Incubate this!

Here's an item that offers an interesting window into the Fantasy Island formulations of SEIU’s top officials.

How exactly are Purple Palace officials planning to respond to SEIU’s pathetic failures at the bargaining table and its declining membership?

They’ve decided to set up a ‘business incubator’ to dream up “innovative” strategies that’ll allow SEIU to revive the entire U.S. labor movement!

An inside source sent copies of documents detailing SEIU’s latest Alice-in-Wonderland distraction, which is being pushed by SEIU’s David Rolf. Rolf is the teenage member of SEIU's International Executive Board who famously cut a secret deal with Washington nursing home corporations that forced workers into cheap 'template' contracts and banned them from striking for 10 years.

Here's an excerpt from the incubator documents:

Over the last 40 years, corporations invested heavily in research and innovation that produced not only new technologies to drive up profits but also new management strategies to avoid unions and hold down wages. On the other side, there’s been no similar effort to incubate 21st century alternatives to the collective bargaining model that built the middle class in the 20th century.

So… the Purple Palace has decided to set up an SEIU-styled business incubator that’ll connect “venture-funders” and “investment/business partners” with so-called innovative ideas for transforming the labor movement.

SEIU's David Rolph

What kinds of ideas? 

The only concrete strategies mentioned in the SEIU documents are such radical new approaches that range “from activating workers and consumers to engaging in political and legal strategies.”

Well... instead of flushing millions of workers' dues dollars down the toilet, SEIU might want to test out these radical ideas.

1. Stop cutting back-room deals with corporations that sell out workers… like Dave Regan’s multiple secret deals that eliminated workers' defined-pension plans, slashed their health benefits, and banned workers from striking.

2. Stop rigging union elections that keep clueless fatcat SEIU leaders in power and prevent workers from choosing their own leaders. Ever heard of “democracy”?

3. Stop lying to workers.

4. Stop protecting SEIU’s corrupt leaders like Tyrone Freeman, who robbed millions of dollars from low-wage healthcare workers in California, and Andy Stern, who pocketed tens of thousands of stock options from billionaire Ron Perelman in exchange for selling out low-wage security guards.

And the list goes on... 

Finally, here's an email from David Rolf about the purple business incubator.

Subject: Incubation Center Program Director

Friends –

Please forgive the mass email and the probability of some duplication in your inbox.

Over the last year, I and others at SEIU have had conversations and exchanged ideas with many of you about the need to address the crisis for America’s workers and unions with dedicated capacity to develop new real-world models for winning for workers in the 21st Century.  We believe that to succeed, any new model(s) would need to be:

·         Economically powerful enough to change workers lives economically for the better;

·         Scalable to cover entire industries or geographies;

·         Sustainable – with an embedded revenue model.

Working with other partners in the philanthropic, advocacy, policy, and labor communities, we intend to launch such a new center, not housed within any union or labor federation, early in 2014.  Intending to model much of what we do on the lessons successful of “incubation” and “acceleration” centers in the business and social sectors, we’re temporarily referring to this initiative the “Incubation Center.”

Attached is a draft concept paper describing our thinking to date on this new initiative.  This version is not final or written for a public audience, as it will continue to evolve as new partners become involved in shaping the vision and business plan of the Incubation Center.

The job announcement for the founding Project Director is also attached.  This executive-level position will assist the founding partners in developing the business plan and launching the new initiative during 2014…

In Solidarity,

David Rolf