Yesterday, former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) chieftain and appointment to President Obama's "Deficit Panel" Andy Stern was reportedly being investigated by the FBI for his role in a couple of shady dealings while he was at the helm of the forced unionism leviathan.  But that wasn't the only big story coming out yesterday about widespread SEIU union hierarchy corruption during his tumultuous reign. From Ed Barnes on FoxNews.com:

Despite a finding by the Federal Election Commission's general counsel that the Service Employees International Union violated election law when it required local affiliates to contribute to its political action fund, the FEC's full board nonetheless quietly voted to overrule its staff attorney and dismissed the original complaint -- clearing the way for the union to squeeze its locals to amass a $9 million war chest for the next election.

Moreover, the group that filed the complaint, the National Right to Work Foundation (NRWF), didn't receive a full explanation of the FEC's decision in the case until after 111 days had passed, ensuring that its right to file an appeal had lapsed.

...

The NRWF, long a thorn in the side of the 1.8 million-member union, filed its complaint in October 2008, challenging an amendment to the union's constitution that required each local to contribute $6 per member to the international's political action committee. Those locals that didn't comply would be charged the difference between what they owed and what they raised -- plus, a 50 percent penalty.

"To us it was a prima facie case for coercion," [National Right to Work President Mark] Mix said. "Plus, it looked like a money laundering scheme as well, because locals would pay the penalties from their general funds into the political action committee. General union treasury funds are not allowed to be used for political purposes," he said.

Frankly, it's very unfortunate that the FEC seems interested in allowing Big Labor political corruption.  As Mark Mix explained in the Washington Examiner earlier this month:

Imagine the outcry if McDonalds executives demanded that franchise owners collect “voluntary” contributions totaling $25,000 for the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC) from employees at every restaurant.

What if the fast food titan’s headquarters followed up with a threat - pay us, or face a $37,500 fine? Do you think this heavy handed scheme would raise a few eyebrows at the Federal Election Commission (FEC)?

Replace “McDonalds” with “SEIU” in that description and you’ve got a pretty good idea of Big Labor’s latest political fundraising strategy. To meet their ambitious fundraising targets, Service Employees International Union bosses are now threatening to fine any local affiliate that doesn’t meet its PAC contribution requirements.

The only problem with this racket is that FEC guidelines explicitly prohibit organizations from collecting PAC funds by threatening members with financial reprisals. SEIU bosses aren’t exactly hiding their intentions, either – they actually wrote this fundraising provision into the union’s constitution at their annual convention.

If McDonalds had the nerve to collect contributions from employees using similar threats, you can bet the FEC would be all over the case. The SEIU, however, seems to have gotten away scot-free.

In the wake of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) boss Andy Stern's retirement, SEIU Executive Vice President Mary Kay Henry was ushered in as the new chief of the notoriously corrupt and predatory union hierarchy.

Despite the mainstream media's portrayal of Henry's coronation as a change in the way SEIU union organizers coerce workers into dues-paying union ranks through intimidation or political deal-making, nothing could be further from the truth.

From National Right to Work's contribution to BigGovernment.com:

Don’t let the cheery atmosphere surrounding her anointment ease concerns about her nor the SEIU and its agenda; because for her, ObamaCare and its potential for 21.1 million forced unionism conscripts are just the beginning steps for SEIU’s steady march towards domination of U.S. labor markets.

Mary Kay Henry’s intentions to further radicalize the labor movement and the American economy are clearer than Stern’s vision. With the hundreds of millions of union dues and fees flowing into SEIU’s treasury, she has the financial fuel needed to fund her ambitious desires...

Mary Kay Henry has been credited with most of SEIU’s membership growth for more than a decade; however, that growth did not come from the grassroots; it was top down.

From 1996-2007, SEIU claimed 900,000 “new members” and Mary Kay Henry’s healthcare division provided almost all its growth...

In 2006, Mary Kay Henry laid her plan on the table:

More central power is needed, said Henry. “We believe the American labor movement needs to move beyond voluntarism [joining voluntarily?] … SEIU aims to increase the union rate of health care workers from its current 20 percent to 50 percent.[iii]

SEIU’s game plan is simple and reminiscent of the 1950s: create the allusion that it has the power to subjugate employers by region and couple it with SEIU’s willingness to ignore election rules to intimidate and control almost every elected and appointed Democrat in the United States. If the plan works, SEIU organizations gain control of workers in an entire region of the country.

After creating mega-locals, SEIU begins to sign-up smaller workplaces and move these units into the appropriate mega-local conflating contracts into its master contract for the region.

In the end, SEIU’s mega-local contract spans across numerous states and worksites making it virtually impossible for individual workers to mount a successful decertification or deauthorization NLRB election.

(Emphasis in original)

To view the National Right to Work Committee's latest video, "SEIU's Mary Kay Henry: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss"click here or you can watch it below:

Today, the Denver Post questioned President Obama's recess appointment of radical SEIU union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, noting how Becker's biases against workers' rights:

From the Denver Post:

We question Becker's ability to be an arbiter enforcing fairness in union elections...Becker served as counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO. It was [SEIU] president Andy Stern who visited the Obama White House 38 times (at last count), and his union spent a reported $66 million to help the president win election.

The Post continues:

He not only supports so-called "card check," the Employee Free Choice Act that which would effectively eliminate secret ballots and strip away worker privacy when forming a union, he also advocates for the elimination of the "no union" option from workers' ballots. And he thinks employers should have no "role in union organizing campaigns and in union representation elections."

How can Americans expect Becker will exhibit impartiality?

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, for instance, already has asked Becker to recuse himself from 12 cases because "his prior writings demonstrate a bias against the group."

Read the whole Denver Post editorial here.

If the goal of Obama's Deficit Panel is to increase government budget deficits then naming SEIU top boss Andy Stern makes perfect sense. But since the supposed goal is to reduce the record budget shortfalls, Stern's nomination is a real head-scratcher.

As many union members know, the self-interest of union bosses to corral more workers into dues-paying ranks often has severe costs.  And now that more than half of our nation's government workers are now under union boss monopoly bargaining control, it's becoming abundantly clear that one of these costs is the growth of government to fiscally unsustainable levels.

It's no wonder mayors from across the country are standing up to oppose the Police & Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill, currently pending in Congress, which would force first responders into forced-dues-paying ranks by federal fiat.  As Charleston, WV, mayor Danny Jones told the Charleston Daily Mail, 

If you look around the states, the most unionized states are the ones that are the most broke.

So while SEIU boss Andy Stern continues his using his frequent White House visits to push for a new federal policy that could add $100 billion a year to the federal budget (while forcing employees of federal contractors into union coffers) and the costs of Big Labor's public sector growth become more clear, concerned citizens can only wonder what kind of recommendations Andy Stern will make on President Obama's deficit panel.

Here on Freedom@Work, we've kept you updated about the Obama Administration's payback after payback to the union bosses who spent over one billion dollars in 2008 getting Barack Obama and other forced unionism proponents elected.

From rolling back union disclosure guidelines to slashing the budget of the Department of Labor's union watchdog agency to blacklistining nonunion construction workers from "stimulus" projects, the Obama Administration hasn't been shy about rewarding union brass.

So Friday's news about the White House's visitor list isn't exactly a shocker, but it says an awful lot about the Administration's priorities: no one has visited the White House more than Service Employees International Union chief Andy Stern.

Stern, of course, is one of the nation's most politically powerful union barons.  Under Stern's reign, the SEIU has also been marked by scandal after scandal, dissatisfied and unhappy workers and union members, and vicious campaigns against workers and employers.

Here at Freedom@Work, we spend a lot of time documenting union bosses' shameless hypocrisy, but this latest incident (almost) surprised even us. The powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) recently fired 75 staffers. But why is an organization that collects hundreds of millions of dollars in easy money (forced dues) per year cutting jobs now, in the midst of a devastating economic recession? Simple - they want even more cash for political lobbying:

"It's completely hypocritical," said staff union President Malcolm Harris...

Harris said his union's understanding is that the layoffs are the result of budget troubles faced by SEIU, which, on top of the California dispute, spent $80 million during the 2008 election and is planning to spend tens of millions more to advocate on behalf of Obama's health-care plan and card check.

The entire sordid episode is sadly reminiscent of the SEIU's election-year shenanigans, when the union hierarchy threw in the towel on the notion of hands-on employee assistance, replacing a help line with a remote call center -- the goal being to free up even more resources for political campaigning.

And now, yet again, SEIU bosses are demonstrating that they are more concerned with politics and forced-dues dollars than looking out the working man. 

(Via National Review)

Foundation VP Stefan Gleason sits down with Hot Air's Ed Morrissey to discuss disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's connection to union corruption: