It’s LM-2 season, which means we get to look at the financial expenditures of labor unions for the previous year. The most compelling bit of information that came from SEIU International’s LM-2 was its contribution to “Political Activities” – $27.7 million in all. 
What SEIU-UHW’S revealed was quite interesting as well. Despite losing almost 40% of its membership, SEIU-UHW still made $16.6 million in 2015 (a profit margin of 14%). “To put that into perspective, it’s higher than Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola.” SEIU lost another election to the National Union of Healthcare Workers. The bargaining unit was 300 workers at Oakland’s Hospital and Research Center. 145 votes went to SEIU. 153 to NUHW. 4 voted against representation all together. SEIU Local 1021 is currently being accused by their members of rigging their February election of officers. Out of the 48,000 ballots that were supposedly sent out, only 3,500 people voted. Apparently there were issues with the computer software that calculates the tallies as well. Click here to watch an interview with one of the Local’s leaders who is disturbed with the way the election was conducted. Connecticut is facing a $250 million shortfall this year and is expected to be in even worse shape next year ($900 million). Meanwhile, the Connecticut State Employees Association, a public union affiliated with SEIU will not budge on renegotiating their benefit packages in order to save jobs. They believe the problem can be solved simply by putting more taxes on the rich, even though Connecticut has some of the highest taxes in the country already.
