The Service Employees International Union has been in the forefront of driving California to bankruptcy with its sweetheart union contracts and pensions. It was instrumental in defeating Arnold Scwartzenegger’s ballot initiatives after his election, in which he tried to gain control of some state spending. The teachers’ union mortgaged their headquarters in San Francisco to get money for TV ads in that battle. They won and Arnold has given up his attempts to slow the spending tsunami. The result is that California is bankrupt but, in a sort of sweet irony, the unions seem to have bankrupted themselves in the struggle to keep California spending too much. They also spent many millions to elect Barack Obama, an investment that will pay off better than their California spending.
But all that spending eroded much of the SEIU’s finances. The article notes that the union took out $25 million in loans last year and saw its net assets fall in half from the previous year. It also points out that the SEIU fired some of its Washington, D.C-based staff.
The SEIU is running TV ads even today trying to stop state budget cuts. The ads are sponsored by something called Commonsense4CA.org. I went to the web site and, sure enough, the SEIU seems to be spending their last dollars in a futile effort to prevent cuts that may be enforced by a bankruptcy judge although there seems to be no chapter of the code for states.
Their last hope appears to be the Obama Administration, which will divert the public purse to bail out unions. Ask the UAW and the Chrysler bond holders.
If I were a union member, as I once was many years ago, I would be unhappy at all this spending.
Tags: bankruptcy, California, politics, unions