The SEIU Learns Something Today

by Brad Peck

The SEIU reports as news today that industry associations are representing their members on Card Check. You would think that a labor union would understand the principle of joining together in a common interest but given that the union in question is the SEIU one can easily see how the concept is beyond their ken.

Take the "Employee Free Choice Act" for instance. Industry groups are advocating on behalf of their members to maintain employee-employer communications. On the other hand the SEIU is lobbying to increase their dues revenue -- really. So, what do their members get? Well, they get the removal of the right to vote in secret for representation AND the loss of the right to vote at all on their own employment contract. Not really a good deal eh? You can see why the SEIU would be confused on the proper role for a membership organization.

But perhaps the saddest part of their blog post is the implication that the poor, noble SEIU is up against a "Lobbying Machine." They add together eight groups and come up with a bullet list of expenditure facts.

• Spent $138.4 million on lobbying in 2008 ($258,000 per member of Congress). All 8 groups lobbied against the Employee Free Choice Act.
• The five associations with PACs gave 82% of their PAC contributions to Republicans from 2000 to 2008.

Notice the focus on "lobbying" in the first bullet. Why did choose to focus on lobbying and not election spending?

After their bruising legislative loss in 2007, it appears unions decided their money was best spent on getting pro-labor candidates elected to the 111th Congress and defeating pro-business candidates...The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) spent the most in independent expenditures and communications costs in the last election cycle, at nearly $42.4 million...These independent expenditures were in addition to the more than $73 million that the labor sector contributed directly to candidates' campaigns and to party committees--a 20 percent increase over contributions in 2004.

And that is just one union, not eight. If you want to do some math, go here. Regarding the second bullet, since 1990 the SEIU has given 96% of their money to one party -- guess which?

Of course they are not totally adverse to spending money after the elections:

After spending $85 million on the 2008 election cycle to get its candidates into office, the Service Employees International Union is now launching an approximately $50 million campaign, called "Change That Works," aimed at supporting passage of President-elect Barack Obama's economic recovery package, healthcare reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.

I am glad that we were able to educate the SEIU on the role of a member organization. I will close with two more lessons for the day. First: If you spent more money on member services and recruitment perhaps you wouldn't need a labor conscription bill to grow your membership. Second: Two of the stated goals for your "Change That Works" campaign are in conflict. Passing the Employee Free Choice Act would actually impede economic recovery. Drop it and apply savings to Lesson 1.