SEIU in Bed With Wall Street

Peter Schweizer of the Government Accountability Project has discovered that the biggest funder of the Occupy Wall Street movement is receiving millions of dollars from Wall Street. The SEIU has an exclusive deal with Visa that is putting millions into their pockets. Here is the story: With the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFL-CIO spending tens of millions on political activism, including the recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, union members might do well to see where the money is coming from. Big unions are morphing into the kinds of big businesses and banks they decry, hawking to their members everything from high interest credit cards to home loans. And contrary to Big Labor’s claims, these products offer no real benefit to union members—only to the union bosses. As the collection of union dues have dipped, union bosses are increasingly looking for ways to bend the revenue curve in their favor by profiting off loans and credit extended to their members. Consider, for example, the "SEIU New Rewards Visa Card" and the AFL-CIO "Union Plus" card. With each new enrollment and subsequent swipe of the card, the union bags a fee and a percentage respectively.
SEIU Tries to Grab Dues Money from Taxpayer Subsidies

SEIU Tries to Grab Dues Money from Taxpayer Subsidies

From the Washington Examiner: In-home health care workers in Connecticut, like their counterparts in Michigan, may see so-called union dues deducted from paychecks they receive through a state subsidy for the poor . . . The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is trying to unionize in-home health care workers, based on the theory that they qualify as public employees because the money paid to them is subsidized by the state. "The only notice home health care workers receive concerning a union election is a nondescript mailing asking them if they wish to join the union," says the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). "Under this process, the union only needs to receive a majority of returned cards—not a majority of all workers—to be recognized as those workers’ exclusive bargaining representative." The SEIU achieved this goal in Michigan, with the result that even low-income families who receive a Medicaid subsidy to take care of their adult, disabled children are losing $30 a month to the union. "Our daughter is 34 and our son is 30," retired police officer Robert Haynes said of the Michigan unionization. "They have cerebral palsy. They are basically like 6-month-olds in adult bodies. They need to be fed and they wear diapers. We could sure use that $30 a month that's being sent to the union."