The Classic Liberal Blog

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) ...

ANOTHER SEIU BEATING: A state worker is recovering after a bloody brawl at a union hall. He says members of the local SEIU 1000 beat him up and sent him to the hospital all because he wanted to expose alleged corruption within the union.

ATTACKED BY SEIU THUGS: The police report is unambiguous about what happened on August 6th in St. Louis. The White House, through SEIU, did indeed ‘punch back twice as hard.’ What is ambiguous, however, is why prosecutors haven’t pursued the charges against SEIU. As you will learn, there is a lot to suggest that Bob McCulloch, the St. Louis DA, is trying to cover-up SEIU’s crime. Stay tuned as the truth comes out.

A Second SEIU Attack in St. Louis: The witness is a police officer and the event is on video. Johner struck the woman in the face, and was arrested. And yet, no charges have been filed in this case, either. As in the Gladney case, prosecutors have done nothing for three months. They have called no witnesses. They have launched no investigations. They simply sit on the charges, waiting for…something.

SEIU's Disgrace: With this latest act of physical aggression, SEIU escalated its campaign against registered nurses ... many of whose RN leaders were at the conference, and whose executive director Rose Ann DeMoro was the scheduled speaker ... "There is an ugly pattern here of physical abuse and tactics of intimidation that have no place in either our labor movement or a civilized society," DeMoro later said.

Why This Matters

Well, for starters ... SEIU president Andy Stern is President Obama's most frequent guest at the White House. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

Flexing his influence, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern turned up at the White House 22 times in the first six months of the Obama administration, more than anyone else on the visitor logs released last month.

And according to Andy Stern, SEIU is the largest political action committee in the country! In other words ... Andy Stern is Obama's boss.

Why is the SEIU boss the White House’s most frequent visitor?

In pursuit of his vision, Stern has turned the SEIU into a massive grassroots army that can mobilize in behalf of candidates and legislation. The scope of its activities in 2008 was epic. Stern bragged that “we spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million, to be exact — and we’re proud of it.” Ironically, SEIU spent so much in 2008 that it had to take out massive loans to keep operating ...

SEIU has set aside $85 million to spend over the next two years on political advocacy.

SEIU has poured millions into a group called Health Care for America Now, which has dispatched envoys to deliver portable pavilions, professionally printed placards, and uniform attire at almost every major health-care protest this year. Dennis Rivera sent hundreds of union activists to meetings this summer in an attempt to counteract opposition to the Democrats’ bill. “We’re running this campaign like this was a presidential campaign, and our candidate is health-care reform,” Rivera told the New York Times. Why does SEIU care so much about health-care reform? The subsidies and mandates in Democrats’ legislation would drive up demand for health-care services, meaning more revenue for hospitals, more health-care workers, and more members for SEIU.

“The most important thing to note about what SEIU is doing is that it’s really become a lobbying arm for the president,” Berg says. “Much like Organizing for America [the community-organizing group run by the Democratic National Committee], they are trying to drive bodies nationwide to lobby their congressmen and senators to try to implement the president’s agenda.”

Back to the Wall Street Journal ... (emphasis added)

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. The NUHW doesn't have this kind of firepower ... When the secret ballots were mailed in and counted, the SEIU won that vote by a sliver, 2,938 to 2,705.

[N]ow, Carlos Martinez, an immigrant from El Salvador who was on the SEIU's staff during the campaign, has come forward—so he says—to blow the whistle on his employer. Mr. Martinez went door-to-door canvassing the home-care workers during the 15-day election. Like him, many of them are native Spanish speakers; some are illiterate.

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.

Considered the most powerful labor figure in the land ... In two interviews with me in the past year, Mr. Stern has called his strategy of building a large, integrated international union the path to revive organized labor in America.

Things that make you go HMMMM

A union is supposed to be an agent between a group of employees and their employer. Right? And a union member pays "dues," as payment for the union's representative services. Right? Sure ... it all makes sense on the surface. But ... do you see what's really going on here?

Let's say you work for Company A and you're represented by SEIU (who gladly accepts your dues). SEIU then takes your money and uses it, not to represent you, but to force people (globally) into becoming their client. This expansion increases SEIU's revenue (dues), and you ... get nothing.

In other words ... You're getting screwed by the union!

If you live in Michigan for example, it doesn't help you one iota whether SEIU gets another contract in California or Cambodia. Seriously! $10 million on just this one campaign? Almost $61 million on Barack Obama? SEIU is the largest political action committee? Do I need to spell it out for you?

SEIU is only representing themselves.

It's all about politics. It's all about power. It's all about control. And it ain't no "power to the people," either. These union bosses don't give a rats ass about you. They just want your money, so they can change the form of government in America to amass power for themselves.

There is no reason for either unions or corporations to participate in the political process. They can't even vote!

 

P.S. - The picture at the top of the post reads, "For the Motherland, for Stalin, for World Peace, for Communism."