SEIU's Andy Stern to Resign - Redistributed Wealth of His Workers On His Hip

Enough is not a feast - Andy Stern's Marxist snout will remain in the tax-payer trough =no worries on that.

"Last night I received confirmation that Andy Stern is resigning as President of SEIU. He has not yet made a public announcement; we will share the details as we become aware of them," Sosne wrote in an email obtained by POLITICO.

Sosne offered no explanation for the move, but another SEIU official speculated that Stern had finally tired of the draining job.

"Health care getting done is a good culmination," the official said.

Sosne isn't seen as a Stern loyalist or a central union player, but she's a respected former nurse who sits on the international's board as president of SEIU Local 1199NW, which represents nurses. She and her assistant didn't respond to questions about the email. Stern's spokeswoman also didn't immediately respond to a question about the email.

The SEIU has emerged as a central political player and has grown rapidly under Stern's tenure, and some close to him had expected him to resign during the first term of the president he helped elect, and after the achievement he'd spent years focusing on, widening access to health care. But he's also waged a series of bitter battles inside the labor movement, one of the nastiest of which turned in SEIU's favor with a California court ruling last week. Stern also won a victory when Obama named his union's lawyer, Craig Becker, to the National Labor Relations board over Republican objections in a recess appointment last month.

Stern, even without the union presidency, would remain on, among other things, the board of President Obama's deficit commission, to which he was appointed in February.

Anna Burger is to Andy Stern as Stalin is to Lenin. These University of Pennsylvania Alums - school of social work - have hoodwinked our supine corporate media into believing that SEIU is not a PAC, but an actual labor union. Nope. They are ACORN writ large and the folks who helped Blago fire-sale President Obama's hardly ever used U.S. Senate Seat.

"Did [the bankers] build anything? Create anything? . . ." No, Anna; Janitors Mop, Health Care Workers Empty Bed Pans and You Are Wearing their Dues !

Yesterday the shameless led the wageless by the hundreds against BANKS and got universal press coverage touting protesters in the thousands.

That's nice. SEIU corrals thousands of no skill and low skill workers into their pens with their dues and keep them there for life.

Time was a janitor's job was a pathway to the trades and the middle class. No more. SEIU does prepare people for the future - that is none of their business. Andy Stern and Anna Burger will tell them who and what to believe.

SEIU is ACORN with a better PR firm.

Yesteday, Anna Burger*howled out great hollow hypocrisy at the BANKS - you know - like Tom Joad's faceless; nameless; bloodless enemy in Grapes of Wrath - Metonymy in rhetoric that plays well with synecdoche.

Banks are the villain du jour.: Insurance Companies, Wall-Street Fat Cats; Wal-Mart, Big Oil & etc.


"Did [the bankers] build anything? Create anything? Do anything?" Burger asked the crowd, which repeatedly responded "No!" - Progress Illinois ( SEIU Funded Comic Blog)


Actually banks create wealth - unnaturally. Why the very vaults from whence Anna and Andy scoop dues to jet off to Red China/The Big Ed Schultz Show/Tapas With Chavez/Shakedowns with Jesse Jackson Universal come from Banks.

I would venture to say that very few of the workers in SEIU make enough of a wage to have more than a checking account - if they are lucky enough to have that.

The Cadillac Commies leading SEIU belong under the same microscope slide as ACORN.


*Anna Burger, born in Levittown, Pennsylvania, and daughter of a disabled truck driver and a nurse, began her activist career in 1972 as a Welfare worker. It was there she became involved in her local union. Burger organized a walkout in efforts to create a safer working environment for the office. Burger became more active in her union, and quickly moved through the ranks of the local union. Burger became SEIU local 668's first full-time woman president before moving onto the SEIU International office in Washington, DC, to work as National Director of Field Operations, under former SEIU president John Sweeney. Burger successfully ran Sweeney's campaign for president of the AFL-CIO. She was elected Executive Vice President of SEIU, and Secretary-Treasurer in 2001.

In her tenure at SEIU, Burger has worked with President Andy Stern to create the largest and fastest growing union in North America.[citation needed] While union membership across the country has been continually dropping[citation needed], SEIU is the only union that has continuously grown.[vague] As well, Burger and SEIU are working to create ties with unions in other parts of the world, especially Europe and Asia.

Burger and Stern called for a change in the AFL-CIO's strategies in June 2004. By the summer of 2005, 6 unions (including SEIU) withdrew their membership to the AFL-CIO, and created a new labor coalition, the Change to Win Federation. On September 27, 2005, Burger was elected Chair of the breakaway coalition. As the Chair of Change to Win, Burger became the first woman to lead an American labor coalition.

Burger is married to Earl F. Gohl and they have one daughter. Anna Burger currently lives in Washington, DC with her family.

Real Unions in Danger = Stern's SEIU

Andy Stern and Anna Burger are destroying the American Labor Movement - Labor Leaders who have anything to do with these two career Lefty sneaks help them destroy Labor.

Here in Chicago, CTU lead by the oafish Marilyn Stewart want Charter School teachers to turn their backs on the contracts that each one of them signed in good faith and seek cover in Chicago Teachers Union. School Reform means nothing to CTU. Charter teachers who signed to join CTU are breakers of oaths, they want to be treated as professionals and act like whiny fools. The work loads that they contracted to do - agreed to do, for the pay and position with International Charter Schools are now too much of a burden on them.

Quit.

Join CTU and Chicago Public School System and all that goes with that shameful and corrupt, incompetent, lazy and greedy system. I know many heroically dedicated Public School teachers and they too are ashamed and disgusted by the stupidity and cant of CTU leadership and that comes from it.

SEIU needs an unskilled workforce to add greater numbers to its sad and 'going-nowhere' membership.

SEIU need to bring down the trades as well as the Schools.

Here's one of the Stern Gang writing about his covert work to undermine the Carpenters Union.

Labor’s New Deal – Douglas McCarron’s Raw Deal for the UBCJA
By Chris the Abducted Alien
Rated "G" by the Author.
Last edited: Sunday, April 27, 2008
Posted: Sunday, April 20, 2008



The article written by Andy Stern outlines the history of the beginnings of our labor in America starting with Calvin Coolidge who once famously declared, “The chief business of the American people is business.” Coolidge’s heirs today are corporatists who have succeeded in rolling back many elements of the New Deal and the subsequent reforms that helped create a great American middle class.

Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that in addition to government programs, a balanced economy requires strong labor unions. Then, as now, increased unionization created higher wages and benefits for both union members and unorganized workers. As unionization increased, the middle class grew. And as the percentage of workers represented by a union has declined in the past three decades, the disparity of wealth has increased in the corporate world.

We need to take into account the vast changes that have occurred since the New Deal, and we must continually adjust as new changes take place. America still needs strong unions--as well as a government on the side of working people--as part of the solution to rebalance power, provide greater fairness, make work pay and ensure that the dreams of all American children can still come true.1

Let’s fast forward to the present...



The plan by the wealthy leaders in our world, including Bush & Company and the representatives in his current regime, has been to steamroll and eliminate the middle class at warp speed. Let’s see what part the UBCJA under General President Douglas McCarron has had in this plan...


General President McCarron tightened his control of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners at the union’s convention in Las Vegas on August 25, 2005, when delegates voted to give him a third five-year term. The pro-democratic opposition slate, “Restore the Vote” team, did not have a chance...

Since then, he has run our union like it is his personal property. He has given himself dictatorial powers in our Constitution; he has amassed delegates, most of whom are beholden to him for jobs. Just like some of our individual carpenter locals continue to do today to most of our members.
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Note: Articles, sources, and citations are given at the end of my article.
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McCarron basically has been running our carpenters union like a corporation. He even boasts that centralized leadership is more efficient and attractive to employers and would produce more jobs for working carpenters. What he does not tell us is that his plan was to replace us, the professional carpenter with people that the corporate contractor will train to be uneducated and unthinking, just a robot, to service the employer in our trade, kept ignorant to our bargaining agreement, and happy to make less than our current union scale. This person is less likely to give our corporate unions any problems and our Regional Councils can make as many concessions with our bargaining agreements as needed to keep our coffers full at our corporate Regional Councils, thus letting America know we still have strong unions.


The many younger members, and all the new journeyman carpenters who are allowed to buy their union cards when they come along with a newly signed non-union contractor, do not know the carpenters history behind our bargaining agreement and how it came to be. They do not know how the carpenters in the late 1800s and early 1900s fought and died for the rights and wages we have enjoyed up till now...it is the members in all unions that are the ones who make up a good portion of the middle class in America...


I would like to make it very clear right now, that what I am getting ready to talk about does not involve every Regional Council, Executive Officer, or Officer at a local. We have been infiltrated with McCarron representatives at every level. These are men and women who believe and work towards McCarron’s plan and takeover of the UBCJA. Some of our representatives and members are still passionately unaware of the New Global Union plan for our UBCJA by McCarron.


Opposition from union carpenters continues to grow across America for UBCJA General President Douglas McCarron. He has taken the vote away from the rank and file carpenters and given it to himself and transferred that ability to all the Regional Councils left in our UBC. McCarron has even stepped over the border with his bullying in Canada.


Some of the men and women that now run the various Regional Councils across America and Canada are acutely aware of what is really happening but have been placed between a rock and a hard place because of the bullying with threats of losing their jobs and dictatorship policies made by McCarron. But many others are falling in line with the McCarron republican corporate labor union plan.


If we do not stand up and fight, we the rank and file, the working carpenters and our children that come after us are all going to lose...but our union administrators will continue to get their fat salaries and double pensions!


Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and UNITE-HERE are thought of as the reformers of anti-democratic behavior within our various unions. So why did the newly formed federation Change to Win Coalition invite General President McCarron to become part of the seven partner unions?


Andy Stern, who is the president of the SEIU, has always criticized President George W. Bush’s domestic and foreign policies. I wonder how Stern is dealing with McCarron today, knowing that McCarron is Bush’s darling Republican labor leader who gets to ride on Air Force One? McCarron has been meeting with Bush since his election as General President of the UBCJA in 1995...


There is no longer any mention of the UBCJA being part of the Change to Win Coalition in 2008.

The following is a statement by Anna Burger, Chair of Change to Win Coalition:

WASHINGTON DC, May 11, 2007 -- “On behalf of the six million members of Change to Win unions and its Leadership Council, we are disappointed that House Democratic leaders joined with the Bush Administration yesterday to announce a trade deal that is more free than fair.

The agreement does not represent the basis for the type of new U.S. trade policy that this nation desperately needs. Despite improvements in labor and environmental standards, workers remain at risk because the proposal fails to address how to protect U.S. jobs or create new ones. It undermines our prevailing wage and Buy America laws. And it hands foreign firms operating here more privileges over U.S. companies. For working America, that is not a deal.

Quick policy fixes won’t help workers achieve the American Dream in the 21st century– they need a whole new trade model equipped to meet the realities of today’s global economy.

Without significant changes, this agreement opens the door for subsequent harmful trade policies that resemble NAFTA/CAFTA – trade deals that have led to the loss of millions of good jobs at home, a surge in undocumented immigration, the soaring trade deficit, declining wages, and a deterioration of labor standards.

Change to Win stands for fair trade that promotes prosperity at home and abroad so that workers can achieve the American Dream in an era of globalization. Fair trade helps create standards that will stimulate development, protect and create new U.S. jobs, and maintain high wage standards around the globe – the Peru/Panama trade agreement falls far short of this.

It’s time for an alternative approach to this current failed model. We call on Congress to get back to work craft meaningful policies in current and future trade negotiations. We need to ensure that workers, not just corporations and CEOs, fairly share in the benefits of today’s global economy.”

Story by Steven Greenhouse on February 21, 2008 -- Change to Win gets behind Obama. In a conference call this morning, four of the coalition’s unions — the Service Employees International Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers and Unite Here — voted to back Mr. Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. With their votes, they ensured that unions representing two-thirds of the coalition’s members were backing a candidate, triggering the group’s endorsement.

The three other unions in the coalition — the Laborers, the UBCJA and the United Farm Workers — abstained. The carpenters union had initially endorsed Senator John Edwards, while the farm workers, easily the smallest union in the coalition, have endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

The Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters had this charade late last year in the Chicago area, actually in Iowa, with the current Presidential primary, and the UBCJA giving $500,000 of our money to an unknown person, Senator John Edwards to run in the primary for President. We had two perfectly good Democratic candidates already running in the primary...why was the UBCJA backing Edwards? Why did our Regional Councils go along with it? Why did none of our members (working carpenters) know about this? And why have we not heard any more about it? McCarron again did this without the permission or vote of the members...


All 50,000 of our members here in the Chicago area received a letter announcing the UBCJA backing John Edwards the same day he, John Edwards, dropped out of the Presidential primary. That was the first time many of the carpenters heard of John Edwards!


Again, carpenters here do not know what our Regional Council was thinking; they are not talking and continue to have meetings in secret and without all members knowing what their plan is. I personally feel this was one of the biggest mistakes our union in Chicago could have done...not allowing the rank and file (working carpenters) in on what has been happening with our Labor union(s). Now, all of the deceit and manipulation that is occurring in the UBC is on our shoulders. Many carpenters here in the Chicago area are continuing to talk about them and are starting to think they are part of McCarron’s Republican plan.


I attended the International Convention in Las Vegas in 2004 and heard Douglas McCarron speak. I have been giving him the benefit of a doubt as to what I heard him say at the convention and have been continually questioning his speech and the statements made by him...was this guy for real? He was talking about opening up diversity to people of color and women in our union so we could help to keep it strong. And then going on to say, also allowing the women who were and are part of this union to organize and now help to work to be part of the century old union. I never thought I would hear something like that from a union guy in my lifetime! It was just too good to be true , I was dumbfounded!


But now, in 2008, my take on this is McCarron is just another carpenter talking out the side of his mouth. “Doublespeak” has been practiced by politicians for decades. It is also now known as the ultimate betrayal by our union administrators who have learned the practice well! In society today nothing has been more widely accepted, used and promoted then the art of “Doublespeak.” McCarron continues to tell the union members what we want to hear, so he and his administration can complete the republican plan. He has been trained to complete this plan well from Bush and Company...as to what has to be done with middle class Americans in order for the Unions to survive in America...


We have seen no labor unity between UBCJA and the other Change to Win Coalition and AFL-CIO affiliate unions in the current race for the presidential primary. All the other unions are either backing Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. This tells me we have a few defectors to democracy in our unions, and one of them is our UBCJA...


The working carpenters here in the Chicago Regional Area are getting ready to get into serious difficulties with concessions being given to contractors with our Bargaining Agreements for several of the counties that are coming up this year 2008. The “Raw Deal” is already happening across America in the Carpenters and other unions. I predict concessions will be given to the employer’s big time this contract year...all in the name of our failing ECONOMY precipitated and planned by Bush and company and advantageously completed by McCarron in the carpenters union and by others in the other unions...


Here is an overview of what is happening in our Carpenters unions and our agreements across America and Canada:


First, millions of Americans are starting to become aware of what the Republicans have been planning over the past two decades. This is to eliminate the middle class by busting the unions to destroy our economy, our education system, and turn all of us against each other over hate for one reason or another, and now by allowing the immigrants to take over jobs in the United States for less pay.


McCarron’s plan has been no different; it has become the Corporate UBCJA. Get the undocumented workers who are mostly already uneducated, who know nothing about our bargaining agreements or our laws and are willing to work for less money than union scale carpenters are making under our current agreements. The immigrant’s loyalty is to the Regional Council and the puppets that run some of the locals. Some of our Regional Councils and locals are assisting the illegal immigrants to get Department of Homeland Security working cards in the United States, even though they are still not registered as legal residents in the United States. And there has been very little talk about the immigrants being dual citizens of both the United States and the other countries (where they were born).


McCarron and his kingdom of Regional Councils have been pandering to the contractors union and non-union (big business) and destroying our current bargaining agreements within our union across America and Canada. The Brotherhood of Carpenters is going to “hell in a hand basket,” and they are selling the rank and file working carpenters down the river...

November 7, 2005 – “UBCJA President McCarron in Washington DC is threatening American-style bully tactics to conduct a hostile takeover of the autonomous BC Carpenters Union.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA) sent a letter last Friday to the BC Provincial Council of Carpenters elected President, Len Embree, threatening to impose immediate "supervision" over the independent BC Carpenters Union, its 7000 members, and their union's assets.”

This story by EDMONTON/630 CHED, September 20, 2007 - - The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and the Alberta Building Trades Council have taken out ads warning carpenters they could face criminal charges or civil action if they don't return to work.

Headline News: “Threats of criminal charges for striking workers in Alberta, Canada. Federation Labor laws are being fought by over thousands working carpenters at a rally in Alberta, Canada. The Alberta Labor Code is dead!

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has dealt a fatal blow to these oppressive Labor Laws and the future for Canadians in Alberta is beginning to have promise.

Saturday, September 22, 2007 the funeral for the Alberta Labor Code will be held at the Alberta Labor Relations Board - 10808 - 99 Avenue at 12 noon and a Funeral parade will head to the Alberta Legislative building where the Alberta Labor Code will be put to rest.

For two days, beginning September 6, Alberta carpenters rallied in front of the Alberta Labor Relations Board to affirm their right to take collective action to defend their interests. On Thursday, September 6 more than 200 carpenters rallied outside the Alberta Labor Relations Board (ALRB) in downtown Edmonton where yet another employer complaint was being heard. On Friday, their numbers grew to more than 600 and the carpenters were joined by members of other unions. They filled the room where the hearings were taking place and closed the entire street in front of the ARLB offices.”


Corruption continues to run rampant in the Chicago and across America and Canada. From what I remember on the history of labor I read...it was the Canadians that started the rank and file working carpenters labor movement. Peter J. McGuire’s movement in 1881 started for the carpenters here in the United States after the Canadians fought and won for their rights in Canada. McGuire’s plan was taken from the Canadians...


Sheet rockers in Baltimore and Vancouver got the raw end of the deal along with Southern California style drywall piece rates in union contracts. The Southern California Nevada Regional Council of Carpenters continue making concessions to the contractors, it has become a way of life out there. It does not seem to bother the Business Representatives that concessions are “okay” and that the fact is the UBC gave up piece work 120 years ago...this drywall clause was clearly a travesty of justice under our current union contracts.


Clearly three-fourths of the members are currently deprived of the right to vote through the manipulation of our locals to keep members away from meetings. And the apathy and lack of education to our bargaining agreements by our members to get involved has not helped. It clearly places a minority in control of our unions.


The piece work clause is still in our By-Laws and Working Rules currently here in the Chicago area...but Immigrant drywaller’s are allowed to get their money by piece work right now. And again, some of our union business agents and organizers look the other way. Similar issues arise with the siders, roofers, and insulators. When carpenters are asked to bring a manual or power tool on the employer’s jobsites and our union allows it. Our union here even allows the transportation of the employer’s tools in the carpenter’s vehicles, and again the business agents and organizers look the other way.


New York also has many concessionary agreements of its own that are now part of its bargaining agreement. Fred Devine, the former administration President for the New York District Council of Carpenters and now convicted felon, started the ball rolling in 1993.


In the 1993 agreements with the associations, Devine gave up double time for overtime, and now all carpenters will only get time and a half for work after seven hours, except on Sundays and legal holidays. The District Council (now called Regional Councils) also agreed to allow contractors to use only apprentices for the unloading and distribution of carpenter materials on jobsites, turning the apprentices into cheap delivery labor and denying journeymen opportunities for overtime.

This story by Gregory A. Butler, carpenter in New York:

“Union carpenters in New York City in 1999 are at a crossroads. For the first time since 1915, we have a District Council leadership that does not have ties to La Costa Nostra, but we are actually worse off than we were under the wise guys.

There is a building boom, and only 1,300 or so brothers and sisters on the list out of 20,000, but there are also about 20,000 non-union brothers and sisters out there in our trade.

Not only are the non represented carpenters doing virtually all the new houses in Staten Island, and all the apartment renovations in Harlem, the South Bronx, South Jamaica, Bedford Stuyvessant and East New York, but much of the storefront work in the Financial District, Midtown, the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side and even high-rises on W 40th Street and that big MTA command center on 54th Street. And, even the sidewalk bridges around a lot of sites are non union, and we owned that work just 4 years ago.

In New York, McCarron’s organizers have been attempting to set up multiple scales, to attract the rat contractors. With the scaffold contractors, Rockledge and Colgate, who used to be union until former District Council President Fred Devine gave them a contract that exempted them from 50/50 hiring from the hall, enabling them to go 100% non union, McCarron's organizers, is rewarding them for going scab.”

Our unions continue to hire people off the street, even though the indentured apprentices and journeyman continue to be without jobs. Unions pay people living in the street and wives or girlfriends of carpenters to walk pickets, instead of asking for volunteers from the carpenters out of work. This brings up another matter...our carpenter trade union in the Chicago jurisdiction still will not appoint woman carpenters as organizers, but continue to allow the wives and girlfriends of carpenters to walk the pickets and pay them. This has been going on forever...now if that is not discrimination I do not know what is?


The council will close down the permit office every once in a while to pacify the other out of work carpenters, but the process continues. This concession was to allow contractors to hire diversity, but it has given these contractors the ability to pay less than scale to these people hired off the street. They know only what their union employer is telling them, they are being manipulated and lied too about what they should receive as union scale and benefits. These people are mostly people of color, women and easily manipulated uneducated white men. Our union does support discrimination by our union contractors. Because the business agents and organizers are to busy getting more jobs for us to work on, but does not have the time to support our rank and file members unless it benefits their plan.


At this point, I also have to include the apprenticeship programs...I am sure this occurs at many of the apprenticeship schools across union America. Bring the new people in by the thousands and let them run wild with no support from our Trustees or our Apprenticeship Administration. If it were not for the marvelous Instructors that work at the schools, the apprentices would get no support at all. This is of course unless they are favorites or in a union family. Fairness is not practiced here either…


Most of the new apprentices are left to fend for themselves. If our apprentice coordinators can find them leads on jobs, and if they can find a union contractor to hire a person of color or a woman, then they might work for a few months. More money goes into our coffers...and that is more money for the Executive and local administrators to provide salary increases and to make their wages secure and some of their double pensions fatter...and unions get stronger.


Some of the people in my union have been stonewalling my efforts to develop an evening class to educate all union carpenters to our Area Agreements, our UBCJA Constitution, and our union member rights for over ten years. Instead they make a video and leave it up to the individual member to watch and understand. Most of the members do not even watch it. Good job guys, keep the plan rolling along...keep doing it your way!


The Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters Apprentice & Training Program has a Labor Management Relations class for first year apprentices. None of the other Instructor’s were ever trained to teach this class…I had to educate myself about the bargaining agreements, By-Laws & Working Rules, and our UBCJA Constitution so I felt comfortable teaching it to the apprentices. Some of the business agents, stewards on job sites, and organizers are still clueless to our area agreements or UBC Constitution.


The comments I have received from the working apprentices in the field are horror stories about what the union contractors are making them do in violation of our contracts…this has been occurring for the past fifteen years and is continuing to get worse. Our business agents and the hundreds of male organizers we pay continue to look the other way.


We are currently bringing in 3000 to 4000 apprentices for training in our program every year, but only 700 to 800 graduate...what does it matter; right? Most of them did work for an hour or more, or maybe a year or two before they disappeared. Our coffers are getting fatter because of these people...


Story from a sister Carpenter in another state:

“We have a local here that I say is about 70% African American. It happens to be a local that is paid a lesser rate because it is a housing local not commercial. Almost ALL of the women and men of color that come in through the pre-apprentice programs are assigned to that local. They don't get the same elective of being assigned to the local in their area like most of the white apprentices. The leadership of that local is 100% white. Go figure. This, in one the largest unionized cities on the east coast. Most members are just glad to be working.”


TEAMSTERS (IBT) - Chicago Local in Turmoil over Officer Elections

“Dissident members of a Chicago Teamsters union have charged the hierarchy with subverting the victory of their candidate for president in elections conducted Oct. 17, amid allegations of corruption linked with mob influence, kick-backs, and underhanded job-shifting schemes against the current hierarchy, led by Robert Walston. Local 743 represents more than 12,000 health care, manufacturing, insurance and university workers in the Chicago area.


An opposition slate led by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) activist Richard Berg was ahead in the ballot count 788 to 781. About 200 ballots -- most from a shop that supported Berg -- remained to be counted when those votes were challenged. Local 743 bosses initially said that they would recognize the votes that had been challenged, but after checking the current tally changed their minds and decided to hold a new election entirely.


Local 743 attorney Bill Widmer said Berg himself asked for the election to be voided because voters had supposedly been disenfranchised. But Berg said the union dismissed numerous other protests he had filed, and than decided to grant one and ordered a new election when his win looked likely.” [Chicago Maroon, 10/28/04: Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/22/04]


Story by two sister Teamsters from the Chicago area:

“We are in a local on the southern area of Chicago that consists of all women, only the two of us are citizens of the U.S. All the other women are Hispanic and have U.S. Department of Homeland Security working cards. But they are not residents of the U.S. All of the officers in our local are white men who put fear into the women when we have anything to say about our employers not giving us our contracted scale or working more than eight hours and still getting paid the same as an eight hour day. The officers will not give us information as to our bargaining agreement and continue to threaten us with our jobs if we do not shut-up.”


Our Chicago area administration signed an agreement with what is called, Furniture Contractors. The concessions given to this type of contractor allows them to hire twenty apprentices to one journeyman carpenter on every one of their union jobs. Business agents have been placing mostly people of color and women with these contractors. These apprentices have no possibility of becoming journeyman carpenters. These type of contractors do not train people in the carpentry skills needed to gain journeyman status...so, near the end of their four year apprenticeship they only have two options left...start the apprentice program all over again or quit the carpenters union for another type of job.


You see, if they start all over again, they will continue to put money into our corporate Regional Councils coffers for all vested carpenters in our unions and they will again have a steady job for another almost four years at the apprentice rate. Good deal huh?


Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters administration gave up overtime on Saturdays for Residential Carpenters in our area...they raised the union dues fifteen dollars more for first and second year apprentices because they know most will not be in our union after the second year. Journeymen only received a three dollar increase...

In various other unions across America, and in some instances here in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa immigrant workers, people of color, and women are being placed into separate locals to allow the men that run that local to control and manipulate them. These people are not given their By-Laws and Constitution booklets, nor are the officers at those locals educating them to their rights under our bargaining agreement. In some of the more depressed areas of our three state county regions, locals are bullying their members and manipulating them into believing that they will not be able to get a job or ever work as a carpenter again. And again, these are mostly people of color, women or uneducated white men. People of color and women are constantly intimidated into not participating at their local meetings. Some of the apprentices that want to speak up at a meeting are still told to “shut your fucking month and sit down,” when it is a concern that the officers do not want to address. They also allow their members to bully the new members coming in, especially if that new member is a woman.


The immigrants only have employment cards from the Department of Homeland Security to work in the United States, and these people are constantly fearful of doing anything that could have them deported back to their countries. So they work for their union employers, accepting anything given to them. The Regional councils and the business agents again look the other way...


Any time a person of color or a female carpenter fights for their rights under our union contract they are blackballed and not able to work for that contractor again...


In September 2004, Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin reported that Andy Ryan, 19, son of Tom Ryan, Business Representative/Secretary Treasurer out of Carpenter Local 13, was hired as a building inspector even though the city requires all inspectors to have completed a four-year apprenticeship and have two years work experience. The Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters was Mayor Daley’s largest campaign contributor in 2003. After more investigation it was found that another son of a Business Representative was also hired by the Chicago Building Department a year prior. Carpenter Local 13 was credited with being one of the prominent locals to negotiate a bargaining agreement with the City of Chicago, Building Inspection Department a year earlier...


I did not see young Ryan or any of his brothers in the Apprenticeship school until after the corruption charges were filed with the Chicago Building Department…then several of the brothers started in the apprenticeship. I heard one has since been appointed as a Business Representative in our CRCC union.


We have Executive Business Agent/Directors in charge of certain committees in our area; one is the called Mentorship Committee in which the President of a Carpenters Local and also an Executive Business Representative is in charge and has the title of Mentorship Director. There has not been a mentorship committee in this or other locals since the Las Vegas Convention in 2004. Yet I was told that it existed before 2004. It’s a big joke to this guy...if there is or was a mentorship committee in any carpenter local, it was because of the men and women carpenters in those locals made it happen, not because of this so-called Business Representative/Mentorship Director. Word is he received this position because it was the worse committee to be on, and they had to put him somewhere...


What our Unions have done over the past decade is to pander to the Corporations leaving the working carpenters to fend for themselves. As long as the union Corporations pay into the benefits fund, our unions will continue to be a strong hold in America, but this time at the cost to the uneducated workers, the immigrant workers or the uncaring and ignorant uneducated indentured apprentices and journeymen that continue to look the other way...


The same concessions have been happening here in the jurisdictional counties in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa and it is getting worse...and the excuse we, the working carpenters will be given is we are in a recession, and there is nothing that the Regional Council can do...


This same plan has been in effect in other unions across America and Canada as well. Part of the plan is to lower the wages of all union carpenters. The Corporate UBC and the Regional Councils however will continue to get there money to keep the union strong because the corporate contractors continue to pay into the benefits at higher amounts, possibly with the promise of better health care for union workers. Even though wages will be down and immigrants are always willing to work hard and receive lower wages. History repeats itself again...


UBCJA General President Douglas McCarron has been part of the RAT BRIGADE (Corporate Contractors) all along!


McCarron has been in on this plan since his first election in 1995 and started negotiations in 2000 with Bush and the Republican Party, his administrations goals have been to continue making the unions strong at the expense of the working carpenters and undocumented immigrant workers. These unions were once run by the working carpenters, now it is a Labor Union Corporation and the UBC and the Regional Councils have taken control. The union workers' rights under our agreements have been violated continuously over the past decade, and no one in our administration has been supporting the union workers rights. The Equal Rights amendment and all of the other laws are not enforced. It is like they have been put in place by our government and our unions but were written with disappearing ink...they are no more, nor have they really been!


The only right that our unions have been supporting with their millions of dollars a year attorney firms, which we pay for, is for the corporate labor unions, their administrations and contractor corporations’ rights.


We no longer have a voice or vote in our unions, and pretty soon we will no longer have a voice or vote in America! Corruption, deceit, and manipulation are alive and well in our unions…

“We, as carpenters, both union and non-union, have to build a new type of unionism. Our goal is and has always been for a better life and a higher standard of living for EVERY carpenter, White, Black, Latino, Polish, Asian, man or woman. We should not be on the same side with ANY contractor, rat or union. And, we do not have much use for leaders like Doug McCarron.” – Gregory A. Butler, union carpenter Blog

I second that notion...Wake up people, fight back!

................................................................................................................................................................

People really need to educate themselves to what is happening on in our Nation...

READ, THINK...EDUCATE

If you are just a passionately unaware American, please evaluate your thinking as to who is the best candidate to be our leader...the next President of the United States...

SWAY THE OBAMA WAY!

Time for Illinois Labor Leaders - the Real Ones - to get wise and give Andy Stern the tune-up he needs.

SEIU helps Obama and really Wants the Wealth Spread Around

"We're ready to take the offense for organized labor. It's time we have a President who didn't choke saying the word 'union.' We need to strengthen our unions by letting them do what they do best --- organize our workers. If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It's that simple. We need to stand up to the business lobby that's been getting their friends in Congress and in the White House to block card check. That's why I was one of the leaders fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I'm fighting for it in the Senate. And that's why we'll make it the law of the land when I'm President."
Barack Obama, Dubuque, IA, November 13, 2007

I am conflicted. American Labor created the American Middle Class through the sacrifices made by Union Men and Women and Colle ctive Bargaining. American Labor is now identified as the sole property of SEIU's Andy Stern. The Media did that.
The Media helped create Andy Stern. Andy Stern is a Marxist who leads the largest union of no skill and low skill workers who bu sheer force of their numbers intimidate politicians. Labor helpe no skill and low skill workers on to a path that gave them the skills to fight their way into the Middle Class.

The Middle Class is the home of American labor - skilled tradesmen. That home is being assaulted by SEIU. SEIU needs Barack Obama in the White House.

Click my post title -SEIU and ACORN are all over Indiana!

Services Employee Internation Union (SEIU) ignores Collective Bargaining practices, which American Labor developed to give build the American Middle Class. SEIU mobilizes no-skill and low skill workers by the thousands to intimidate, agitate and effect legislation that Redistribute Wealth. SEIU is now identified in the American Media as Labor.

Here is SEIU in its own words:

SEIU History
» In 1921, members of seven small janitor unions dared to dream they could build their strength by forming a single organization, the Building Service Employees International Union. The BSEIU, a union of mostly immigrant workers chartered by the then-AFL, changed its name to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in 1968. Chicago-based Local 1, SEIU's first local union, is still organizing janitors and security officers today.


» In the years during and following the Great Depression, the union was the first in the country to help other service workers like hospital caregivers and public employees unite together in a union, paving the way for the modern SEIU's three core industries: property and public services, and health care. In 1968, the union was renamed the Service Employees International Union to reflect its membership and key sectors.


» SEIU's membership has grown from 625,000 in 1980 to more than 1.8 million today. At a time when the majority of organized labor was shrinking, SEIU was aggressively uniting workers' strength - largely in the fast-growing service industries. In 2000, SEIU had united 1.4 million members, to became the largest and fastest growing union in North America.


» SEIU represents more immigrants than any other union, and its membership is among the most diverse in the labor movement. Since President Andy Stern took office 1996, over 900,000 workers have united with SEIU, many of them women and people of color. Also that year, SEIU officers also committed to diversify the union's leadership to reflect the membership, and today, more than 50 percent of SEIU members are in local unions led by a woman or person of color.


» Following the 2004 presidential elections, SEIU launched a widely publicized dialogue to help rebuild the labor movement following several decades of decline. Despite massive economic changes in our world today, the strategies, structure, and priorities of the AFL-CIO, and many unions, haven't changed much since the federation was founded 50 years ago - prompting SEIU and four major unions to disaffiliate from the AFL-CIO in the summer of 2005 and build something stronger to help unite the 90 percent of workers who have no union. ( emphasis my own)

» At a historic founding convention in St. Louis on September 27, 2005, SEIU, along with 6 other unions representing 5.5 million workers--the Teamsters, UNITE HERE, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Laborers, the Carpenters and the United Farm Workers--formed the Change to Win Federation to develop joint strategic organizing campaigns to help ensure that workers, not just executives and stockholders, benefit from today's global economy. With a key focus to unite non-union workers by industry, the new federation aims to empower working people in this country so that they can build the strength to make their voices heard in their jobs, their communities, and in Washington. The delegates elected SEIU's Anna Burger as CTW federation chair - making her the first woman in U.S. history to ever head a labor federation.

Here is What SEIU is all about:
"We're going to build the strongest grassroots political voice in North America," Stern told more than 3,000 SEIU delegates in his June 2004 convention address.



But Stern's ideological aim has nothing to do with empowering workers. On the contrary, he has pursued a policy of consolidating small SEIU-affiliated unions into larger unions, and of giving the national union total control over its locals, which are now to be prohibited from even having their own logo and symbols. All power and image is to be subsumed under the purple and gold logo of national SEIU and its supreme boss, Andrew Stern. Stern's current organizing approach, in fact, is to bypass workers altogether.



SEIU and its political, media and leftwing activist allies conspire to attack a company directly with what they call "Corporate Campaigns" or the "death of a thousand cuts." This cabal of attackers harasses and disrupts company activities, sends vicious emails and letters to stockholders, intimidates customers, stalks and frightens employees, files baseless lawsuits, plants false stories with media allies to smear the company's reputation, and uses hundreds of other tactics to injure the targeted company in every way they can imagine.



The aim of this concerted swarming attack is to bully and pressure a targeted company into signing an agreement making SEIU the representative of its employees. When this happens, employees who might have voted "No" to SEIU representation in an election will get no vote at all. The union yoke is simply locked around each worker's neck - and paycheck. SEIU prefers this because, in a large percentage of past cases, workers who were given a choice voted against joining this thug union.



"He ticked off a number of reasons why union elections have their drawbacks," Chicago Tribune reporter Stephen Franklin wrote in a story headlined "Democracy Dream Still Eludes Union" after interviewing SEIU President Stern a few years ago. "They politicize the union's staff, they are costly, they are distracting from the union's business…. 'It is hard to make the argument that unions with direct elections better represent their members,' said Stern, whose membership takes in a large number of low-wage hospital workers, janitors and factory help."



"Some SEIU staff say straight up, 'This isn't a workers' organization. If it was left to the workers there wouldn't be an organization,'" wrote labor reporter JoAnn Wypijewski in October 2003 in the magazine CounterPunch. She is former Managing Editor of The Nation.



In its arrogance, organized labor now demands that workers should not be permitted any say in how their dues may be spent on politics. And the current SEIU approach is to deny workers any vote whatsoever on whether or not they must join this union, and no control over the local conglomerated SEIU union to which they must be members. Stern and the national union control everything. This is what Stern, blind to its irony, describes as "Union Democracy."



SEIU perfectly embodies the values of the New Labor Movement in America. To understand what it is, consider this 1997 analysis by Los Angeles Democrat, longtime fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, activist and author Joel Kotkin: "The public-sector unions have pushed the entire labor movement to the left. The Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, has embraced organizations with a New Left origin, such as ACORN and Cleveland's Nine to Five, and has even set up its own gay and lesbian caucus. 'Most of the radicals who went into labor ended up in the public employee unions,' observes one labor official."



"The rise of these unions led to the elevation of SEIU's boss, John Sweeney, to head of the labor federation," wrote Kotkin. "No George Meaney-style bread-and-butter unionist, Sweeney is an advocate of European-style democratic socialism. He has opened the AFL-CIO to participation by delegates openly linked to the Communist Party, which enthusiastically backed his ascent. The U.S. Communist Party says it is now 'in complete accord' with the AFL-CIO's program. 'The radical shift in both leadership and policy is a very positive, even historic change,' wrote CPUSA National Chairman Gus Hall in 1996 after the AFL-CIO convention. That alone is enough to send shivers down the spines of many labor activists, particularly those old enough to remember the earlier struggles against the totalitarian left. 'All those people we thought we got rid of 40 years ago are back in there,' complains one Detroit area labor lawyer close to the United Auto Workers. 'It's like the 1930s all over again.'"



Some SEIU activists boast that they are the "new CIO," referring to the radical, class-warfare Congress of Industrial Organizations before Walter Reuther purged it of its most toxic Communist leaders as a condition of merging with the more moderate, boost-worker-wages-oriented American Federation of Labor to create the AFL-CIO in 1955. Today's SEIU "leaders tend to be radical, even socialist," wrote Ryan Lizza, Associate Editor of The New Republic in 2003.



Such leftwing ideology was on display at the June 2004 SEIU convention, whose agendas moved far beyond workplace-and-wages issues by passing a resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. SEIU and AFSCME contributed $2.6 million of their members' dues to Democrat Howard Dean's quixotic, losing anti-war run for the Iowa presidential caucuses, precisely because he was more passionately radical than the more reliable organized labor sock puppet, Rep. Dick Gephardt. (Many observers have likened Dean in that regard to SEIU President Stern.)



This New Labor movement is no longer focused just on workaday concerns. Many of its leaders are now 1960s radicals like Stern. SEIU's allies in waging mass attacks on targeted companies are not only politicians, the media and trial lawyers, but also leftwing environmental, health and community activist groups. John Sweeney marched arm-in-arm with such activists in protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle while radicals around him smashed store windows.



But although the SEIU objects to importing goods from international companies, it supports importing workers via easy immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens. One reason is that SEIU finds it easy to organize low-income, low-education workers who do not talk back to or question their SEIU union bosses. Another potential reason, as the Communist Party USA has proposed, is that Marxist-style revolution requires a disaffected proletariat, but American workers are generally too satisfied to function as this revolutionary class. The CPUSA answer: import poor immigrants, who, with proper union brainwashing, can become the soon-to-be-discontented proletariat that the U.S. has not produced in its own native population.



As Ben Johnson reported in FrontPageMagazine.com on March 2, 2004, SEIU's Andy Stern is on the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party auxiliary America Coming Together (ACT), along with the head of the Sierra Club and other radicals, ACT being funded by international money-manipulator George Soros.

Chicago land Braces for Burge Blizzard!

Expect non-stop ‘all Burge all the time’ from the hard hitting cadre of investigative journalists and opinion slingers.

TV News Nitwits will adjust the odd comb-over and honey-do tresses and get all steely eyed.

Remember Millionaire Lefty Lawyer G. Flint Taylor (long time pal of Billy Ayers they go WAAAAY back!) brokered this Burge Story. He was last heard from while being sued by Urban Translator and Repentant Gang-banger Emeritus Wallace Gator Bradley, late of the Queen’s Own Gangster Disciples. G. Flint will no doubt want his cut, Tribune and STNG. He had to wrestle the Gator to keep his Burge Boodle!

Our own home grown newshounds could not pick up on the fact that Paul Vallas might have been a great person to call regarding Obama/Ayers Annenberg Playtime. It took a New York Post story to awaken the Nuanced Eric Zorn. They have awakened a sleeping Pygmy!

Here's the Deal:

1. No physical or corroborating evidence ever has been brought to bear in any number of attempts to bring Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge to trial

2. It seems to me that the media got on board of the bus driven entirely by radicals of Peoples Law Office, which succeeded in drawing in the national media back in the 1970's to discredit the FBI - G. Flint Taylor was that Boy Wonder and he brokered the media's love affair with this issue.

3. Four Mayors - Byrne, Washington, Orr, and Sawyer did nothing to spark inquiry into the issue

4. G. Flint Taylor and his cooperating witnesses - The Chicago Media - have orchestrated the case.


5. Okay, Fitzy! Let's see what you have.

6. I would not know Jon Burge if he walked on me. I do not know if he tortured anyone and neither did the Commission that spent 7 million dollars - that did not give Flint Taylor his money. Prove it Fitzy. I have yet to beimpressed with the Federal Prosecutor. I do know that the Chicago Media sees him as the poster boy for Justice and Jon Burge for all the evil and systemic racism that helps sell newspapers. They'll help you take Burge down, Fitzy! No worries there.

7. This trial is over as far as the media is concerned. Justice and the search for truth has nothing to do with it. Click my post title to get the perspective of the real victims in all this - The Police Officers.



http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/10/feds-arrest-ex-chicago-cop-burge.html

Chicago Tribune Targets Skilled Trades Unions to Obscure Class War Agenda

Dennis Gannon is not only a skilled and hard working Tradesman, but the leader of the Chicago Federation Labor, which includes the Chicago Building Trades Council. Due to many years of John Sweeney's leadership of AFL-CIO, Gannon inherited a toxic labor situation of poisoned waters polluted by Andy Stern of SEIU. SEIU represents the largest organization public salaried employees in America as well the largest force of unskilled and low skilled health care workers. SEIU rank and file depend upon increased taxes taken from the Skilled Trades Workers who earned their livlihoods through training and Collective Bargaining. SEIU and ACORN are working together to elect Barack Obama as President of the United States - so is the Chicago Tribune.*

It may be remembered, certainly not by the selective memory of Chicago Tribune editorial board, that Andy Stern and Anna Burger led their followers of SEIU out of the AFL-CIO. Sweeney, who was Stern's sponsor in SEIU, took the first of many knives to the ribs and well he should.

Dennis Gannon is another story. Labor has fallen on hard times, due in large part to the propaganda printed in newspapers like the Chicago Tribune - 'Excessive salaries and benefits!!!' American Labor, through collective bargaining, gave America the standard of living unequalled in human history. That standard of living is the Target of SEIU and its redistribution of wealth agenda.

Benefits and wages won in the arena of Collective Bargaining and here, again, is the opinion of the Chicago Tribune on why Daley's Budget is bloated to bursting with taxpayer money:

The generous wages and benefits given to many in the roughly 38,000-strong municipal workforce amount to 80 percent of the cost of running the city's government, making it impossible to significantly cut the budget without reducing personnel costs.

Those expenses are only going up since Daley agreed last year to a 10-year contract with dozens of labor unions. The deal guarantees continued pay increases that far outstrip inflation.

Take for instance the city's hoisting engineers, members of clout-heavy Local 150. Their top hourly wage of almost $44 an hour has risen from $37.50 in three years.

Local 150's city contract also allows for double time for any work over eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week.

They and other blue-collar workers, such as laborers, get 12 sick days a year, which they can carry over to future years if not used, in addition to 12 paid holidays.

If a relative dies, members of the biggest trade unions get three paid days off—rising to five if the funeral is held out of state.

"Tax increases don't get at the core problem that operating costs are rising far faster than what any revenues could pay for," said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a tax watchdog group.

But Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said cutting hundreds of unionized city workers would inevitably have a negative impact on city services.

"At the end of the day, somebody has to do the work," Gannon said. "Take them out of the equation and who is going to pick up that slack?"

The wages and benefits won by labor - Real Labor through collective bargaining - are to blame for Daley's give away politics?

Nonsense! Daley tossed $250,000 Plus to Chicago Public School kids to bribe them into doing what they are supposed to do. Daley's Duncan plans to send CPS teachers back to school to learn what they are supposed to teach. Daley tosses millions at programs with no oversight. But, The Chicago Tribune gives a NUANCED approach - take money away from skilled, trained and effective Tradesmen.

Dennis Gannon and all of the Skilled Trades Union have the albatross necklace of SEIU
which eschews Collective Bargaining in favor of hammering pressure on politicians to legislate tax-payer funded pay raises.

The Chicago Tribune has long acted as a mouthpiece for SEIU and stated 'Redistribution of Wealth Agenda.' That agenda will effectively kill the Skilled Trades Unions and eliminate the American Middle Class.

*Some of ACORN’s recent activities are as follows:

SEIU paid ACORN founder and chief of anti-Wal-Mart strategies Wade Rathke $21,885 in salary and $5,233 in expenses for the role of “campaign project organizer.”
SEIU gave $50,000 contribution to “Walmart Associations” in the care of Wade Rathke
SEIU paid a $126,000 “subsidy” to Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now, operated by ACORN
Change to Win paid ACORN $30,000 for a “public awareness campaign.”
SEIU twice awarded ACORN a $40,000 “monthly retainer.”
SEIU paid more than $970,000 to ACORN’s ACLOC program for “training.”
SEIU Local 5 paid ACLOC $58,487 for an internship phase and for an “organizing partnership.”
UFCW hired ACLOC as a “consultant for organizing program” at a cost of $429,431
UFCW Local 876 paid $131,089 for a “community standards program.”
ACORN is also on record as providing direct staffing for various labor union efforts and programs as opposed to mere training and consultancy work, as well.

This close relationship raises questions as to whether ACORN should fall under Federal regulations as a labor organization.

http://theunionlabelblog.com/2008/07/23/acorn-and-its-connection-to-organized-labor/

John McCain: SEIU - Revolutionary Corruption!

Andy Stern oversees the Redistribution of Wealth agenda operated by SEIU. Barack Obama depends upon SEIU and every bit of advice and approval Andy Stern and Obama Economics Adviser SEIU Anna Burger offer.

Andy Stern's and picked L.A. SEIU chief oversees the redistribution of contributions from the rank-and-file.

The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton's steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show.



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In addition, the union paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee. And a now-defunct minor league basketball team coached by the president's brother-in-law received $16,000 for what the union described as public relations, according to the union's U.S. Labor Department filings and interviews.

Most of the 160,000 people represented by the union, a local chapter of the nation's fastest-growing labor organization, the Service International Employees Union, earn $9 an hour or slightly more tending to the infirm and disabled in private homes under taxpayer-funded programs. The workers, whose dues fill the local's coffers, often are described as "the poor caring for the poor." In its Labor Department filings, the local, headed by Tyrone Freeman, has reported more liabilities than assets for each of the last three years.

This clown could make a Cook County elected crook blush with shame - for not stealing everything.


Now that's not Chump Change You Can Believe In!

John McCain: Obamanomics by SEIU's Andy Stern

SEIU is a leftist troika that poses as a labor union. SEIU is run by a Leftist Social Worker whose 1960's radicalism found a profitable and powerful home in a labor union that expands membership numbers, intimidates gutless politicians, and operates the most massive redistribution of wealth scam in America. 1-2-3- that's how you dance to a troika -1. Expand 2.Intimidate 3. Redistribute Wealth!

Taking over the weak and corrupt janitors union in Chicago in the 1970's, Andy Stern and fellow University of Pennsylvannia School Social Work colleague Anna Burger help radicalize and consolidate locals of building janitors, bringing thousands of unskilled to low skilled health care industry workers, security guard locals, menial office task workers and others into a political intimidation political action force.

Using a very complicit and lazy news media, Andy Stern deftly crafted a cult of personality unparalleled since Mao. The Purple Gang of hundreds of thousands of low-skill to no skill workers intimidated their way into public service employees and nearly match AFCME in tax-payer salaried workers. If you are somewhat taken aback by my analysis of the threat that I see from SEIU, please do take a look at Andy Stern's frequent trips to Red China and read Newsweeks's glwoing accounts of Stern's agenda to help one of the most oppresive regimes on the planet 'control their workers.' Take a look at Andy Stern's similar control that he exercises over local SEIU 'thought criminals.' Andy gets great PR from the press and the other mediums, but occasionally the real story gets out.

Like this one:

Sal Rosselli had been hardened by nearly three decades of front-line unionism. Time and again he staged insurgent organizing drives and do-or-die strikes, staring down major corporations. Now he blinked away tears as he huddled with supporters in his Oakland headquarters, a sooty-windowed, bunker-like building strewn with leaflets and picket signs, a place suddenly under siege.

Rosselli was describing his latest battle, his toughest ever: a face-off against a comrade in struggle, Andrew Stern, whom many view as the most powerful labor leader in America.

The two are locked in a nasty, often personal fight over how to make the nation's fastest-growing union -- 1.9 million members -- even bigger. Stern, its president, has sought more common ground with employers as a means to unionize entire industries. Rosselli believes building membership first requires getting the best deal for workers already under labor's tent.

"If you stick your head up, if you question what he's doing, you'll get whacked," said Rosselli, 58, head of the second-largest California chapter of Stern's union.

Wiping his eyes, he insisted that Stern, through a trusteeship, is determined to oust him from his elected post as part of a long push to centralize authority.

Stern and his allies in the Service Employees International Union dismiss the allegations and downplay the significance of the rift.

"It's not open warfare, it's a debate," said Pennsylvania union official Thomas De Bruin.

"It's David and Goliath," Rosselli said.

http://theunionnews.blogspot.com/2008/06/seiu-andy-stern-is-issue.html

SEIU was solidly behind John Edwards. Edwards tanked. SEIU is solidly behind Obama.

Anna Burger sits on Obama's Economic Advisory Board. A radical Marxist is telling Obam how to shape America's economic path.

Obama like Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick from whom Obama crafts many of his rhetorical hits in the media, depends upon Andy and SEIU.

Andy Stern is making sure that Race is the pivot point of Obama's Campaign.

Leaders of the AFL-CIO met this week in Chicago to decide how to deploy some 250,000 volunteers and more than $250 million for its grass-roots campaign on behalf of Obama and 500 Democratic candidates vying for other posts.

The fast-growing Service Employees International Union, which has successfully organized lower-wage workers, has $85 million to spend. The AFL-CIO said it has set aside its rivalry with the SEIU and other unions that left to form their own labor federation in 2005.

CONFRONT RACISM

Unions pride themselves on their racial diversity and plan to confront members about any biases they have.

"You go straight at our people and talk about the difference between McCain and Obama and the fact that race could be an issue -- you go straight at it," said Gerald McEntee, head of the AFL-CIO's political committee.

"Once people get in the booth, if they won't vote for a black man ...," he said with a shrug. Continued...

If you do not vote for Obama, You are a racist. Stalinist and simple. That's Andy Stern and all who do his bidding.

American Labor was built upon the principles of the right to work, the right to organize, the right to engage in collective bargaining and the right to strike for wages and benefits. American Labor made the American Standard of Living and the Middle Class. Unions taughtthe unskilled skills - moved the poor into the middle class. SEIU uses the poor and the unskilled to eliminate the American Middle Class.

The more unskilled and impoverished Americans, the more powerful Andy Stern's SEIU becomes.

Andy Stern's SEIU is for redistribution of wealth, global identification over American values, salaries mandated by legislation and the elimination of the American Middle Class.

Obama swims in Andy Stern's Tank.

John McCain is on the other side of Andy Stern.