“After a great amount of my own thought, hearing opinions from many of you, and holding them up against my own criteria—I recommend that Anna Burger not only temporarily—but then permanently—become the 10th President and first woman to lead our union.”

That’s what outgoing SEIU President Andy Stern requested in his April 16th letter to the International Executive Board of SEIU, as he named Anna Burger as his preferred successor.

But locals from New York, Los Angeles, Oregon, and Washington State, as well as Canada, all lined up behind Mary Kay Henry tonight to commit their votes.  According to Politico’s Ben Smith,

“It’s done,” an SEIU insider emailed moments ago.

Tonight’s development comes only days after Anna Burger’s plea to the International Executive Board:

“During my 38 years in SEIU, I’ve held every position but one and now I’m asking for your support… to be the next International President.”

However, building tensions between locals across the country that saw Stern as a divisive figure, too politically entrenched and connected to the DC complex, have left the union itself divided.  Some have seen Mary Kay Henry as a more uniting force that might break the national union away from the chains of the DC operations and bring the power of the locals back to the members again and keep the peace amongst other locals. Others (including me) speculate that she’ll infuse new life into those very DC operations and could possibly even accelerate some activities; she apparently has fewer enemies than Stern or Burger did.  As Politico reports,

“One person familiar with the deliberations said the swing voters decided that Henry was closer to a consensus choice, as opposition to Burger had already begun to divide the union. If Burger was to win, they decided, she would have had to win cleanly, and it was already too late for that.”

But Henry is by no means devoid of enemies.   She’s been a driving force between the very public and now famous SEIU-UHW battle, including her part in the union’s lawsuit against former leaders.

Mary Kay Henry’s history with SEIU began in 1979, as she rose through the ranks and became a leader and chief healthcare strategist, then was elected to the International Executive Board in 1996.  Today, Henry serves as International Executive Vice President of SEIU, a step beneath Anna Burger.  Henry’s efforts have been very focused in the health care sector and on building labor coalitions and partnerships with hospitals and health care facilities.  That said, we can probably expect to see SEIU’s stronghold on this sector continue to grow stronger.

In addition to her posts at SEIU, Mary Kay Henry has also been a labor adviser to and member of the Subcommittee on Catholic Health Care of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, an organization that in itself has become a major political force, having brokered deals with the likes of Nancy Pelosi for crucial votes in the eleventh hour of major bills, most notably on health care reform.  Additionally, she is a member of the executive board of Families USA, a left-leaning non-profit group that serves as a think-tank for most of SEIU’s and other progressive organizations’ research and reports to support universal health care.

While Anna Burger serves as International Secretary-Treasurer to SEIU, her future remains uncertain at this time.  Perhaps she’ll become even closer to the White House, where I’m sure her friend Andy Stern will often be in his free time.  I assume she’ll also remain at her post if she can swallow her pride long enough to accept a defeat that’s likely left her – and her ego – feeling blindsided.  Even when she’s fighting for “the little guy”, she can hardly ever do so without forcefully creating different classes of people and driving a wedge between them.  Even as she summed up her letter to the other SEIU International Executives last week, she wrote:

“I will do my best for the home care worker who loves grandmothers who aren’t their own; child care and school workers who hug kids long after their shift is done; hospital and health care workers caring for us against great odds; janitors who mop the floors of men who never look them in the eye; security guards who protect the skyscrapers of CEO’s that steal more in one minute than those workers make in a lifetime; public workers who keep us safe and provide a decent society but work for politicians who scapegoat and undermine what they do; and for all men and women who work hard, play by the rules and just want a shot at the dream of a better life.”

Typical rhetoric for the Queen of Labor.  (And by that I meant Anna Burger, not Andy Stern).  Even when in common company, divide the common man.

While Henry is known inside of SEIU and other labor groups, she’s not exactly a household name outside in political circles.  So it remains to be seen how that will factor in as SEIU settles into external relations under her new leadership.  Speaking from my own experience though, it’s often times the new blood that moves more quickly and easily to reach an organization’s objectives, since colleagues and working partners are usually more open to giving a new leader some time and breathing room while they prove themselves in their new position.  President Obama is probably the best case in point.  And just look at how much [damage] he’s done in less than two short years.

For now, we sit back, we wait, and we watch.  Carefully.

* Author’s note:  No, the “Stop” and “SEIU” signs were not photoshopped to appear in the photo as “Stop SEIU”.  But don’t think for a moment I didn’t notice it…

From 2000 to current, SEIU has spent at least $187,500,000 through combined lobbying, PAC and 527s group donations and expenses on candidates and policy issues – nearly 100% of which went to Democrats and to liberal policy initiatives.  Much has been focused on influencing universal health care, as well as other indirectly related health legislation, such as public nutrition, food safety, research, and environmental health – all part of SEIU’s supposed plan for Building a New American Health Care System. Because, in their words, they “will not stop until every man, woman and child has quality, affordable care they can count on.”

So really…why is SEIU so invested in health care?

Because health care is the lifeblood of SEIU.  In January of 2007, SEIU announced it would combine over 30 of its local unions to form a National Health Care Division.  Years of organizing independent workers, such as home child care and foster care providers, home health aides, and nutritionists had led SEIU to discover untapped potential in what it deemed “health care workers”.  With three divisions – Health Care, Public Services and Property Services – SEIU’s members are nurses, dieticians, lab techs, nursing home & home care workers, and child care providers. Others are janitors, cafeteria workers, and other service workers in state/public facilities like hospitals, schools and stadiums.  SEIU has made health a key driver to creating these jobs.  And they know the best way to protect their lifeblood is to entrench themselves into the legislative / policy-making process on a more permanent level.  While two million members in SEIU is impressive, apparently they don’t feel it’s enough to build an empire.  So if you’re SEIU, how do you create and maintain even more health care jobs?

Make Health Care your flagship policy issue and build your entire organizing strategy around it.

In November of 2007, SEIU held a joint public session , “High Road Health Care Charrette“, at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.  A collaborative effort of SEIU, the Sloan Foundation’s Industry Studies Program, and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (also a partner of Green for All and the Apollo Alliance), the joint session was a discussion on restructuring the health care industry to move more of the private insurance market functions into the government sector, arguing that doing so would increase productivity and drive down cost.  But by productivity and cost, SEIU meant their own – increasing the government and health care sectors adds more SEIU members, and transfers the expense of their health and retirement benefits from their own books to the state and federal government instead.

In downloading one of SEIU’s public presentations from that 2007 session, titled “Rx for Successful SEIU Strategy for Health Care“, there were a few subtle points that confirm some suspicions. The issue of health care reform wasn’t just an organizational or social issue for SEIU.  Health Care appears to have been a specific target that was carefully selected, massaged, manipulated and developed into a far more strategic policy initiative for SEIU. And all the rhetoric today in 2009 about fighting this fight for the good of all Americans would hardly seem 100% sincere.

While part of the presentation does provide some insightful information, several of the slides contain content that is somewhat revealing of a more selfish strategy.  Some of the key takeaways that can be translated from this particular presentation focus  on the benefits that SEIU would gain in winning their desired health care legislation:

In it, SEIU’s strategy states that it must make health care coverage its number one priority because:

• It helps with organizing and securing affordable care for members
  
  TRANSLATED:  If health care is provided and managed by the government, whether at the state and/or the federal level, SEIU members will be guaranteed coverage. And as health care or public services employees, SEIU members will now negotiate directly with the states and federal government as the primary employer and payer, rather than a series of scattered health facilities or independent caregivers that need to be organized. That certainly streamlines the union’s processes, and strengthens and centralizes SEIU power.

• It reduces pressure on compensation negotiationsTRANSLATED: If the government provides the health insurance for their members, SEIU no longer needs to carry the overhead and administration of those benefits. This certainly reduces pressure on negotiations, relieves SEIU of perception of being too costly, and gives their negotiations more breathing room to justify demanding higher wages.

• It creates demand for SEIU-provided services TRANSLATED: If government makes health insurance mandatory, it would increase the patient pool, which would in turn astronomically increase the demand for unionized health care workers (SEIU).  In addition, if government also legislates health-related behavior and decisions, such as diet, exercise, food services, school & hospital cafeteria menus, vending machine content, restaurant menus, etc., it also creates demand for other SEIU members, such as their dietitians, school nutritionists, and “healthy” cafeteria and food service workers.

• Strong messaging about consequences of inaction needs to be developed and implementedTRANSLATED:  Tie health care to the economy, the environment, and the budget and position it as a crisis.  Influence public perception by portraying the current situation as “a health care system that is broken.”  Repeatedly demand that health care for every American cannot wait or it will collapse the economy.  Insist that the status quo is unacceptable.  Work with scholars, partners, and health professionals to collaborate on and spread these talking points until they are taken as unchallenged fact.

• Candidates must be put on defense about flawed policy; champions must not always be defending
  
  TRANSLATED: Supporters of government-run health care must be portrayed as serving in the best interests of the economy and of the American people; in contrast, opposers should be accused of supporting the status quo and “the same old ideas”. They should be painted negatively:  vilified, politically attacked, portrayed as ignorant and discriminatory, labeled right-wing extremists who distrust our government.

• Messaging about why this is a sympathetic working Americans issue must effectively be deliveredTRANSLATED: Supporters of government-run health care must create enemies of working Americans: greedy insurance companies, opportunistic doctors, pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, and fiscal conservatives.  They must position health insurance as a fundamental right. The government must be portrayed as the only option for ensuring fairness in guaranteeing and providing that “right” to the American citizens.  Opposers of a government option must be labeled with descriptors such as “unsympathetic”, “immoral” and “without any conscience”.

• “Where would stronger connections between industry scholars and SEIU help advance interests of both scholars and SEIU?” is a question that session participants are asked to consider.TRANSLATED: Influence public opinion through colleges, universities, research panels and think tanks. The outcome of this study from the Rutgers Center for Women and Work for example, enabled SEIU to try and claim that public school food service workers influence the health of our students, implying that outsourcing the function is bad (and hiring union workers is socially responsible):

“School food service workers are often ‘invisible’ as a factor in student well being”, said Mary McCain, author of the report for the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers. “But their role in food preparation and service often can have more influence on food safety and students’ healthy eating than official directives.”

In this blog post, SEIU also correlates the health of our nation’s “lunch ladies” to the health of our nation’s children, using it as a driver to argue for unionized workers over outsourcing.  Or this one, “serving justice – and serving lunch.” (through propaganda, like the video below…)

SEIU has since been working diligently with scholars and research universities to collaborate on other studies that will produce outcomes that happen to support their views, in their effort to indoctrinate Americans unfamiliar with our nation’s founding principles of a free market economy:

• The Future of the Health Care Workforce in South Central/Southwest Wisconsin
  From the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, 10/23/2008
• Costly Coverage: Premiums Outpace Paychecks, New State Reports from Families USA
  Supported by Americans for Stable Quality Care, an alliance that includes Families USA and SEIU
• Workforce Issues for the National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care
  Research study performed by Brandeis University, January 2007
• By a Thread: the New Experience of the Middle Class
  Report produced by Demos and Brandeis University, 2007
  Another Demos report, “White-collar Workers Unite“, highlights United Professionals, founded  in 2006 thanks to SEIU, AARP and Obama-Biden economic policy advisor Jared Bernstein.

Further reading into other presentations and documents of SEIU’s also brings about familiar language that sounds just eerily similar to that which exists in the current bills in Congress and in all the liberal Democratic government-run health care talking points.

Writings like these marry SEIU’s strategy with the repetitive rhetoric we hear today, and it simply solidifies the notion that SEIU and its sister labor unions of Change to Win are the special interests truly in power in Washington DC.  If it’s not SEIU’s lobbyists, PACs or 527s groups peddling a government-run health care plan, perhaps it’s one of the many SEIU insiders working in the White House. Rather than focusing so much attention on the special interests that are the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and other health professionals, Americans would be wise not to take their eyes off of this very special interest that is SEIU.

In short, ACORN or not, the 2010 census will be an organizing tool for the American Left.

Here is a partial list of other census partners, according to the Census website:

AARP

A. Phillip Randolph Institute

AFL-CIO

American Federation of Government Employees

AFSCME

American Federation of Teachers

Coalition of Labor Union Women

Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

Community Action Partnership

Families USA

International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Labor Council for the Latin American Advancement

League of Women Voters of the United States

National Black Justice Coalition

National Council of La Raza

National Education Association

Pride at Work

Rainbow Push Coalition

Service Employees International Union

Southern Coalition for Social Justice

United Workers Workforce Alliance

My problem all along is that overtly political organizations, say SEIU or ACORN, would be out collecting sensitive information on Americans.  What would stop them from zapping off one copy of personal information for themselves as they submit it to the Census Bureau?  The federal government We will essentially be paying organized labor and “social justice” organizations to recruit new members.

With such a tight grip on the Census by the Obama administration and its allies, one wonders what the end result will be and if it can be trusted.