Remember Andy Stern's campaign against the CEO and Chairman of Bank of America, Ken Lewis? Well, evidently Our Glorious Maximum Leader wasn't just an ordinary customer or labor leader out to make a political point in his campaign against Bank of America - he was also a Very Important Customer...
For the past few months, Andy Stern, president of the powerful Service Employees International Union, has railed against the government's $45 billion Bank of America bailout.One would think that is bad enough for Our Glorious Maximum Leader, but that is just one facet of his rank hypocrisy...
He has condemned the bank for lavish bonuses, for exploiting millions of mortgage and credit card customers, and for mistreating its low-level workers.
SEIU's Change to Win labor coalition even led a "Just Vote No" shareholder revolt Wednesday at the bank's annual meeting in Charlotte, N.C., at which Ken Lewis was ousted as bank chairman but kept on as CEO.
But guess what? Despite all the public fanfare, Stern has been quietly doing big business with Bank of America.
Last year, his union borrowed $10 million from the bank, SEIU's financial report shows. That loan brought the union's total debt with Bank of America to $87.7 million.
Ken Lewis, in other words, is SEIU's main creditor.
And that's not the only surprise in the report.Nothing unusual. Rrrriiiggghhhtttt...
SEIU's other big lender last year - to the tune of $15 million - was Amalgamated Bank. That's the institution owned by UNITE HERE, a rival union that represents clothing, hotel, restaurant and laundry workers.
The Amalgamated loan was issued in September, an SEIU spokeswoman said. It arrived just before a power feud between UNITE HERE's two top leaders, Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm, erupted into the nastiest labor split in years.
Once it became clear that Wilhelm had leadership support in that dispute, Raynor rushed to rewrite the bank's bylaws in December to assure himself control of Amalgamated's board of directors. He then ousted Wilhelm as a bank director.
Amalgamated is the only union-owned bank in America. It has $500 million in assets, and is often called the crown jewel of the labor movement.
By the time he ousted Wilhelm from the bank board, Raynor was openly working with Andy Stern to convince a third of UNITE HERE's nearly half-million members to secede and affiliate with SEIU.
The UNITE HERE breakaway group calls itself Workers United. Stern spoke at its founding meeting last month. SEIU bankrolled the secession effort and a suit aimed at getting control of Amalgamated.
"Raynor conspired to move money from Amalgamated Bank to SEIU for the purpose of attacking our union with money from our own bank," Wilhelm says.
Last week, UNITE HERE's leadership voted to start suspension proceedings against Raynor, who's still the union's president.
Raynor declined to talk about the Amalgamated Bank loan. SEIU spokeswoman Ramona Oliver dismissed Wilhelm's claim.
"We do a lot of business ... with Amalgamated," Oliver said. "There nothing unusual about that $15 million loan."
Still, one must ask, with easy access its millions of members paying monthly dues as well as COPE expenditures, why does SEIU find it necessary to take out paper to the tune of $105M, with $60M of that in the past calendar year...
So why would SEIU, which boasted nearly $250 million in dues income from members last year, even need to take out big loans from Bank of America and Amalgamated Bank? It turns out Stern's organization has been burning through cash.There is just something that must be interjected here: Barack Obama was never, EVER, in serious jeopardy of losing the 2008 Presidential Election, and certainly was never in any level of deficit to warrant any union, much less SEIU, having to "put all we had on the table." The GOP had the brief post-convention poll bounce, true, but that ended right at about the time that it was demonstrated that Sarah Palin could not stand up to the harsh, intimidating interview styles of Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson. Res ipsa loquitor.
Last year, the union spent $67 million on "political and lobbying" expenses - twice what it spent in 2007. It sold virtually all of its investments to generate additional cash.
Much of that money went to elect Barack Obama.
"We put all we had on the table to make sure that [Obama's victory] happened," Oliver said.
However, the article goes on...
The union's latest financial report shows SEIU has only $33 million in net assets. That's an average of just $18 for each of its 1.8 million members. UNITE HERE, on the other hand, has more than $200 million - an average of about $568 per member.It seems there's a lot to be learned from Andy Stern - with the one thing coming immediately to mind being how NOT to run a steady and stable union.
SEIU's outstanding loans total $102 million. Its liabilities have skyrocketed to 82% of its assets.
Like the Wall Street banks Stern has rightly criticized, SEIU is spending beyond its means. His solution seems to be a hostile takeover of another union's membership, along with a plan to snatch up labor's only bank.
Ken Lewis should take survival lessons from Andy Stern.
Not defending this behavior at all, but I would submit the following:
ReplyDeleteSEIU has a problem with saying what the real message is supposed to be. We don't tell the truth very often and it shows. What our message should have been was -
"We spent that money because we knew that we are never as liberal of a party or movement as we say we are.
We spent that money because we knew that we needed to do so to get a seat at the table.
What we didn't know is that just because we saw it as a done deal, the campaign did not. They were grateful for the help but we weren't guaranteed a seat for our money.
We thought it was business as usual and it was not. Now we are broke and scrambling to figure out what to do next (organizing should probably be on that list but it isn't for some reason.
Any suggestions, please send them to our offices in DC by purple carrier pigeon.
Thank you,
Andy"