Members of ACORN and SEIU rally in Baton Rouge, La. to support President Obama's health care reforms, but are interrupted by counter-protestors from local Tea Party organizations.
Henry David Thoreau once claimed that most men lead lives of “quiet desperation.” James Thurber, an American writer many years after Thoreau, countered his sentiment by explaining, “Nowadays, men lead lives of noisy desperation.”
If either statement could accurately characterize the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), it must be the latter. While America’s policy-makers and interests groups gather inside the Beltway to shape health care reform legislation, the SEIU gears up its muscle and influence to cling to their only remaining hope- a government overhaul of health care.
Clinging Desperately to Universal Health Care
Why is the SEIU in favor of President Obama’s health care reform proposals, if other allies in the labor community, such as the United Autoworkers (UAW), oppose it? Why would the SEIU favor the public option, if their biggest membership driver is the ability of union bosses to “negotiate” benefits packages, including health care and pensions, for its workers?
Brian Johnson, the Executive Director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom, has the answer: desperation.
“The SEIU, unlike other organized labor, did not develop carefully-negotiated pension arrangements for their members,” Johnson said. “They’re dealing with the inability to pay out their pensions, since they’ve got liabilities of $1.5 billion and they only have around $1 billion in the bank. This means they’re $500 million in the hole.”
If they can’t get the public option passed, Johnson argues, they will have nothing to keep their members on the rolls. After all, the SEIU has spent millions to encourage the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or Card Check, a measure that would require a public vote on the unionization of a work place. The result? Nothing.
After the waste of millions of dollars of members’ dues on the failed Card Check push, it is becoming increasingly difficult for leadership of the SEIU to justify spending more money on political action without any results for the people who pay them. That’s why, Johnson says, they need universal health care.
“This is their absolute last chance to bring something to their members,” he explained. “After they’ve spent so much time and money putting President Obama into office, it makes sense that they’d want something in return. And if they don’t get it, their members will be fed up and will start to leave organized labor.”
The American Thinker points out that in addition to needing a substantial credibility boost, the SEIU benefits from having a partnership with the White House on health care reform for the purposes of sheer numbers.
Eighty-three percent of the hospital workforce is yet to be unionized. Going state by state, hospital by hospital, or politician by politician is time-consuming and expensive. It’s easier to call on your partner, President Obama, to pass health care reform. Once the federal government is paying all the bills, one of the new reforms could easily be that all health care workers will now be represented by a service employees union.
Obviously, as the SEIU fights to keep its head above water financially, drawing in new members would, in the short run at least, alleviate some of the financial headaches they face. Pair their diminishing sphere of influence of unions overall, with a mere 8 percent of private employees unionized and 33 percent in the public sector, with the necessity of delivering results to their members, and you’ve got a recipe for an utter dependency on a public option passing.
Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures (and a Lot of Them)
As the SEIU struggles to formulate an explanation for its members as to what they’ve been up to with all their money all these years, they are busy covering their tracks with some clever maneuvering on both policy and grassroots levels. Indeed, it is apparent that the SEIU is unsure as to how to direct their dwindling cash supply, but they’ve managed to sneak in behind the scenes to shape policy and rile up members to protest (as usual) in the streets of towns across America.
Inside the Beltway, one man is guaranteeing the SEIU will be allowed an unflinching place at the policy table. That man is Dennis Rivera, the 17-year leader of New York City’s 1199 SEIU and the chairman of the union’s national health care division. According to an article published in Crain’s New York, Rivera has been hard at work mobilizing activists on the ground and inserting union influence legislatively on behalf of the SEIU.
Dennis Rivera, the indomitable labor leader, was on Capitol Hill in late June to persuade members of a powerful House committee to include a public insurance option in its massive overhaul of the nation’s health care system
Crain’s New York explains that Rivera’s unique ability to build bridges between workers and those they normally oppose, such as corporations, has made him an invaluable resource for both the Obama Administration and the union he represents.
One part of Mr. Rivera’s considerable influence derives from the close ties that he and the SEIU have with the White House. SEIU’s February 2008 endorsement of the president is viewed as one of the turning points in his primary battle against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, and Mr. Rivera’s former political director at 1199, Patrick Gaspard, now heads Mr. Obama’s political operation.
“To some degree, Dennis is an independent actor, and to some degree, he’s working for the White House,” says David Nexon, senior executive vice president of the medical technology association. “That played into making the process a success and people wanting to get involved. It’s not too great to be on the wrong side.
Rivera previously served as a union organizer in his home country of Puerto Rico. He brought his techniques to America, according to Johnson, and was able to turn out 30,000 SEIU supporters in the streets of New York City. Now, Rivera enjoys a $10 million budget and a war room with a staff of more than 400, all courtesy of union members’ dues, to target lawmakers in the health care reform debate. Johnson considers Rivera to be “another union goon” who has used bully tactics, and millions of dollars from membership coffers, to advance a political agenda.
President Obama asked America to judge him based on those with whom he surrounds himself. Clearly, he is working with Rivera to advance health care policy that is quite friendly to his allies at the SEIU. Johnson believes that this sort of partnership helps to disguise the fact that the SEIU’s pensions are extremely underfunded, with 1 out of every 160 retired union members unable to cash out what is owed to them in their pension.
The SEIU continues to use their favorite method of persuasion- public protesting- to make their members feel as though they are part of a team effort. During Organizing for America events, created as an offshoot of the Obama campaign and funded by the Democratic National Committee to promote the President’s agenda, the SEIU and ACORN rally side-by-side, decked in their famous purple shirts and displaying the hostility they are known to exhibit. Moreover, they have begun hosting meetings in members’ homes to plan activism and view Obama’s speeches on health care reform.
Then, there’s all the new media activity that only a month ago seemed to transmit virally through the Internet, and now, remains a faint murmur in online buzz. HAARM, or Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine, was an attempt by the SEIU to parody the Right for their opposition to health care reform. They even went as far as to criticize healthcarehorserace.com, as well as groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party Patriots. The site, along with the accompanying Twitter page, has been rather quiet lately, which causes many to wonder if their attempt at modernizing their approach for mainstream appeal proved fruitless.
And of course, they didn’t throw out their favorite tried-and-true “event crashing” tricks, as Brian Johnson can attest. At a meeting he scheduled on the Hill on behalf of the Alliance for Worker Freedom with around 100 elected officials, their staffs and representatives from business organizations, Johnson was interrupted by three uninvited guests from the SEIU.
When Johnson told them calmly that the meeting was an invitation-only event, they told him that they had received the invitation… from their (union) boss at the SEIU. Apparently, someone leaked the invitation to SEIU leadership and they sent out three members to watch over and participate in the meeting.
After Johnson told the SEIU members again they were not invited and should leave, they proceeded to sit down anyway. Johnson gave them one final warning and they didn’t budge. He called Capitol Hill Police, who then escorted them out of the building.
It is important to note that Johnson appeared the day before on the Glenn Beck Show (FOX News Channel) discussing Rivera and the SEIU’s role in the health care debate. It is unsurprising that they chose to force themselves into his meeting the next day after he spent the segment discussing the utter neglect of the SEIU to provide for their members and their re-prioritizing based on political expediency.
Today, the SEIU released a statement on their blog, lamenting they deserved to be at the meeting as it concerned labor relations and they were members of organized labor. The blog does not admit, however, that it was an invitation-only meeting and the SEIU was not on the guest list. If the roles were reversed, it is hard to believe that the SEIU would be even the least bit sympathetic to someone like Johnson if he decided to offer his professional input in their discussions on labor policy.
After the Noise
If President Obama’s attempt at liberal health care reform fails, what will be next for the SEIU? Will they return to pushing Card Check again, or will they take a back seat to other large, better organized unions? Will the 2 million members of SEIU revolt and demand their dues be returned to them for the failure of leadership to deliver upon any of the promises they made and the diminishing of their pensions? If this legislation fails, it might just not be President Obama’s Waterloo. It might be the SEIU’s, too.
