SEIU

Internecine battles that go public always tell you more about how an organization operates. For example, a court battle after a Democratic primary in East Chicago, Indiana led to both sides testifying against each other in court about how they stole votes and 32 convictions on voter fraud. Whenever reporters and liberals claim that voter fraud doesn't happen, just refer them to the court testimony. By the way, these are absentee ballot fraud, the same sort of at-home coercion that occurs in "card-check" union organizing drives.

A similar battle is going on California. last year, the San Francisco-based SEIU-UHW (United Healthcare Workers West) had been under attack by the SEIU national organization and the Los Angeles-based local whose head Tyrone Freeman, an Andy Stern protege, was forced to step down after charges of embezzling local funds. Eventually, Sal Roselli, the head of the San Francisco organization was kicked out. He is now counter-attacking as National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

There have long-been allegations that ACORN and SEIU are closely related and that ACORN runs training programs for SEIU. In this case, SEIU-UHW is claiming that the NUHW is playing dirty. Check out this blog post from their site in which union members claim to have been lied to and coerced:

Examples of the tactics used by NUHW, which home care workers share on video and can be viewed here, include:

Asya Tilman, was told to sign "a petition to protect our rights," and it was not until "a few months ago that I realized that, through their lies, they try to move me to a different union." After Asya signed, she was then asked whether her daughter, also a home care worker, was at home, "and he said that I could sign under her name. And that is what I did."

Yuk Wan Leung was overwhelmed when two workers from the hotel union knocked at her door pressuring her to sign a petition. They told her the petition was for their voting freedom and it would not affect her union. Then they refused to leave until she signed.

Mei Fong Tsoi was approached while walking to work and was told to sign the petition to support the union, "I am a working member and I know my union. I even signed for my husband because he is also a homecare provider." 

While one local is claiming thuggery in San Francisco, at first under the direction of a criminal and now by a dissident organization, the national organization is claiming that coercion doesn't happen in union battles. Curious, eh?

 Note: The first version of this post misunderstand the relationships between the various California locals. I thank a union official for a correction. However, the core messaging problem still stands, and in some way is strengthened. An SEIU is claiming union thuggery, while the national denies it. After a several-year-long campaign of thuggery against a dissident. As in East Chicago, this is just how union infighting looks.

I love this. According to the WaPo, SEIU is getting rid of union organizers, who are filing a complaint with the NLRB over the issue:

The Service Employees International Union, considered the most influential union in the nation, has notified the union that represents about 220 of its national field staff and organizers that 75 of them are being laid off. In return, the workers' union, which goes by the somewhat postmodern name of the Union of Union Representatives, has filed unfair labor practices charges against SEIU with the National Labor Relations Board. The staff union's leaders say that SEIU is engaging in the same kind of practices that some businesses use -- laying off workers without proper notice, contracting out work to temp firms, banning union activities and reclassifying workers to reduce union numbers.

This reminds me of ACORN's 1995 lawsuit to exempt them from paying minimum wage, while working on a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage. EPI has the story, wtih the full report after the jump:

In 1995, ACORN sued the state of California, claiming that it should be exempted from the state minimum wage. The group realized the simple economic fact facing all employers: being forced to pay higher wages means that you must employ fewer workers. A legal brief filed by ACORN during the appeal of its lawsuit admits:

As acknowledged both by the trial court and California, the more that ACORN must pay each individual outreach worker—either because of minimum or overtime requirements—the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire.

This argument is particularly ironic. In 1996, when New Orleans business targets of Rathke’s minimum wage increase campaign acknowledged the economic reality that increasing the cost of labor would lead them to reduce employment or cut hours, Wade Rathke snapped, “If their business is that marginal, they probably shouldn’t be in business.”

We've talked about it several times here on the blog; the hostile takeover of smaller unions. It has been Andy Stern's main modus operandi (President of the Service Employees International Union or SEIU). The idea is to roll into the territory of a local, smaller union, make back room deals with the employers to get their assistance, and then lead a forced take over of that smaller union eventually to vote it out of existence. Thereby the little unions that might stand in the way of the mega unions are eliminated and the mega unions now controlling everything from the top down get more even more massive.

It's a perfectly legitimate strategy, of course... except for the fact that it makes the lie to every purported "principle" that unions claim to have. Local control becomes dashed and democracy summarily eliminate, yet local control and democratic process are the central themes of unionism. Without them they are little different than the supposedly evil corporate maters bent on domination that union claim their employers are. If a union member cannot feel that his local representatives are actually there for him then that impersonal attitude is no different than uncaring masters of industry.

Yet, this strong-arm takeovers of smaller unions is the current rage among big unions. And it is being noticed.

Last week there was a big pow wow of 12 of the nation's biggest unions. They mean to join together to work toward enlarging unionism in the American workplace. But the smaller unions are balking because they know that the larger the union group is the more chance they will be eliminated.

The 12 could not agree upon a plan to create a governing council and one of the reasons is power.

The larger unions want to create a powerful executive committee, and one divisive issue is how much power medium-size and small unions would have. The small unions oppose demands that they be forced to merge into larger unions.

And they are right, too. If this council or umbrella organization is created it will naturally tend to aggregate more and more power unto itself and that power WILL tend to eliminate smaller, weaker entities.

If unions start such an group, small unions are doomed. And, we will see that unions aren't at all interested in democracy or local control. They are only interested in amassing power, the sort of power that will corrupt unions hopelessly.

Let's hope these smaller unions are smart enough to understand that.

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Hilda Solis and Xavier Becerra were both picked for Barack Obama's cabinet in positions that are intensely important to the labor movement, Secretary of Labor and US Trade Representative, respectively. Both also come from Los Angeles, the home of the largest and most systematic case of labor crime currently being investigated, that of Tyone Freeman, formerly the head of the LA chapter of SEIU. This has been well documented by the LA Times' Paul Pringle.

So I asked myself, how close is Solis to SEIU? Turns out pretty close. In 2000, Solis beat 71  year old Democratic incumbent Matt Martinez in a contested primary. In 1999, Solis received two donations from the SEIU. That is, in a Democratic primary, against an incumbent Democrat, she got SEIU's endorsement and money.

First, she received $5k, the maximum, from SEIU's national PAC:

She also received $250 from SEIU's Sacramento lobbyist:

One can only assume that she got logistical support on the ground too.

I would also note that TPM's write up of "labor leaders hail Obama's pick" quotes only one union leader, Andy Stern the head of SEIU, and even gives a picture of Stern, rather than Solis in the story.

Sounds like SEIU got their candidate. So how close is Solis to Stern and Freeman? Are these relationships going to come up in the confirmation hearings?

The fallout from Governor Blago's effort to turn the Illinois senate vacancy into a mashup of an  E Bay auction and  Richard Daley, Sr. political tactics will be a gift that keeps giving.

For one thing, virtually  the entire senior management of the Illinois Democratic party now must be suspected of having offered unethical rewards to seek appointment to the Senate, or conversely, were solicited for bribes and declined to report the illicit conduct.     

Perhaps the most ambitious was ultra left wing Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Schakowsky , who made clear in April she was interested in the seat.  

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BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter apallasch@suntimes.com

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Rep. Jan Schakowsky has made what appears to be the most explicit pitch yet to be appointed senator if Barack Obama is elected president.

Such an appointment would be at least seven months away and would be made by Gov. Blagojevich.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/880337,CST-NWS-senate06.article

Actually, Blago might have had a warm spot in his heart for this woman. Her husband, after all, spent time in federal prison  http://cbs2chicago.com/seenon/Robert.Creamer.Jan.2.326652.html

The husband of an Illinois congresswoman was sentenced to five months in federal prison Wednesday for writing rubber checks and failing to pay withholding taxes.

Robert Creamer, 58, husband of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., also was ordered to serve house arrest for 11 months after he finishes his prison term.......
 

Creamer pleaded guilty to failing to pay withholding taxes and bank fraud involving check kiting -- writing checks on accounts without sufficient funds to cover them while moving money between accounts and playing the so-called float to prevent the checks from bouncing.......
 

The money was used to keep Creamer's group -- Illinois Public Action -- in business without any cutback in its programs. That included Creamer's $100,000 annual salary, prosecutors said......
 

Schakowsky got her political start helping advance her husband's social agenda as a member of IPCA and later, Citizen Action. She served on the board at the time the crimes occurred. She was never charged

Illinois Citizens Action is a 501 (c) (4) nonprofit group http://www.citizenaction-il.org/about_us.htm. ( It appears to be the successor in interest to Creamer's old group http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7284;  http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6729 )This will be more important as one reads on.

Creamer's other major endeavors--besides bank fraud-- include frequent columns in the Huffington Post where he takes a neosocialist world view, and running a political consulting firm  Strategic Consulting Group http://www.stratcongroup.com/. These guys were last seen in my part of CT back in '02 doing the old ACORN routine of registering voters who listed vacant lots as their home address. Of course ACORN is a client of SCG http://www.stratcongroup.com/clients.php as is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) whose president, Andy Stern, gushed about Creamer's latest magnum opus on political activism Stand Up Straight http://www.stratcongroup.com/publication/testimonials.php, as did Obama's major domo , David Axelrod. 

(SEIU is all about universal health care, immigrant rights, and card check. http://www.seiu.org/political/congress/. as are their allies--Citizens Action Illinois)

Now, didn't we hear something about Andy Stern and SEIU from U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald this morning?

Michelle Malkin points out that an "SEIU official" is cited  in this morning's missive from the USA's office http://michellemalkin.com/2008/12/09/look-for-the-union-label-whos-the-seiu-official-who-talked-with-blago/ Malkin surmises that Stern was running interference for Valerie Jarrett, Obama;s transition director.  But why?

The tenor of the conversation between Blago and our union hack concerned setting up a "501 C-4' organization to hire Blago in exchange for the appointment to the Senate."

I said go back to [Senate Candidate 1], and, and say hey, look, if you still want to be a Senator don’t rule this out and then broach the idea of this 501(c)(4) with her.”"

Only one prospective Senate candidate has a spouse familiar with setting up 501 c type organizations and willing to break the law to promote their goals.

 And I strongly suspect she is "Senate Candidate #1" until proven otherwise. Who else would this union be so inclined to go to the mattresses for?

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The AP drops a story about a power and money scandal at ACORN involving the founder of ACORN, Wade Rathke and his brother Dale:

The lawsuit filed in August by two board members accuses ACORN founder and former chief organizer Wade Rathke of either concealing or failing to properly report that his brother Dale embezzled around $948,000 from New Orleans-based ACORN and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000.

I wonder if this might expand to SEIU in general, which has been getting a lot of scrutiny due to a fight with the California Nurses Association and corruption in the LA branch, ably reported by the LA Times' Paul Pringle.

The issue is that Wade and Dale Rathke have also been leaders of significant SEIU multi-state locals.

Wade Rathke also founded SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans (more broadly Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas) and is still the "Chief Organizer" of the local, which is headquartered at the ACORN office.

Meanwhile, in 2000, Dale Rathke, was the Treasurer for Local 880 in Chicago, while at the same time being CFO of the national ACORN organization. According to the Illinois State Senate in 2001, Local 880's email address was seiu880ch@acorn.org.

So in 2000 while Dale Rathke was embezzling money from ACORN he was also the Treasurer for one of the most important SEIU mega-locals and filing their compliance forms with the Department of Labor. See the filing after the jump.

Seems like it might be worth some investigation.

Paul Pringler of the LA Times has running a great series of stories about the corruption of the LA local of SEIU. The most recent places them all in context.  The basic idea is that the head of LA local, Tyrone Freeman, appears to be using union funds to route money back to his friends, family, and even spouse.

This story adds three important components. First, Freeman appears to run corrupt elections. Second, he is a "protege" of Andy Stern, the head of SEIU, and there is evidence that Stern and the (inter)national organization is covering up for Freeman. And, third, Stern has a strategy for using Freeman and his corrupt elections and embezzling to take over all of the California SEIU. If these facts hold up, it could lead to some very danger places for Stern and the SEIU.

The details from the story are all above the fold. The key point here is that these stories suggest a need to continue these investigations and examine both national and local SEIU expenditures much more closely.

Here's a lesson that you will hear again and again. Union leaders take care of themselves before their workers. From today's WSJ:

Public records based on the SEIU's own filings show that the SEIU National Industry Pension plan – which covers some 101,000 workers – was only 75% funded in 2006. Put another way, the plan had only three-fourths of the money it needs to meet its retirement obligations. And the national chapter is only the start. Some 13 local SEIU pension plans in 2006 were less than 80% funded; several didn't reach 65%.

The bosses, on the other hand, have over-capitalized pensions:

On the other hand, SEIU leaders are highly attentive to their own pension funding. A separate fund run by the national union, this one covering the benefits of SEIU officers, was 103% funded in 2006. The top SEIU guns are set for their golden years.

You might need more than 100% if, say, the stock market were to suffer for a couple of years.

Andy Stern, however, has figured out a way to cook the books based on a formula that is not even in effect:

The SEIU is now disputing some of these figures, claiming the information it publicly filed is wrong. It now claims its national plan was 92% funded in 2006, and as of January 1, 2008, was 96% funded. Here's the catch: The union says these new numbers are based on calculations required under a 2006 pension reform that hasn't yet taken effect. It didn't release its new math either, though we're eager to see it.

In general, union pensions are a sleeper issue. It is part of the story behind Card Check. It is an untold story in the UAW-GM agreement. And it is always the same story: union bosses paying them and their buddies off and shafting their workers.

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:

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.