'WE spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama -- $60.7 million to be exact -- and we're proud of it," boasted Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, to the Las Vegas Sun this week. The behemoth labor organization's leadership is getting its money's worth. Whether rank-and-file workers and ordinary taxpayers are profiting from this ultimate campaign pay-for-play scheme is another matter entirely.
The two-million-member union, which represents both government and private service employees, dispatched leaders to seven states in the final weekend before the election to get out the vote for Obama and other Democrats.
Through a series of local chapter takeovers and bully campaigns to destroy the reputations of executives who refuse to submit to their will, Stern and his scandal-plagued lieutenants have consolidated low-skill service workers to create a 21st century labor empire. The ubiquitous Stern now enjoys a prominent seat at every major policy discussion at the White House.
Obama champions the SEIU's top priorities: expansive government health care (paid for with regressive sin taxes) and the "Employee Free Choice Act" to do away with private-ballot union elections in the workplace. He has installed SEIU-blessed bureaucrats in every corner of his administration.
The SEIU scored two Cabinet appointees: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Stern dubbed Sebelius a "top choice" and lobbied for her confirmation. During four terms in Congress, Solis pocketed more than $900,000 in union campaign contributions.
Former SEIU chief lobbyist Patrick Gaspard served as the Obama campaign's national political director and transition deputy director of personnel. During the 2004 election cycle, he led the George Soros-funded group America Coming Together (ACT) as national field director. During Gaspard's tenure at ACT, the get-out-the-vote group employed convicted felons as canvassers and committed campaign finance violations that led to a $775,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission. Gaspard was appointed White House political director shortly after Election Day 2008.
Within two weeks of assuming office, Obama signed a series of executive orders championed by union bosses.
The payoffs keep coming for the SEIU. Last week Obama slashed the Labor Department's funding to investigate union corruption -- a welcome move for Stern, who has seen three of his handpicked deputies resign in 2008-09 over financial scandals involving cronyism, nepotism and embezzlement.
California officials also reported last week that the Obama White House gave the SEIU an unprecedented role in negotiations over federal stimulus funds. According to the Los Angeles Times, the union lobbied the feds to withhold nearly $7 billion in stimulus money from California unless it revoked a wage cut for unionized health care workers -- which had already been approved by Democratic lawmakers as part of a budget deal.
SEIU's enforcers have set aside $10 million to unelect any of its political beneficiaries who abandon their pledges to do the union's legislative bidding. Meanwhile, after spending a fortune to put Obama in office, the union laid off a third of its DC field staff (in violation of its own employment protections, workers say) due to . . . budget troubles.
The laid-off workers are collateral damage in Big Labor's pursuit of power. The only jobs guaranteed by SEIU's merger with Hope and Change, Inc. belong to the brass.
Michelle Malkin, NY Post, May 13, 2009
