A Service Employees International Union (SEIU) whistleblower has revealed that the organization forced him to work for Democratic political campaigns — even those of candidates for whom he was ineligible to vote.
Mallory Factor, the author of the best-selling book Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind, videotaped an interview with a former SEIU organizer in which he made the claim.
In the video, the subject, whose voice has been distorted to protect him, says SEIU officials “were required” to take days off and work for candidates the union supported.
“They would tell you, ‘We need to go canvassing for this candidate, so we need you to sign this sheet to say that you are requesting a personal day today, so that you can go do this. We’ll make it up to you later,'” he recalls.
The man continues: “And I [thought], ‘Is this really legal? Can you require me to volunteer for a candidate that I can’t even vote for?’ … I don’t live in that jurisdiction, that district that they are running from.”
The worker called it “mandatory volunteerism,” and he explained “that happened a lot around election time.”
“We were all told that we had to volunteer for this candidate on this day,” the man recalled.
Factor said it was obvious the union is “not playing by the rules” and warned that if Obama is reelected, “it will be because of the unions.”
“Our first union-label president will owe them big-time,” Factor said. “He’ll be paying them back, and it sure won’t be with more investigations and scrutiny. There will even be less.”
Factor said the former SEIU organizer is “willing to testify in front of Congress” so long as his identity is concealed.
According to the Daily Caller, The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently “published statements from three union members who objected to seeing their union dues diverted to support political candidates they did not support.”
Claire Waites was one who testified.
She is an eighth grade teacher in Alabama who told the committee that the NEA “instructed her to donate to a ‘Children’s Fund'” that she learned made contributions to Democrats like John Kerry.
Waites also testified that she found out four years later that her county’s union president withheld funds that were provided to her by the local union and contributed them to this “Children’s Fund.”
Waites alleged that the county president, Saaida Hunter, said her contribution “would go to the Obama campaign, another candidate I did not support, and that contributing in my name was probably illegal… Needless to say, I never got my money back.”
This video — and perhaps the subsequent testimony of the former official — may lead to more union members revealing the ways in which they have been strong-armed into supporting the political agendas of their bosses.