Max Arias and The Poseurs: Now Playing at UHW!

Tasty got this email about an SEIU organizer named "Max."

"Tasty - do you know a SEIU staff person named Max whose working in UHW's nursing homes? I just went to the NLRB vote count at All Saints nursing home and some of us supporters of NUHW were waiting in front of All Saints for the start-up of the vote count. All of us have worked in nursing homes for years (one of us is almost 70 years old) and we're all women. Anyway, we're waiting there, and this SEIU staffer named Max walks in front of us, turns, and says "Fucking bitches" and then walks away. Who is this guy??? He's Latino with curly hair."

Umm, ok.

Well... Tasty did a little investigating. Turns out this is Max Arias, a staffer from SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana who's been working on the trusteeship for more than a year. Max is a classic poseur. You see, young Max fronts all kinds of progressive attitude and credentials (apparently, Max loves to tell everyone how his father is a leftist leader in El Salvador) even as he disrespects actual workers who've spent decades busting their asses in nursing homes.

SEIU is filled with these types. Remember Rahul Varshney, who revels in posting narcissistic videos of himself babbling about "the workers' struggle" as he dances to Wu Tang Clan? Rahul is the guy who, along with with SEIU staffer Dana Hohn, conspired with HR officials to fire Will Brennan, who'd spent 23 years working as a telephone operator at Olympia Medical Center. Why did Rahul and Dana get him fired? Simply because Will opposed SEIU. (Btw, Tasty is looking forward to next month, when Rahul, Dana Hohn and 4 other SEIU staffers will go on trial for threatening and bullying the rank-and-file workers who pay their wages.)

In SEIU, there are also lots of poseurs who sit on the sidelines and preen their progressive pedigrees as they avert their eyes from the outrageous and immoral conduct of their union. They pretend not to notice when Mary Kay Henry calls the cops on rank-and-file workers. Or when she locks elected bargaining committee members out on the sidewalk while SEIU cuts secret deals with the boss. They cover their eyes when Eliseo Medina gets an immigrant nursing home worker fired from her job simply for passing a petition in favor of NUHW. And they stare at their feet when SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern calls workers "terrorists" simply for requesting democratic elections to change unions.

Is this who is left at SEIU? What kind of staff are running UHW? Aren't they trying to WIN votes?