For Big Labor’s most notorious organizing partner, ACORN, the “chickens have come home to roost” thanks to a couple young people exposing ACORN (see BigGovernment.com for more). In case you only watch MSNBC for your news, you may not have noticed ACORN’s very thin veneer being sanded away exposing the rotten termite-infested wood underneath.
So, what has ACORN to do with Big Labor? ACORN is big labor. In 2008, Big Labor paid ACORN $3.5 million. But, that is only the tip of the big labor iceberg.
ACORN controls or significantly dominates several Big Labor unions and organizations. For many years, ACORN ran SEIU 100 (Gulf Region) and SEIU 880 (a recently expanded SEIU mega-local that covers Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas). SEIU President Andy Stern hand picked ACORN founder S. Wade Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects. Rathke controlled Louisiana HERE local 100, was secretary-treasurer of a New Orleans based AFL-CIO labor organization, and served on the board of a hotel employees organizing committee.
ACORN operates several big labor funded organizations such as the Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now (WARN) and Community Labor Organizing Center (CLOC).
In addition, Rathke acolytes Stewart Acuff and Mark Splain control the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Department.
According to a 19 March 2009 report filed by Washington Times reporter S.A. Miller:
ACORN provided liberal causes with protest-for-hire services and coerced donations from the targets of demonstrations through a mob-style “protection” racket. ACORN called it the “muscle for the money” program, according to prepared testimony…
The “unofficial” program collected payments to organize protests. For example, the Service Employees International Union [SEIU] hired ACORN to harass the Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm. Other paid protests targeted Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt and Money Mart, according to the testimony.
And, American workers can expect to see more ACORN orchestrated big labor organizing campaigns if the Card Check Forced Unionism, EFCA, bill is passed as promised by President Obama.
After union lawyers’ attempt to get the NLRB to block the vote failed, CWA union bosses backed down and departed AT&T workplace rather than face workers’ vote
Biden judicial nominee Nicole Berner has a track record of mindlessly repeating union bosses’ anti-Right to Work diatribes and defending their schemes to profit at the expense of the disabled.
Mark Mix Voices His Concerns On Tennessee’s WDEF News 12 as Big Labor Prepares for a Card Check Election at the Chattanooga Volkswagen Plant.