As president of the Services Employee International Union (SEIU), Andy Stern has presided over a union that has grown impressively while at the same time just about every other union in the country has diminished in size and power. Some might think this a tremendous victory for president Stern. But how he has achieved this feat is certainly a matter of concern for everyone, a concern that should cast a pal over this claimed victory.
Question: do unions have a reputation of being transparent with their members? Well, unions in America certainly have the reputation of being run by the worker, for the worker, so transparency is an ideal they all claim to live up to, for certain — graft, embezzlement, mob infestation and corruption aside.
So, why has the SEIU been making secret pacts with other unions as well as employers, the natural enemy of unions? Andy Stern says that it is all in the pursuit of growth. His detractors in the ranks say that his is a growth-at-any-cost effort that places them all at a disadvantage.
Why, Stern has even made secret deals with employers, the full details of which are not being made public even to his own membership. He has made deals that stipulate that the SEIU will give up the right to go on strike. In return, the employers agree with the union which of their plants and businesses will be “allowed” to be unionized as well as how many employees will be organized with the employer making a pact of non-interference of the process.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Andy Stern was impatient with the “old ways” and wanted to grow his union at an accelerated pace.
The SEIU’s president, Andy Stern, said the unions sought the agreements after realizing that traditional organizing campaigns at individual sites were proving ineffective. “The old ways aren’t working, and we’re trying to find different relationships with employers that guarantee workers a voice,” he said. He dismissed the idea that the new agreements are undemocratic. “These workers have no unions; that’s where we start from,” he said.
One of those newer, faster ways to organize will be to get rid of the ability of a prospective union member’s traditional right to a secret ballot where he can vote his conscience free of harassment when asked if he wants to be unionized. The so-called card-check system would find a prospective member forced to reveal to all his coworkers if he voted yes or no for unionization. This leaves the prospective union member open for pressure to vote yes or harassment if he insists on voting no, situations that could not occur if it were a secret ballot.
Naturally, this card-check idea and Stern’s penchant for secret deals and top-down leadership have brought forth accusations that he is anti-democratic in his policies.
It’s hard to fault anyone who’d think so, too.
The Journal summed up the current direction of Stern’s leadership.
The unions gave up the right to strike and to post derogatory language about the companies on bulletin boards. With Compass, the unions agreed to these restrictions “anywhere in the world.” In exchange, the companies agree not to oppose union organizing at the designated locations.
Labor experts said it was highly unusual for unions to give employers the ability to choose which employees a union can try to organize. “That’s not widespread,” said Robert Bruno, associate professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “When you agree to these kinds of conditions the question is what is lost and what is gained?”
The agreements enable the unions to organize workers through a simple card-signing process in which the companies agree to remain neutral, rather than a secret-ballot election. The companies agree to provide the unions with lists of employees and access to workers. The unions give up the ability to strike and agree that they will present issues before a labor-management committee before engaging in leafleting or rallies.
It all seems rather cozy, doesn’t it?
Many union supporters as well as many SEIU members on the inside are afraid that Andy Stern has given away the store just to assure growth. They say he is slighting the future of the union, giving away too much power. But, there is an unrecognized soft underbelly to what is being perceived as the iron clad position that Stern is giving employers here.
Does anyone think, once the SEIU amasses the power of mass membership in the services industry, that the union will stay true to its agreement not to strike and to resort only to the arbitration systems between union and employer that current agreements have created?
Does ANYONE imagine that any union is trustworthy enough to stay within their agreements?
Anyone who believes that the SEIU will continue to abide by any agreements is a fool. The second the SEIU imagines they have enough power, all past agreements will be thrown on the scrap heap and strike signs will be raised anywhere the union wants to blackmail these foolish employers into buckling under to further demands — agreements or no.
In any case, it is rather interesting that the SEIU is pursuing secret deals, trying to take away the right of their members to strike as well as to take away their right to the common democratic process of the secret ballot, isn’t it?
No wonder SEIU president Stern is facing stiff resistance even among his own members.
Seattle schools were dealt a devastating blow today as a result of state-forced collective bargaining practices. A Dallas-based nonprofit, National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), was prepared to award a $13.2 million grant to assist Seattle schools with their Advanced Placement programs in math and science, allowing students to earn college credit while still in high school
A full 22% of that grant money was to be merit-based pay to teachers who participate in the specified Advanced Placement programs – that’s $2,640,000!
The problem? NMSI wanted to pay the money directly to participating teachers, but Washington state law mandating collective bargaining between the UNIONS and school districts would not allow for such a pay scheme. Negotiations to resolve the conflicts between the grant and the law failed.
So, Barack Obama claims he is a reformer. He claims he wants to clean up Washington D.C. He acts as if he just wants the truth told to the people. Well, here is some truth. According to the Wall Street JournalBarack has promised the Teamsters that if they give him their support he will kill the current Federal oversight agency that was created to root out union corruption in the workplace.
Yes, Barack Obama has said that he wishes to protect corruption, not eliminate it. Has he agreed to turn his back on fighting corruption merely so that he might be able to count the votes of union thugs in his column?
It has been revealed by inside sources that Obama secretly promised the Teamsters that he will end the strict oversight that the Federal government has through an independent oversight board that was set up in 1992 because of the mob influence rampant in the Teamsters. Obama has claimed that he favors “examining” the review board, but refuses to state publicly what that means.
However, the Wall Street Journal claims that they have found out that Obama means to scale back the board and this isn’t too hard to believe since the Democrat controlled Congress has also been slow to approve funding of the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) of late, paving the way to defund it and let it lie fallow. If Obama follows suit with the Democrats in Congress who are trying to give corrupt unions a free hand to indulge in more corruption with no government interference, it would seem to fit the Democrat agenda. This also shows that Obama is no “reformer” and not interested in changing anything in Washington but the party of the President.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama’s secret promises are a bit “unusual.”
It’s an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union.
You bet it seems an “unusual stance” especially from the so-called candidate of “change.” After all, a secret deal to eliminate an agency that has been very effective at rooting out union crime and corruption does not ring true with a candidate who claims that he wants a “new day” of truth in Washington D.C.
Obama has said, though, that his promises to the Teamsters is not a “blanket commitment.”
But, what Obama is quoted as having said is just another example of his penchant of say nothing at all and using a whole lot of words to do it.
“I wouldn’t make any blanket commitments,” the Illinois senator told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“What I’ve said is that I would examine what is going on in terms of the federal oversight that’s been taking place but it’s been in place for many years.”
Obama said the Teamsters had done “a terrific job cleaning house” and suggested it could be time for the Teamsters “to get treated just like every other union.”
“That’s something that I’ll absolutely examine when I’m president of the United States,” he said.
This is all stuff and nonsense. Has he made a commitment to let the a corrupt, Mob infested union off the hook or not? No one can say because he talked out of both sides of his mouth once again.
It should be noted, too, that this oversight of the Teamsters is independent of politics and is a venue of the Justice Department. But, if Obama really does end up trying to eliminate a review board that has been successful in rooting out criminals in unions, how does this make him a “fresh voice” in Washington? It looks more like he is just another Democrat that panders to unions and turns his face from their criminal activities.
The powerful union lobbies in the US have cornered their lapdogs in the Democrat Party and succeeded in killing the free trade agreement that we had brokered with Columbia. The main reason that unions twisted the arms of their Dem representatives is supposed to be because of Columbia’s admittedly horrid history of violence against unions and workers.
John Sweeney, president of the largest US federation of unions, the AFL-CIO, detailed the allegations in a Washington Post op-ed April 14: “In Colombia, joining a union or advocating for workers’ rights can be a de facto death sentence,” he said. “The human-rights atrocities against union activists and supporters are not isolated, rogue events; they are committed largely by the armed forces and paramilitary organizations with ties to elected officials close to President [Alvaro] Uribe.”
Now, who can deny that such a history is lamentable? I, for one, am one of those folks who complains that the US government works so closely with the murderous, inhuman Chinese, for example, so I can very much sympathize with the sentiment that we should not reward criminal nations that perpetrate such murderous and violent actions against their own people.
Yes, Colombia has a high murder rate. With much of the country still in the control of vicious leftist narco-terrorists (supported by Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez), you’d expect a high murder rate among any one group - from union members to midgets. That said, last year’s 17,198 homicides (among 45 million people) was a drop of 40 percent from the 28,837 in 2002.
Deaths among Colombia’s union members plummeted even farther - from a high of 275 in 1996 to only 39 last year. That’s a drop of 86 percent in a decade.
And that’s 39 killings (a figure the AFL-CIO itself cited last month) out of about 800,000 union workers - or about five murders per 100,000 union members. How does that constitute “a de facto death sentence” - when the murder rate for the population as a whole is about eight times higher?
Now, wait a minute. Isn’t it “improvement” and “success” and “effort” that leftists always claim to want to see to afford any rewards? How much better does Columbia have to do to show vast improvement than an 86% drop in the sort of murders that the unions here are complaining about?
In the end, it is all a lie by both the unions and their lapdogs in the Dem Party when they say that Columbia doesn’t deserve the free trade agreement because of how unionists are treated there. What American unions and the Democrats want to avoid is any success for the waning Bush Administration.
That is it.
They couldn’t care less about the lives of union members in Columbia. And by killing the trade agreement, the unions here are proving that they don’t care if Columbia’s union members get to keep their jobs, either!
The Illinois Constitution has an interesting provision in Article 14. It’s a rule where every 20 years a Constitutional Convention can be called to consider alterations and amendments to the state Constitution. The Convention itself isn’t called automatically, though. Only the question of calling or not calling the convention can be on the ballot at first. This is the time for the voice of the people to be heard…. unless unions have their way by preventing it!
Illinois has developed the reputation as one of the most corrupt anti-democratic state in the union and now we have this one small chance to change that. This is one chance, but a fleeting one, to finally have a say in what our politicians do. Do you want a chance to actually have a voice in state politics at long last? Vote yes on the ConCon.
Illinois DESERVES Better!
Naturally, there are very powerful people lined up to deny the citizens of Illinois from having their say after decades of being ignored, trodden upon and stolen from. After seeing politician after politician go to jail for corruption and graft.
These powerful folks don’t want their sweetheart deals and back room power-brokering to be upset by we lowly and forgotten citizens… you know, we who pay ALL of their bills with our exorbitant taxes?
So, guess who opposes the right of the people to have their say?
Unions stand against the people.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers are against the ConCon. Why? Why else but because it will threaten their overly cushy jobs and their bloated and illicit pension and healthcare plans– the sort of plans that no one in the private sector is ever able to get.
The The Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Education Association are against the ConCon. Why? Well, how could they continue to so mis-educate our children so blatantly without ever being called to account for their failures if the people were ever called to have a say on their shoddy efforts at education?
A Constitutional Convention threatens the undeserved perks and high spending jobs they have. No wonder they are afraid of the people having their say.
So, once again what we end up with is unions that stand against democracy! It seems to be one of their most common traits, lately, showing how far away they’ve moved from their claimed days of wishing to listen to the voice of the people.
Here are a few highlights we found when we searched the 2008 first quarter reports by client:
* The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees reported $480,000 in expenses.
* Change to Win, a coalition of seven unions including SEIU, reported $80,000 in expenses.
* The National Education Association reported $284,964 in expenses.
* The AFL-CIO reported $540,000 in expenses.
There are a few limitations to the reports. The amounts listed are estimates, and only organizations that spend at least $10,000 on lobbying during a quarter must report. Changes to the law in 2007 have forced organizations to disclose any affiliates that contribute $5,000 or more in any three-month period. For more information on the LDA and recent, related litigation, click here and here.
While these reports are not comprehensive in their approach to transparency, they at least provide another window into the inner workings of labor union political priorities and spending. Union members and the public should use the reports for increased union accountability.
At last YOU can have a say in Illinois! 
