“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,

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I don’t know about you, but my benefits are shrinking and my wages have been reduced for 2010. And I certainly won’t be seeing any major increase in my salary this year.  My employer is struggling in this economy.  I know it, I see the sales and operating numbers.  Amazingly, no one in our company has complained once about the state of their salaries and benefits.  And after a recent round of layoffs, we’re all working two and three people’s jobs, too.  But we get it, we’re all a team, and together we have to do what we can to pitch in and help cut costs during a rough patch in time.  That’s just how business works.

Every single friend, family member, and neighbor I know is in the exact same position.

That’s why so many of us are appalled at the behavior of some of the union bosses these days.  Even some of the most ardent union defenders I know (the few people who typically argue with me over union policy) have had enough with all the headlines like this:

“As National Bargaining for 100,000 Union Members at Kaiser Permanente Begins… SEIU-UHW Members Tell Kaiser: Keep Your Hands Off Our Healthcare Benefits”

And they have also had enough of behavior like this:

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SEIU has made a good living off the law of unintended consequences.  Or so the labor union would have you think. The reality is, there’s nothing unintended about the consequences they reap.  And when it comes to local, state and federal lawmaking, SEIU banks on the propensity of the American people to respond to emotion rather than logic, and orchestrated concern that becomes a popular mantra.  Even some SEIU members (those brave enough to say so) plead for the public to investigate the union’s true intentions. But if you’re just an average citizen disengaged from the issues, before you know it, you’re ignoring the consequences staring you right between the eyes.

This past September Lisa Snyder, a 35 year old Michigan mother,  made the news when she received a disturbing letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services.  In it, the letter warned her that she was in violation of the law.  Her offense?  Watching a handful of neighborhood kids  each morning for about 20 minutes as they waited at the end of her driveway for the school bus to arrive, with the blessing of their parents. State law in Michigan prohibits the home supervision of unrelated children for more than four weeks in a year without a child care provider license.  Turns out a neighbor had complained and the Michigan Department of Human Services, the watchdog for home child care licensing, intervened by sending the warning letter.  In Michigan, state employees for the DHS are represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union.  Coincidentally, the union that represents the state’s home child care workers?  Also the UAW.

AFSCME: American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
FCC: Family child care   |   FNN: Family, friend and neighbor
” Building a Union of Family Child Care and FFN Providers”
by SEIU & AFSCME members to the National Women’s Law Center

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