other staffers were also told to pressure voters to spoil ballots that had been filled out for the NUHW. In other instances he filled ballots out for them. He says he even took some to the post office, as did other SEIU campaign workers.

…Mr. Martinez says he raised his concerns directly with Mr. Regan and other superiors. He also says he tried to submit a complaint with two state agencies but was ignored. He then repeated these charges under oath before an NUHW lawyer. Six other Fresno workers confirmed parts of his account in affidavits. For example, Adriana Gomez, a home-care worker, said that Mr. Martinez “took my ballot and made a mark for the SEIU team.”

The NUHW has now filed complaints against the heavy-handed tactics employed by the SEIU.

I cannot stress enough that this is the brain child of SEIU president Andy Stern. Stern is well known for his somewhat megalomaniac pretensions of becoming the leader of all unions not just that of the SEIU. He envisions a personal empire of unions so powerful that it also controls the federal government.

We can also see that this man has an inordinate amount of influence with President Barack Obama evidence of which is the fact that Stern has been the most frequent visitor to the White House offering his consultation. It is assured that Obama has signed onto Stern’s plans and has placed the powers of the federal government at Stern’s disposal.

Of course, the shame of it is is that we can see that Stern will do anything to gain power despite how illicit, undemocratic, or anti-American it is. That he is so close to President Obama certainly makes one fear that the President himself is a party to Stern’s antics.

As each month passes we see more and more proof of the unprincipled man that SEIU President Andy Stern is. And we see that this is the sort of person that Obama “pals around with,” if you will.