The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is holding its annual convention in Puerto Rico and the union’s boss Andy Stern has announced the formation of the “Accountability Project.” Don’t get your hopes up, this has nothing to do with being more open and accountable to union members who pay Stern’s salary. This has to do with big and often unaccounted for political spending.
The new political spending project includes:
* $10 million fund to take on elected officials who fail to live up to their promises” to the union bosses;
* “Calls for SEIU members to make at least 10 million phone calls to members of Congress after the election to hold them accountable” for Big Labor’s radical agenda;
* “At least 50 percent of the union’s organizing budget and 50 percent of its non-organizing staff at the national and local levels will be devoted to the effort;” and
* “A commitment to jump start a much broader, permanent grassroots movement of working people by actively involving at least one million SEIU members in the ‘justice for all’ effort by 2012, and creating leadership roles for at least 200,000 (or about 10 percent of the union’s membership)”.
A true accountability program would allow union members to decided on their own whether to join and pay union dues.