Union linked to Illinois corruption scandal
By Steven Greenhouse
December 11, 2008
iht.com
The Service Employees International Union has long boasted that it is on the cutting edge of the labor movement. But it found itself badly embarrassed this week when it was linked by name to Governor Rod Blagojevich's maneuvering to secure some financial gain from picking the next Senator from Illinois.
The federal criminal complaint filed against Blagojevich said his chief of staff, John Harris, had suggested to a service employees' official that the union should help make the governor the head of Change to Win, the federation of seven unions that broke away form the AFL-CIO. The complaint said Blagojevich was seeking a position that paid $250,000 to $300,000 a year.
In exchange, the complaint strongly suggested, the service employees union and Change to Win would help persuade Blagojevich to name Valerie Jarrett, President-elect Barack Obama's first choice, as the state's new senator. And the union would get help from the Obama administration, presumably for its legislative agenda.
Several union officials in Chicago and Washington said that service employees official approached by Harris was Tom Balanoff, the president of the union's giant janitors' local in Chicago and head of the union's Illinois state council. Balanoff, one of the union officials closest to Obama, is widely seen as an aggressive, successful labor leader, who has helped unionize thousands of janitors not just in the Chicago area but also in Texas.
Reached by telephone on Tuesday, Balanoff said, "I can't comment on anything right now."
The Illinois branch of the service employees issued a statement on Wednesday night saying, "We have no reason to believe that SEIU or any SEIU official was involved in any misconduct." It added that the union and Balanoff "are fully cooperating with the federal investigation."
Greg Denier, Change to Win's spokesman, said the federation "had no involvement, no discussion, no contact" with Blagojevich or his staff. "The idea of a position at Change to Win was totally an invention of the governor, and his stance has no basis in reality," Denier said.
Denier noted that the presidency of Change to Win was an unsalaried position. The federation's president, Anna Burger, is the service employees' secretary treasurer and receives only her SEIU salary.
Service employee officials said that the criminal complaint does not allege that the unidentified "SEIU official" did anything wrong. All he did, they said, was listen to Blagojevich and his chief of staff and ferry some messages for them.
A senior service employees official, who insisted on anonymity because prosecutors have asked union officials not to talk, said his union was one of many that backed Blagojevich and has received favors from him. But he said that it was understandable that Blagojevich would ask the service employees for favor because it was so powerful and was seen as one of the unions closest to Obama.
Patrick Gaspard, the former political director of the service employees' huge New York health-care affiliate, 1199, was political director of Obama's campaign.
If Blagojevich was going to approach a union to help land a cushy job after leaving the Illinois governorship, it probably made sense for him to approach the service employees, the nation's fastest growing union.
With more than 1.8 million members nationwide, it is the largest union in Illinois, was an early and generous backer of his gubernatorial ambitions and received some important favors from him. In 2005, the governor issued an executive order that enabled the service employees to unionize 49,000 in-home child care providers who were paid through state and U.S. government funds.
Afterward, the service employees negotiated a 39-month contract that raised the child-care providers daily rates by 35 percent on average and provided them with health coverage.
With Blagojevich evidently hoping to trade favors with President-elect Obama, the service employees seemed like a sensible intermediary because it was widely seen as doing more to elect Obama than any other union. The service employees' political action committee spent at least $26 million on Obama's behalf in this year's presidential campaign, making it by far the largest single PAC donor in the campaign.
The service employees union was by far the top overall donor to Blagojevich's 2006 re-election campaign, with records showing it donated more than $900,000, or about 5 percent of his total campaign funds.
Michelle Ringuette, a service employees' spokeswoman, said the political contributions were unusual.
"Many unions make donations to political candidates," she said, "in the interest of making sure we have elected officials who represent the interest of working families, men and women who get up and go to work every day." |
