| www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org | Date: 2/27/2012 10:07:42 AM |
| SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION (SEIU) | |
| 1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 | Phone :202-730-7000 URL :http://www.seiu.org/ |
See also: Andrew Stern John Sweeney The earliest roots of SEIU date back to 1921, when seven small janitor unions combined to form the Building Service Employees International Union (BSEIU), whose members were mostly immigrant workers. Over time, BSEIU began to organize other types of service workers as well, including doormen, elevator operators, nonacademic school employees, healthcare workers, public employees, and people employed in such venues as bowling alleys, stadiums, and cemeteries. In 1968, BSEIU changed its name to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). With 2.2 million members across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, SEIU is today the fastest-growing union in North America. Representing both public- and private-sector employees, its mission is "to improv[e] the lives of workers and their families and creat[e] a more just and humane society,” particularly for “people of color,” who make up 40 percent of the union's membership. In its quest to recruit new members, SEIU aggressively pursues unskilled, low-wage service workers, who constitute the vast majority of its members. By and large, most SEIU members work in three key service sectors:
Moreover, SEIU parlayed MfM into aggressive "corporate campaigns" -- coordinated assaults, often conducted in alliance with social and religious activist groups, against the reputations of companies resistant to unionization. Such campaigns typically feature boycotts, picket lines, public demonstrations, literature distribution, letter-writing, and negative-publicity initiatives in the media. Corporate campaigns of this sort originated in the 1960s with "New Left" organizations like the Students for a Democratic Society. SEIU would continue to employ tough, even violent, tactics long after John Sweeney's departure in 1995. In April 2009, California Nurses Association executive director Rose Ann DeMoro condemned the union's "ugly pattern ... of physical abuse and tactics of intimidation that have no place in either our labor movement or a civilized society." outside the private home of a company official to embarrass and intimidate his or her entire family, or By the end of Sweeney's tenure as SEIU president, the union hierarchy was thoroughly saturated not only with his penchant for ruthlessness but also with his far-left politics. Indeed, as the socialist New Party was becoming established in the mid-1990s, the national newsletter of the Democratic Socialists of America characterized the young organization as essentially the “electoral arm” of ACORN and its allied SEIU locals. Sweeney was succeeded as SEIU president by the former New Leftist Andrew Stern, who filled the post from 1996-2010. Under Stern’s leadership, the union's membership grew by more than 1.2 million. Designated as a “527 organization,” SEIU in 2003 became a national partner in the America Votes (AV) coalition. AV, in turn, belongs to the so-called Shadow Democratic Party, a nationwide network of leftwing unions, activist groups, and think tanks engaged in supporting the Democrats. To view SEIU's fellow partners in America Votes, click here. In November 2003, SEIU dispatched thousands of volunteers to work on the presidential campaign of Howard Dean. After Dean dropped out of the race in early 2004, Andrew Stern played a major role in persuading the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, to select John Edwards as his running mate. By June 2004, SEIU had already committed $65 million to voter-registration, voter-education, and voter-mobilization initiatives on behalf of the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Moreover, the union pledged to assign 50,000 of its members as get-out-the-vote “volunteers” just prior to, and on, election day. In September 2005, SEIU and six other unions -- the Teamsters, UNITE HERE, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Laborers, the Carpenters, and the United Farm Workers -- broke away from the AFL-CIOformed the Change to Win federation. In 2006, George Soros's Open Society Institute awarded a $100,000 grant In 2008, SEIU spent approximately $60.7 million to help elect Barack Obama to the White House, deploying some 100,000 pro-Obama campaign volunteers who "knocked on 1.87 million doors, made 4.4 million phone calls … and sent more than 2.5 million pieces of mail in support of Obama." During his campaign, Obama told an SEIU audience: “Your agenda has been my agenda in the United States Senate.... Just imagine what we could do together...Imagine having a president whose life’s work was your work...” After Obama's election, the SEIU became an enormously influential force in his administration: and to SEIU.
A noteworthy affiliate of SEIU is its powerful and militant, New York City-based Local 1199, which has more than 300,000 members and is the world’s largest union local. Sixteen years after its 1932 founding, 1199 was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee on suspicion of Communist "infiltration." When the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) split in 1991, several officials of Local 1199 took many comrades with them into the breakaway group, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. One of those officials, Rafael Pizarro, also went on to help establish the New Party, a socialist organization that Barack Obama would join in 1995. At a March 2007 meeting, 1199's executive vice president Steve Kramer spoke enthusiastically about the role which CPUSA had played in building up his union. SEIU has extensive ties to the community organization ACORN:
Between 1989 and 2010, SEIU gave $29,140,232 to political parties and campaigns. Of that total, 95 percent went to Democrats and 3 percent went to Republicans. For a list of these recipients, click here. Mary Kay Henry, who has worked with SEIU since 1979, succeeded Andrew Stern as SEIU president in 2010. She is a founding member of SEIU's gay and lesbian Lavender Caucus, whose purpose is "to facilitate open and respectful communication between the L/G/B/T community and the labor movement." She is also a member of the executive board of Families USA. In February 2011, SEIU took part in a “Rally to Save the American Dream” (RSAD), which was organized as an expression of solidarity with Wisconsin public-sector union employees. For a list of other key participants in the RSAD rally, click here. SEIU sponsored a May Day 2011 rally in Los Angeles, where many participants displayed banners openly advocating communism. Also in 2011, SEIU sponsored the national conference of Netroots Nation. To view a list of other notable organizations that have sponsored NN conferences, click here. SEIU has had many affiliations, past and present, with prominent leftist organizations and coalitions. For example:
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