Change to Win

No organization likes bad publicity. And when allied organizations create it, disavowing ties to them becomes attractive. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has exercised that option - at least on the surface. On Wednesday, September 30, the union's secretary-treasurer, Anna Burger, told a congressional panel that her organization no longer has a working relationship with the New Orleans-based nationwide nonprofit "anti-poverty" network ACORN, an acronym for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN, as almost everyone in this country with a pulse knows by now, has been the target of federal and state investigations into a wide range of criminal activity. A very embarrassing and widely-aired homemade undercover video hasn't helped its case. Yet all the same, the union's move looks like a case of bait and switch.

Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, often has emphasized his commitment to building a lean, efficient organization. His union and unions generally, he argues, need to aggressively cut costs and generate revenues in every way possible. Yet the SEIU is a union in major financial trouble. Its pension plan is no exception. Several weeks ago, the Washington, D.C.-based SEIU National Industry Pension Fund (NIPF) revealed in an April 30 letter to union leadership that the pension plan was in "critical status," or the "red zone." This "Notice of Critical Status" stated as follows: "This is to inform you that on March 31, the Plan actuary certified to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and also to the Trustees, that the Plan is in critical status (the "red zone") for the plan year beginning January 1, 2009. Federal law requires that you receive this notice."

The new Democratic-controlled Congress has brought a fresh “to-do” issue list.  And with the exception of the war in Iraq, arguably no issue ranks higher on the lawmakers’ agenda than immigration reform.  “Reform,” however, is a highly fungible term.  Too often, it means perpetuating, and even expanding, Third World mass immigration – the very thing that led to the cries for reform in the first place.  Opinion polls this decade repeatedly indicate most Americans want more restrictions placed on immigration, and not because they are “anti-immigrant,” but because they believe the nation needs a breather from the consequences of high levels of immigration, especially by ethnic groups whose leaders often are avowedly hostile to assimilation.  But the pressure that citizens exert on Congress tends to be less pronounced than that exerted by interest groups with a stake in maintaining a high flow of immigrants, legal or not.  Last year, a Special Report issued by the National Legal and Policy Center presented strong evidence that unions, along with big business and radical ethnic separatists, during this decade have worked closely with one another to block immigration reform under the guise of promoting it.  Already this young year, the coalition has asserted itself.

Compiling a list of the previous year’s Top Ten Whatever – news stories, TV shows or movies – is one of life’s guiltier pleasures for the scribbling class, providing an opportunity for the compiler to exhibit a briefly heightened sense of importance.  Yet despite inviting a certain level of self-indulgence, it also serves a needed function:  putting events in perspective.  There’s no reason why labor corruption stories can’t be ranked as such.