When a small sampling of the White House guest list was revealed several days, Obama campaign bankroller SEIU was at the top of the list. Having spent over $60 million to elect Obama, why should we expect anything different?
Earlier this year, SEIU president Andy Stern admitted he holds weekly meetings at the White House and, according to the guest list, several with the president himself. That makes Andy Stern one important man. Perhaps one of the most important in Washington, in fact.
Andy Stern has long been labeled a ruthless, bare-knuckled union organizer. His union has a significant portion of its membership made up of health care workers and, not surprisingly, has been of the groups most aggressively pushing for socialized medicine.
Stern’s SEIU has been very aggressive at increasing its membership, often employing intimidation to meet its ends. Just one example: In, 2008 SEIU thugs beat up members, mainly women, from rival unions at a labor union convention. SEIU then issued a press release entitled, “SEIU Members Stand Up for the Future of the Labor Movement and the Interests of All Workers.”
So when leaders of United Healthcare Workers-West, a local affiliate of SEIU, began stepping out of line, Stern and the Washington, DC-based SEIU attempted to overtake the California affiliate, through a trusteeship.
A hearing was conducted in late 2008, with attorneys for the local SEIU affiliate urging a denial of trusteeship. Perhaps what is the most disturbing thing from this document is how it lays out, in blow-by-blow detail, Stern’s attempts to crush any dissent. From the introduction:
President Stern has sought to create a top-down corporate-style management structure through which union policy is set and bargaining is controlled from the national level.
Huh, that doesn’t seem to jive with SEIU’s “power to the people” mantra. The local union also accuses SEIU of “undemocratic practices.” And the hearing document tells of a “war council” establised by SEIU leaders to “plot UHW’s demise.” All things, I’m guessing, that really truly are in the best interest of workers.
It’s a chilling document.
I couldn’t care less about inter-labor battles and who prevails. Still, union battles sap their energy and resources and become a distraction from their overarching mission to be a leech on American companies and the capitalist system. So in that sense, carry on.
But this document clearly spells out Andy Stern’s willingness to destroy anything or anyone and his determination to get his way. And lest we forget: this is the culture that was the training ground for White House political director Patrick Gaspard and several other White House aides.
God help us if he’s able to unionize government healthcare workers. This is a small view into the tactics President Obama’s allies are using to enact their agenda, including socialized medicine. Given what is said here, it makes those one-on-one meetings between Obama and Stern all the more intriguing.
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