-By Warner Todd Huston
For those of you following the several recent L.A.Times stories ( see here, here, here and here), the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) has been embroiled in scandal over misuse of funds in California and Michigan. Several SEIU head operatives have vacated their positions of power and all are tied to SEIU president Andy Stern.
Recently Stern announced that the SEIU was setting up an internal ethics commission to look into allegations of fraud and abuse of funds. But, this sham effort to root out corruption is so transparent that even other pro-union groups are skeptical that Stern is seriously trying to stamp out corruption.
The Association for Union Democracy issued a press release scolding Stern for his obvious attempt to cover up, rather than root out, corruption in the SEIU.
Now, remember, the AUD is a pro-union group. In their mission statement, the AUD claims to support “actions which strengthen the democratic process, promoting membership participation, free speech and fair elections, so that union members can transform and lead their unions.”
Despite the AUD’s desire to support unions, they find Stern less than forthcoming.
An internal panel of the kind proposed by SEIU President Andrew Stern would simply mull over the niceties of still another code and would be more than a waste of time; it would be an evasion. What the SEIU needs now is to establish a board composed of respected individuals, independent and completely outside the union power structure – a kind of supreme court endowed with the power, in defense of member rights, to overrule decisions of the international president and the international executive board in those circumstances in which members’ democratic rights could be endangered.
Instead of an internal group answerable to and controlled by President Stern the AUD thinks that any ethics commission should be made up of folks outside the direct control of the SEIU.
The need is not to devise a code of ethics, the need is the genuine practice of democracy. The basic code of ethics was deliveresd on Mount Sinai in the commandment “Thou shall not steal.” Everything else is a refinement. If the SEIU feels it needs an amplification of its own code to remind its officials of that commandment, it need only copy one of the many excellent codes already available. The problem in the SEIU is not that it lacks an ethical code, but that it has evolved a bureaucratic system of organization and, despite any code, has created an atmosphere of authoritarianism that obviously spawns corruption.
But, there’s the rub. Andy Stern is not interested in rooting out corruption as much as he is interested in iron-fisted control of everything SEIU. In fact, Stern’s rival in California is already afraid that Stern is merely using this facade of setting up an ethics commission as a weapon to attack rebel elements inside the SEIU. Sal Rosselli, a major thorn in Stern’s side, thinks that Stern will use this commission to further undermine his own status in the California branch of the SEIU.
It appears that President Stern is not fooling anyone with his proclaimed intentions to root out corruption inside his own union.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston