Press: Andy Stern’s Venture Capitalist GF Faces Possible Punishment at Polls

Remember when SEIU’s Andy Stern rushed to the defense of Gina Raimondo, a former venture capitalist who slashed the pensions of Rhode Island workers and then funneled a billion dollars of workers’ retirement money to her buddies at Wall Street hedge funds?

Well, Raimondo is now trying to become the Governor of Rhode Island… but is facing blowback from voters due to her pension-slashing extravaganza, according to the New York Times.

Raimondo, a Democrat, should have an easy time getting elected in Rhode Island, where Dems outnumber Republicans by 4 to 1.

But here's what the New York Times reported in an article over the weekend (“In Rhode Island Governor’s Race, Pension Issue Could Hurt Raimondo,” Nov. 1, 2014):

In this Democratic state, Ms. Raimondo could be expected to be doing well, but a Brown University poll released on Tuesday showed her and Mr. Fung running neck and neck. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report now calls the race a tossup. One big reason is the pension issue, which alienated the public-sector unions, an important ally in any traditional Democratic coalition.

If Raimondo loses tomorrow's election, let’s hope she’s consigned to the political dustbin for, uh, maybe an eon or two. 

Raimondo -- who critics describe as "a tool of Wall Street” who “trumped up the pension problem to enrich her Wall Street friends, in part through increased state payments in hedge fund fees” -- seems to symbolize everything that's wrong in a society where billionaires and hedge-fund fatcats enjoy unprecedented wealth at the expense of the rest of us. 

And Andy Stern, of course, represents everything that's wrong with corrupt union leaders who rush to the side of the Perelmans, Raimondos, and David Cotes instead of workers.

SEIU’s Andy Stern Suffers Smackdown in Latest Romance with Venture Capitalist

SEIU's Andy Stern

Remember the recent post about Andy Stern’s budding romance with Gina Raimondo, the venture-capitalist-turned-State-Treasurer in Rhode Island?

Ten days ago, SEIU’s President Emeritus rushed to Raimondo’s defense by publishing an op-ed in the Providence Journal after AFSCME rightfully attacked Raimondo for slashing workers’ pensions and lining the pockets of her Wall Street pals.

Well... Andy’s defense of Raimondo hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Earlier this week, Stern suffered a searing smackdown delivered by a national financial expert who performed the forensic analysis of Raimondo’s corrupt pension scheme. 

The expert, Edward Siedle, is a former lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He also founded the Whistleblower Forensic Opportunity Trust and has conducted over $1 trillion in forensic investigations of the money management industry.

On Sunday, Siedle published an op-ed in the Providence Journal that begins like this:

Let me congratulate Andy Stern (“Raimondo right to use investment tools,” Commentary, Oct. 27) on his good fortune after leaving the Service Employees International Union in 2010 — in particular, the two positions he has taken associated with a private equity titan, Ronald D. Perelman.

Stern recently accepted a paid position on the board of directors of the biochemical company SIGA, owned by billionaire Ron Perelman’s private equity firm MacAndrews & Forbes. Stern also recently accepted an endowed position at Columbia University as a Ronald O. Perelman Senior Fellow at the Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy. While The Journal identified Stern at the bottom of the piece as the former president of SEIU and a senior fellow at Columbia, the fact that he is compensated by the private equity industry was omitted.

Mr. Stern opines that it is critical that we try to focus the discussion of pension issues in Rhode Island on facts. I couldn’t agree more. Let’s start with a recitation of irrefutable, indisputable facts…

Ouch!

How much more pathetic can a so-called ‘labor leader’ possibly get… than to be ridiculed for being a bought-and-paid-for tool of a gang of venture capitalists and Stern's billionaire sugar daddy, Ron Perelman?  

SEIU's Andy Stern Finds New Romance in Pension-Slashing Adventure

SEIU's Andy Stern

Remember Andy Stern’s “bromance” with Ron Perelman, the billionaire venture capitalist?

Well, don’t tell Ron, but it looks like Andy has fallen head over heels for a younger venture capitalist who’s busy slashing workers’ pensions. 

Ain’t that a perfect match for SEIU’s President Emeritus? After all, SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan, one of Andy's best buddies, has already destroyed the defined-benefit pensions of tens of thousands of healthcare workers in California.

Who, exactly, is Andy’s new love object? 

She’s Gina Raimondo, a 42-year-old former venture capitalist who’s now the Treasurer of Rhode Island.

Gina Raimondo

Raimondo is waging a war on public workers' pensions and has rammed through a law that’s “slashing benefits of state employees with a speed and ferocity seldom before seen by any local government,” according to “Looting the Pension Funds” by Matt Taibbi, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine.

What kinds of cuts?

She “raised the minimum retirement age, suspended annual cost-of-living increases and replaced the state's defined-benefit pension with a hybrid that includes a 401k-style plan,” according to the Providence Journal.

And that’s not all. 

She funneled a billion dollars of workers’ pension money to her buddies who run hedge funds on Wall Street. These hedge fund fatcats, who are charging Rhode Island taxpayers $70 million a year in "investment fees," are in turn showering Raimondo with campaign contributions for her expected run for governor.

Earlier this month, AFSCME released a 106-page forensic investigation performed by a national financial expert that shines the light on Raimondo's scam. The report begins this way:  

Two years ago, Rhode Island's state pension fund fell victim to a Wall Street coup. It happened when Gina Raimondo, a venture capital manager with an uncertain investment track record of only a few years… got herself elected as the General Treasurer of the State of Rhode Island with the financial backing of out-of-state hedge fund managers. Raimondo's new role endowed her with responsibility for overseeing the state's entire $7 billion in pension assets.

The report, which received prominent coverage in the Providence Journal, continues:

The Treasurer has emerged as the leading national advocate of a disingenuous form of public pension 'reform' which involves slashing worker's benefits and thwarting public access to information regarding the riskiest of pension investments while, in secret, dramatically increasing the risks to retirement plans and the fees they pay to Wall Street.

The financial expert, Ted Siedle, goes on to charge Raimondo with committing multiple violations of state and federal laws.

So… what does Andy Stern think about Raimondo?

Just days after Siedle and AFSCME trashed Raimondo in the Providence Journal, Stern rushed to her defense by publishing an op-ed in the same newspaper. In the op-ed, entitled “Raimondo Right to Use Investment Tools,” Stern says things like this: 

I have met and talked with Rhode Island General Treasurer Gina Raimondo… it is not helpful to attack her integrity and motives... While one can debate whether Rhode Island was right to alter benefits for current employees and pensioners, Rhode Island should be applauded for using all the tools in the modern investment manager’s toolkit to generate the returns workers are counting on to pay for their pensions.

Gimme a break! Once again, when workers are in a fight, Stern rushes to the Boss's side.

According to observers, Raimondo’s looting of public pensions is just the leading edge of a broader national attack against workers’ pensions. According to the Rolling Stone, one of Raimondo’s key supporters is “billionaire former Enron executive John Arnold – a dickishly ubiquitous young right-wing kingmaker with clear designs on becoming the next generation's Koch brothers, and who for years had been funding a nationwide campaign to slash benefits for public workers.”

Ron Perelman

Back on Wall Street, three of the hedge fund owners who are getting rich off Raimondo’s pension scam also happen to serve “on the board of the Manhattan Institute, a prominent conservative think tank with a history of supporting benefit-slashing reforms. The institute named Raimondo its 2011 "Urban Innovator" of the year,” according to the Rolling Stone.

Taibbi's article offers more details about the scam engineered by Raimondo, summarizing it this way:

This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era.

Where does all of this leave Stern?

Let's face it. Andy is a pathetic figure. He long ago threw in his lot with billionaire capitalists like Ron Perelman. Nowadays, Andy's corporate pals let him prance around in a business suit and salivate over stock options in exchange for Andy lending his title as SEIU's President Emeritus to anti-worker causes backed by big business. Stern, like so many other SEIU leaders, is for sale to the highest bidder.

Workers in Rhode Island Bolt SEIU

Last week, food service workers at Brown University became the latest group to abandon the purple ship.

In Providence, Rhode Island, approximately 200 workers voted to decertify SEIU Local 615 and to join an independent union called the United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island (USAW-RI). During previous NLRB elections at the university, a super-majority of the workers voted to leave SEIU. 

So why are Rhode Island's workers leaving SEIU?

It's a story that’ll be very familiar to California's healthcare workers. Here’s what a food service worker told the Brown Daily Herald after the recent NLRB election:

Gloria Fraielli, a first cook who works in Dining Services, approached McAninch with a series of complaints about the SEIU during the summer. Fraielli told The Herald that many of the workers were dissatisfied with the lack of SEIU representatives present on campus to hear their concerns.

“They have a local office here, but there is never anybody there in the office. So if you place a call there, you would be lucky to get a call back,” she said. “We sort of got forgotten about.”

Meanwhile, workers say USAW-RI is far more effective at the bargaining table and is far more democratic and responsive to its members. Interestingly, a blogsite called “Union Librarian” describes historical parallels between USAW-RI and NUHW.  

For instance, here's how USAW-RI was formed:  In 2002, Andy Stern told the Rhode Island workers -- who were then members of SEIU Local 134 -- that the Purple Palace was going to transfer them to another SEIU local. A super-majority of the workers signed a petition opposing SEIU's heavy-handed move. SEIU's top officials, however, simply ignored the workers and imposed a trusteeship. 

Next, workers decided to form their own independent union. The Purple Palace responded by targeting the new union’s leaders with a harassing lawsuit that accused them of “breaching their fiduciary duty” to SEIU International. Sound familiar? 

So... what’s the status of workers' efforts to create their own democratic, effective union? The Rhode Island workers first established their new union in 2002-03. Today, virtually all of the former members of SEIU Local 134 have decertified SEIU and joined USAW-RI!  Plus, workers from other worksites have also voted to join USAW-RI.

It's quite a story.. and it deserves attention from California's healthcare workers!