Union Profile

Card Check Flip-Flop
The SEIU is a leading proponent of an organizing process known as “card check.” Rather than relying on the traditional method of a government monitored secret ballot, card check stipulates that if union representatives persuade more than 50 percent of the workers to sign a union authorization card, the employer can choose to recognize the union as the representative of 100 percent of the workforce. This method is susceptible to fraud and intimidation, as paid organizers have a documented history of using deceptive and coercive tactics to “persuade” workers to support the union.

SEIU will go to seemingly any length to achieve this anti-democratic organizing method. In 2006, SEIU’s staged a number of publicity stunts at the University of Miami -- which employs personnel from a janitorial company called UNICCO -- including a dangerous hunger strike; one protestor had to be taken to the hospital after a drop in his blood pressure, and another suffered a stroke. SEIU’s campaign was carried out solely to get the company to accept card check.

As the president of the university, and former Clinton administration cabinet member, Donna Shalala wrote in TheMiami Herald:

The SEIU wants a process called a ''card check'' that does not guarantee participation by all Unicco employees, and Unicco wants an election for all employees -- supervised by the federal government via the National Labor Relations Board. The SEIU and its supporters are pressuring the university to require Unicco to accept the method that does not guarantee participation by all employees -- part of a national campaign by the union. We have said No. The University of Miami -- no university, for that matter -- could ever argue against an uncoerced election for all workers…

Hunger strikes have never been used in this country to oppose an election. We have urged both parties to continue daily discussions until this issue is resolved. A free election for or against unionization is a federal statutory right.

In 2006, SEIU teamed up with UNITE HERE to pressure hotel and convention center proprietors in Hartford, Connecticut to sign a “labor peace agreement,” which included a provision excluding every organizing process except card check.  The unions’ incessant picketing in favor of the agreement caused the cancellation of more than a dozen convention center events and -- according to a petition delivered to Mayor Eddie Perez -- cost local workers thousands of dollars in salary and tips. One non-union convention center employee protested a joint SEIU-UNITE HERE press conference in late July 2006, telling union organizers: "You're basically strangling our income. Why would we want to join a union that wants to choke us into submission to let you in? You're not the union I want."

The irony of these disputes is that SEIU’s support for card check contradicts the tactics it used in a campaign it ran in Texas. In March 2006, after unsuccessfully attempting to unionize Houston’s municipal employees by gathering signatures, SEIU called for a secret ballot election. As reported in the Houston Chronicle, SEIU’s top brass sent a letter to the rival American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) -- which is also trying to organize Houston’s government employees -- which read, in part: “Will you join SEIU in supporting an employee election so that we can make the true will of the majority known …”

Inconvenient Truths
Few Americans know much about the SEIU, but they should. Here's why:

• On June 20, 2006, a California district court ordered the SEIU to pay $37,000 in compensation to a class of state workers who’d sued the union for failure to provide adequate information about its membership fees or the “fair share” expenses related to its representation of employees.

• Andrew Stern has called the AFL-CIO the Democratic Party's bank -- but his own union is regularly a top political spender, most recently through its powerful "527" committee, which gave millions to political candidates. In 2004, Stern spent at least $65 million of his members' money, much of which supported his favored (but ultimately unsuccessful) presidential candidates. A powerful local of Stern's SEIU budgeted another $35 million of its members' money on political advocacy in 2004, according to union activist and lawyer Nathan Newman.
• SEIU Local 880 (which represents workers in Illinois) and Local 100 (representing New Orleans, Texas, and Arkansas) are both run by the often-in-trouble "community group" ACORN -- an organization that has been tied to government fraud, Teamsters election fraud, and recurring voter fraud. Local 100 is run by Wade Rathke, ACORN's head organizer and a chief strategist in the multi-union PR campaign attacking Wal-Mart.
• The SEIU seeks to unionize just about anyone. In 1997 Local 790 organized strippers from the Lusty Lady peep show in San Francisco.

Membership Total Membership:   1,505,100		Financial Information Total Assets:   $ 164,700,021 Total Receipts:   $ 258,844,884
Source: Department of Labor, Office of Labor Management Standards LM filings

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Representational Activities ( 85.9%)	$ 128,899,855
Political Activities & Lobbying ( 17.3%)	$ 26,008,294
Contributions, Gifts & Grants ( 5.4%)	$ 8,031,767
General Overhead ( 18.3%)	$ 27,419,132
Union Administration ( 9.1%)	$ 13,725,244
Strike Benefits ( 6.9%)	$ 10,302,326
Total Compensation ( 35.5%)	$ 53,344,487
Per Capita Tax ( 2.8%)	$ 4,226,376

Local	Members
SEIU Council (Sacramento, CA)	611,235
SEIU Conference (Los Angeles, CA)	601,379
SEIU Council (New York, NY)	350,000
SEIU Local 1199 (New York, NY)	240,000
SEIU Local 434 (Los Angeles, CA)	118,410
SEIU Council (Chicago, IL)	105,000
SEIU Local 250 (Oakland, CA)	92,294
SEIU Local 32 (New York, NY)	76,174
SEIU Council (Boston, MA)	66,667
SEIU Joint Council 45 (Harrisburg, PA)	60,000
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