Challenging SEIU labor thugs ties to ACORN

Washington Post:

A rapidly growing union that represents nurses, janitors and other low-wage workers is coming under fire from conservatives because of its long-standing financial and leadership ties to ACORN, a liberal organizing group recently embarrassed by videos filmed covertly at its offices.

Some Republicans say federal agencies that recently cut ties with ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform now -- should also consider severing their relationship with the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU and ACORN have long worked closely together, with the union paying the association more than $3.6 million in the past three years and sharing some office locations and leaders with the group.

ACORN's training of its staff and use of federal funds were called into question last month when two conservative activists who posed as a would-be prostitute and her pimp circulated undercover videos they had filmed of ACORN housing counselors advising them on how to conceal their prostitution business. Congress voted to ban future funds to ACORN, and the Internal Revenue Service and the Census Bureau said that, pending an investigation, they would no longer use ACORN in their outreach to low-income families.

The SEIU's parent organization has paid ACORN for training, voter registration and other organizing work, and SEIU locals have paid ACORN affiliates for their services, according to union reports. ACORN founder Wade Rathke was a top member of the SEIU's board until last year and founded two SEIU locals -- in Chicago and New Orleans. SEIU President Andy Stern serves on an advisory panel that was supposed to help ACORN fix financial problems after an embezzlement was discovered last year. Other leaders have served both ACORN and the SEIU , including Keith Kelleher, who headed SEIU Local 880 and also served in an ACORN staff position, and whose wife ran the ACORN office in Illinois.

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Herman Benson, a labor expert and the founder of the Association for Union Democracy, said there is nothing improper on its face about the SEIU seeking out ACORN's help in connecting with low-income community members.

The larger concern about the union, Benson said, is how much Stern has centralized power within the union and consolidated smaller locals into mega-unions run by handpicked loyalists whom members cannot effectively challenge.

"If there are piles of money being spent and you have a bureaucratic apparatus that's not really accountable to its members, then you have all the nice bases for corruption," Benson said. "Whether that's the case here, I really can't say."

ACORN's financial problems surfaced in 2008, with the discovery that the founder and a small staff had concealed his brother Dale Rathke's embezzlement of nearly $1 million. SEIU allegedly suffered similar malfeasance at the hands of Tyrone Freeman, a former chief of staff to Stern, whom Stern chose for his administrative slate in 2008 and named a national vice president.

In August 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that Freeman spent more than $1 million in union funds in two years by funneling money to his wife's and mother-in-law's and friends' home-based businesses, as well as luxury expenses.

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I am not related to Herman, but he appears to be onto something. Actually, according to NOLA the embezzlement may have been as much as $5 million at ACORN. The SEIU looks like an organization that is in need of an investigation, but that is unlikely with Democrats now in charge of the NLRB and the Justice Department. It will probably take some more "conservative activist" to dig into the problem.