Andy Stern’s Newest Gig: High-Paid Consultant for Billion-Dollar Tech Companies

Andy Stern, SEIU President Emeritus

SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern has once again revealed his true colors.

Stern is working as a highly paid consultant for Airbnb, Handy, and other billion-dollar tech businesses, according to a January 10, 2017 article (Josh Eidelson, “It’s a New Game for Uber Drivers If New York Passes This Law,” Bloomberg Businessweek).

In New York, for example, Handy hired Stern to help push a bill through the state legislature that would allow Handy and other gig-economy companies like Uber, Instacart, and TaskRabbit to fend off lawsuits filed by workers who seek to be treated as employees rather than “independent contractors.” 

The bill is also backed by the trade group “Tech:NYC,” whose members include Uber, Facebook, Google, EBay, and Etsy.

The bill “would make it easier for gig-economy app makers to continue to treat their workers as contractors, loosening New York’s current standards,” according to Bloomberg. Handy, co-founded in 2012 by two Harvard Business School students, sends workers to people’s homes to clean up or make repairs.

Oh, and that's just the beginning of the pimping that "Handy Andy" has been doing for his billion-dollar tech patrons.

In a separate gig, Stern last month co-authored a proposal with a right-wing D.C. political operative calling on the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress and White House to grant “waivers” to states to allow them to do an end-run around federal labor laws. The waivers would be a boon to tech companies, which are facing dozens of class-action action lawsuits from workers alleging they are owed millions in back pay after being misclassified as “independent contractors.”

Stern’s proposal, which appeared in “National Affairs” (Andrew Stern and Eli Lehrer, “How to Modernize Labor Law,” National Affairs), is co-authored by Eli Lehrer, the President of the right-wing “R Street Institute” in Washington DC.

How do Stern and Lehrer propose to “modernize” labor law?

Here's a shocker. 

They propose a legislative agenda that’s virtually identical to the tech industry’s. BTW, Stern's article just so happens to praise Uber and Handy as “sharing-economy companies” with “innovative business models.”

In the article, Stern successfully commits a serious ethical violation by failing to inform readers that he’s actually a highly paid consultant for Uber, Handy, and other tech companies. The article conveniently leaves aside this inconvenient fact, and simply identifies Stern as the “former president of the Service Employees International Union and a senior fellow at Columbia University.”

What’s the skinny on Eli Lehrer and the “R Street Institute”?

The R Street Institute describes itself as “a free market think tank” that favors “limited government.” 

It was founded in 2012 by former members of the Heartland Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It’s an associate member of the “State Policy Network,” which the Center for Media and Democracy describes as “a web of right-wing ‘think tanks’ in every state across the country” with deep ties to the billionaire Koch brothers and other conservative funders.

For example, the R Street Institute opposes raising the minimum wage and supports legislation to make it easier for companies to classify their workers as “independent contractors.”

Who is Lehrer?

He’s the president and co-founder of The R Street Institute. Formerly, he served as the senior editor of The American Enterprise magazine and was a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, according to his bio.

Handy CEO Oisin Hanrahan

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Stern’s and Lehrer’s proposal would cause great harm to workers.

Think about it. 

If the federal government decides to “decentralize” labor law by granting “waivers” to states so they can “experiment” with alternative labor laws, what might they do?

Just consider the right-wing forces and Tea Party fanatics who now control many state legislatures.

In Kentucky, where Republicans control state government for the first time in nearly a century, legislators last weekend passed a right-to-work law that was promptly signed by the Republican governor. The new law also prohibits public employees from going on strike.

Next up? Kentucky legislators are considering a bill to eliminate prevailing wages for public works projects.

Meanwhile, state legislatures in Texas, Kentucky, Missouri, Minnesota, and Virginia offer another glimpse of the right-wing ideologues controlling many states. Each of these legislatures will be considering so-called “bathroom bills” like North Carolina’s, which would require transgender people to use restrooms in public schools, universities, and government buildings that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificate. Many of the bills would also ban cities and counties from approving ordinances aimed at protecting transgender rights.

So… what a f*cking great idea, Andy. An absolutely perfect moment in history to give waivers to state legislatures so they can “experiment” with crazy-ass changes to laws governing workers’ minimum wages, overtime hours, anti-discrimination rules, pension rights, and rights to form unions.

Here are a few excerpts from Stern’s and Lehrer’s “bold” proposal to “modernize” US labor law:

It's time for a new path, one that takes advantage of one of the most successful public-policy innovations of the past 50 years: waivers from federal law to allow state experimentation… A system to allow state waivers from major labor laws similarly could give every interest group a chance to try bold reforms the federal framework doesn't currently allow.

The laws eligible for waivers should include, at minimum, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and the Taft-Hartley Act.

What sort of concrete innovations do Stern and Lehrer envision?

Here are a couple described in the article:

Overtime Pay: Instead of the current laws requiring companies to pay overtime wages after eight hours, “waivers might also allow averaging of overtime over several weeks or a month,” thereby allowing companies to reduce overtime pay to workers.

Wage Rates: Instead of current laws requiring companies and labor unions to collectively negotiate a system of pay rates covering all workers, waivers could “leave matters of wages or benefits or both to negotiations between managers and individual employees.”

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin

WTF is Stern doing?

Stern is a pimp without a shred of principles or moral grounding… just a lust for lining his pockets with as much cash as he can possibly stuff inside them. 

Just weeks after resigning as SEIU’s president in 2010, Stern began pocketing wads of stock options and cash from billionaire Ron Perelman, an employer of SEIU’s members whom Stern reportedly negotiated secret labor deals. SEIU officials, including Mary Kay Henry, took no action to stop Stern’s apparent ethics violations. In fact, SEIU continues to consider Stern its “President Emeritus.”

What’s next on Stern’s agenda?

Here’s an idea. 

Perhaps he might want to propose giving “waivers” to allow Republican-controlled state legislatures to “experiment” with “bold innovations” to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other federal statutes designed to protect people’s fundamental rights. 

Tasty is confident that if someone gives Handy Andy a thick wad of cash, he’d no-doubt oblige.

UNITE HERE Leaders: SEIU Is Undermining the U.S. Labor Movement

Andy Stern: Pimping for the plutocrats

Two leaders at UNITE HERE have penned a sharp critique of SEIU.

The piece, entitled “Labor’s Neoliberal Caucus” in Jacobin Magazine, criticizes SEIU for pushing a boss-friendly, “neoliberal” style of unionism that’s undermining the US labor movement.

The authors -- Warren Heyman (an international vice president of UNITE HERE) and Andrew Tillett-Saks (the organizing director for UNITE HERE Local 217) -- define “neoliberal unionism” as “a unionism that espouses collaboration with corporations instead of conflict and upholds free-market capitalism as reconcilable with labor’s interests.”

According to the article, the “modern wave” of this boss-friendly unionism “is rooted in SEIU and its former president Andy Stern’s push for neoliberal unionism in the 2000s.”

Stern, who made backroom deals with CEOs as SEIU’s president and also tried to stamp out internal critics through trusteeships, has continued walking down the same ideological path since his retirement.

Only days after retiring, Stern accepted tens of thousands of shares of stock and a fully paid job from Ron Perelman, a billionaire corporate raider who’s one of the world’s richest men. Perelman has showered Stern with gifts in apparent exchange for sweetheart labor deals that Stern negotiated from SEIU's Purple Palace in Washington DC, including a deal with one of Perelman's many companies, AlliedBarton.

Here’s an excerpt from Heyman’s and Tillett-Saks’ article regarding Stern’s role in pushing neoliberal unionism:

Stern explicitly and aggressively pushed the labor movement to adopt a “collaborationist” approach towards capital; according to the Stern ideology, workers and unions don’t have to fight corporations, just build “relationships” with them and cajole them into a mutually beneficial partnership.

In this spirit, Stern and SEIU amassed a lengthy record of striking deals with corporations that sold out workers’ ability to fight in exchange for promises of union recognition… SEIU expanded, but what expanded was a neutered shell of a labor movement, full of members with preposterous contracts and little ability to fight for better.

Stern is gone but his ideological legacy remains… From embracing free-market capitalism to embracing employers to embracing their political representatives, the political and intellectual lineage is clear.

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan is clearly one of Stern’s disciples.

Regan famously inked a secret deal with the California Hospital Association that banned strikes, forced workers into pre-negotiated contracts with stripped-down wages and benefits, and imposed a gag clause that blocked SEIU members from criticizing their employers or mentioning their CEOs’ sky-high salaries.

On Labor Day of 2014, Regan famously told NBC-LA TV News that the idea of strikes and “adversarial relationships” between workers and corporations is “outdated.” Instead, says Regan, unions must “collaborate” with corporate CEOs to create a new “teamwork” economy.

Below, see a two-minute excerpt from Regan’s NBC TV interview in which he describes his vision of SEIU's idea of "21st century" unionism.

Heyman and Tillett-Saks conclude their article by issuing a call to arms to US workers and unions, who they say must confront and battle SEIU inside the US labor movement.

The proliferation of this model of unionism would spell disaster for the American labor movement. Our movement’s success depends on how widely and how militantly we can organize workers to fight corporate power and the 1 percent, not embrace them.

Union members and leaders must do everything in their power to halt the march of neoliberal unionism, before they march the labor movement straight into its grave. 

What does "neoliberal unionism" look like? Check out this 2-minute excerpt from Regan’s interview with NBC TV News on Labor Day, 2014:

SEIU’s Fast-Buck Entrepreneurs

SEIU's Andy Stern

After SEIU officials’ backroom lap dance with Airbnb execs was abruptly interrupted, Randy Shaw of “Beyond Chron” penned a piece that examines the profiteering of former SEIU and Obama administration officials.

SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern, for example, is involved in at least three for-profit ventures... including a biowarfare pharmaceutical company owned by his billionaire patron, Ron Perelman, the 78th richest person in the world. 

In addition, Stern recently became a high-paid consultant for Airbnb, which ostensibly hired him to grease the wheels inside the Purple Palace. Stern was reportedly helping Airbnb reach a deal with SEIU that critics say would have given the $25.5 billion company political cover for driving up housing costs, intensifying gentrification, and undercutting hotel workers' jobs.

Shaw’s article -- entitled “Key Obama Backers Shift to Private Profiting: Abandoning Fight for Change in Favor of Private Profits” -- begins this way:

What do Andy Stern, Jon Carson, David Plouffe, and Jim Messina all have in common? Each played key roles in Barack Obama’s campaigns promoting “Change We Can Believe In” and now work for for-profit corporations or conservative candidates. 

Why have these and others like former SEIU staffer Christopher Nulty (now at Airbnb) and former NextGen organizer Chris Lehane (also at Airbnb) shifted their energies from working for progressive change in the public sector to private pursuits?

SEIU's Christopher Nulty

Who’s Nulty? 

He was SEIU President Mary Kay Henry’s speechwriter and Chief Communications Aide, as described in this recent post. He left SEIU to take jobs at Yahoo and Airbnb, where he currently serves as Airbnb’s Public Affairs Lead for the eastern half of North America.

Shaw goes on to deliver a smackdown of Stern, whom he calls “the worst stereotype of the fast buck entrepreneur.”

Larry Cohen v Andy Stern

Let’s start with the most obvious contrast, that of the post-retirement actions of two leading union supporters of Obama in 2008: Larry Cohen, former head of the Communication Workers of America, and Andy Stern, who left SEIU in 2010. 

Since leaving CWA, Cohen has continued to work for progressive change. Cohen probably did more than anyone else to build labor support for the Bernie Sanders campaign, indirectly moving Clinton and the Democratic Party to the left on trade and other issues of concern to working people. 

Stern, in contrast, has gone from representing Big Pharma to his recent ill-conceived plan to forge a deal between SEIU and Airbnb on unionizing maids that bypassed UNITE HERE (and violated the jurisdictional agreement between the two unions). He’s become the worst stereotype of the fast buck entrepreneur… 

Stern was the labor official most passionate about Barack Obama in 2008. Yet today it almost seems unbelievable that he was even part of the labor movement.

Here’s a link to the full article.

SEIU Launches For-Profit Unionism from Tech-Styled "Business Incubator"

A scene from The Workers Lab "Summer Institute"

"You can't make this sh*t up," says one reader about the following story.

Last year, Tasty reported that SEIU decided to plow millions of dollars into a Silicon Valley-styled "business incubator" as part of SEIU’s "innovative strategy" to "revitalize" the labor movement by, uhh, adopting more capitalist money-making schemes into SEIU’s operations.

So long, class struggle.

Hello, google capitalism.

SEIU's "business incubator"-- which is modeled after venture capital firms -- is up and running in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

It's called "The Workers Lab" and is headed by President David Rolf (also the president of SEIU Local 775) and CEO Carmen Rojas.  

So what's SEIU’s Workers Lab actually doing?

 

SEIU's David "Google" Rolf

According to an article published earlier this month by "BuzzFeed," the Workers Lab is buzzing with discussion of "smart phone apps," maximizing revenue streams, profit making, "monetizing" the membership, and using members for "data mining," among other topics.

For example, the center’s staff is excitedly discussing how unions and other organizations can "monetize" their members by using apps to "mine" and then sell a variety of personal data captured from workers. 

The article notes that "low-income to middle-class workers are… a demographic that plenty of outside groups with deep pockets, especially in politics, are looking to learn more about…"

Tasty won’t be surprised when SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern and his billionaire buddy, Ron Perelman, make their appearance at "The Workers Lab" sometime soon. 

Ben Geyerhahn, the CEO of BeneStream -- which is one of Any Stern's for-profit ventures -- currently serves on the Workers Lab's board of directors along with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry.

Here are some excerpts from the BuzzFeed article. The full text is available here.

The Workers Lab wants to train labor organizers in the language of Silicon Valley, and outfit them with the dark arts of business school, in hopes of reinvigorating what is widely seen as a dying labor movement…

It’s the last day of The Workers Lab summer institute, a two-day workshop for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to turn their big ideas for empowering workers into sustainable businesses. Though Workers Lab CEO Carmen Rojas and president David Rolf are both present, the man of the hour is clearly Stanford Business School lecturer Michael Bush. Bush has been called in as a consultant to walk the five participating projects through his nine building blocks of revenue-generation. He wears a gold watch on one wrist and a gold bracelet on the other… He says he always starts the class with the same announcement: “I’m going to talk about money.”

The Workers Lab receives funding from the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation, but at heart, it’s a project of the Service Employees International Union. David Rolf is president of both the lab and the SEIU’s Local 775 in Seattle, the project’s major financial backer. Rolf has been public about his lack of faith in traditional organized labor’s ability to defend the American workforce going forward into the 21st century. He says he’s committed to finding a better solution.

A big part of that commitment is The Workers Lab, an experimental, five-person organization studying whether the principles of capitalism and the structures of startup culture might produce better outcomes for workers today…

"Are you going to be for-profit?” Bush asks Chelsea Sprayregen, one-third of the founding team of a child care project that came in named “Work Hard, Play Hard” and left as “Provide.” After a second’s hesitation, she replies in the affirmative. 

“Good,” Bush said. “I like that." ...

“We need to teach people that empowerment and power are actually different,” [SEIU’s David] Rolf explains. Empowering workers, [CEO Carmen] Rojas says later, means giving them a voice, or advocating for improved conditions. Power, on the other hand, means collective action or access to capital. If that means adopting the tactics of the opposition — from dark money funds to data mining — so be it.

Andy Stern Tried to Silence Huffington Post's Article Detailing SEIU's Deal with Billionaire Ron Perelman

Ron Perelman and Andy Stern

In its recent article, the Huffington Post unearthed a previously unknown chapter in Andy Stern’s corporate career at SIGA Technologies, a bio-warfare pharmaceutical company.

It turns out that soon after journalist Ryan Grim published a 2010 article outing Stern for an allegedly corrupt backroom deal with billionaire Ron Perelman (“Andy Stern's Bizarre Alliance With Private Equity and Biowarfare,” October 7, 2010), Stern and SIGA hired a fancy corporate law firm to try to bully the Huffington Post into silence.

In their recent article, Grim and fellow journalist Jeffrey Young describe how SIGA’s lawyers threatened to sue the Huffington Post unless the news outlet deleted Grim’s article discussing Stern's allegedly corrupt deal with Perelman… in which Stern and SEIU abandoned 10,000 security guards who work for AlliedBarton. Just weeks after Stern resigned as SEIU's president, Perelman appointed him to SIGA Technologies board of directors where Stern pocketed tens of thousands of stock options and buckets of cash. 

Below, Tasty has posted a copy of the lawyers' bullyboy letter sent to the Huffington Post… which appears to have been taken from Chapter 1 of a scare-tactic handbook.

Here's how the scare tactic works. 

After a fatcat is stung by the truth, he hires lawyers with super scary-looking letterhead and tells them to send an “I'm going to sue the f*ck out of you” letter to the journalist. The fatcat hopes the journalist will tremble in his boots… and quickly agree to delete the article rather than risk an expensive battle with testosterone-filled attorneys.

In this case, the Huffington Post called Stern on his bluff and forced SEIU’s President Emeritus to slink back to his padded chair in SIGA’s corporate boardroom. Stern’s about-face, of course, had the effect of proving the truthfulness all of the things that Stern and SIGA claimed were untrue. 

 

Arianna Huffington

Check out these excerpts from Stern/SIGA’s “I'm going to sue the f*ck out of you” letter, which was delivered to Arianna Huffington, the Editor-in-Chief of Huffington Post in 2010. "BARDA" is a federal agency that gave a half-billion dollar sole-source contract to Stern's company, SIGA.

For the reasons set forth below, the Companies insist that you withdraw this article from your website and from your archive and that you post in its place a one-line statement that the article was withdrawn because of errors. The Companies further demand that you take all additional steps to have the article removed from computer search engines and deleted by any licensees of The Huffington Post…

First, a major thrust of the article is the implication that SIGA improperly has been using Andy Stern's influence to obtain a BARDA contract and to prevent the funds for that contract from being lost to budget-cutting. That implication is false… [SIGA’s half-billion-dollar federal contract] procurement is not some kind of government boondoggle…

Second, the article falsely implies that Mr. Stern did not have the best interests of SEIU members in mind when negotiating labor agreements with AlliedBarton. And it suggests that Mr. Stern's allegedly improper activities were at the behest of MacAndrews & Forbes, which owned a majority of AlliedBarton at the time, and its senior management, including Ronald Perelman. Those implications are false…

The article should not remain posted on your website, and the Companies hereby demand that you promptly remove it from the site and from archives, and that you take all additional steps to have the article removed from computer search engines and deleted by any licensees. In its place, the Companies hereby demand that you place a single-line note explaining that the article was removed because it contained errors. Thus, people who may try to return to the article will know that it was removed for a reason. If you take these actions promptly, my clients will consider the matter closed, but, if not, they reserve all of their options and remedies. If you do not plan to comply, my clients hereby also demand that you preserve all of Mr. Grim’s and The Huffington Post's documents relating to this story, including all electronic documents, e-mails, voicemails, and similar materials.

Sincerely,

Ronald L. Marmer

  Letter on behalf of SEIU's Andy Stern to the Huffington Post demanding the deletion of an article alle...

 

SEIU’s Andy Stern and Pharma Company Faulted in Ebola Drug Shortage

Why hasn't the U.S. developed a more effective drug to combat Ebola?

According to an article by the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim and Jeffrey Young, a "politically connected drug company" waged "a high-stakes battle for federal funding" several years ago and snatched up government money that otherwise would have gone to developing an “experimental drug now being used by the U.S. government to treat Ebola patients.”

What's the name of this "politically connected drug company"?

You guessed it. SIGA Technologies.

Here's what happened:

In 2010, the federal government awarded a nearly half-billion-dollar contract to SIGA (which was developing a drug “in case terrorists weaponized smallpox, a disease that was considered fully eradicated by the 1970s”) rather than awarding the money to Chimerix, which was developing "a broad-spectrum antiviral” medicine that the U.S. government is now using on an emergency basis during the Ebola outbreak.

The Chimerix drug “was given in the late stages to Thomas Eric Duncan, the Dallas patient who succumbed to Ebola in early October,” according to the Huffington Post.

The HuffPo article discusses the role of Andy Stern, SEIU’s President Emeritus, and his billionaire benefactor, Ron Perelman, in this tale of money, political deals and a lethal viral epidemic.

The bid for the potentially multi-billion dollar government contract was ultimately won by Siga Technologies Inc. in fall 2010. Just before the contract award, The Huffington Post reported that Siga had brought on board Andy Stern, who had recently departed as head of the Service Employees International Union. Having been the lead labor negotiator on the Affordable Care Act, Stern knew his way around the Department of Health and Human Services, which was to award the contract. Stern and Ron Perelman, whose holding company had a potentially controlling ownership stake in Siga, had long been on friendly terms, having become close after negotiating union contracts when Stern was a labor leader.

After the story, Siga threatened to sue HuffPost for reporting Perelman's ownership, which the company said did not amount to a controlling stake. It was a critical distinction, because Siga had bid for the contract as a small business. Chimerix Inc., the rival bidder, challenged the awarding of a $2.8 billion contract, arguing that Siga was not a small business, as the contract required, because it was controlled by MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, the massive company solely owned by major Democratic donor Perelman.

In November 2010, the Small Business Administration ruled that Siga was in fact controlled by Perelman's company and voided the contract. (Siga did not sue HuffPost and declined to comment for this story; the law firm that wrote the letter threatening the suit is now listed as an unsecured Siga creditor.)…

Instead of reopening the bidding, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, asked Siga simply to submit a sole-source bid -- one that no other company could apply for, arguing that Siga was the only company capable of meeting the criteria.

SEIU's Andy Stern

Of course, SEIU’s Stern has a long and storied connection to Perelman.

When Stern was the President of SEIU, he abandoned thousands of low-waged security guards at AlliedBarton after he allegedly cut a backroom deal with their boss, Ron Perelman, according to an earlier article by Ryan Grim in the Huffington Post. (“Andy Stern’s Bizarre Alliance with Private Equity and Biowarfare,” October 7, 2010)

Then, just weeks after resigning as president of SEIU, Stern was placed on SIGA’s Board of Directors where he apparently was enlisted to use his SEIU rolodex and Washington, DC political connections to "dial for dollars" on behalf of SIGA. 

SIGA’s CEO said the following about Stern in a press release:

Andy is a strong leader and a great addition to our Board of Directors. His insight, experience, and leadership, particularly his understanding of how our federal government works, will complement the skill sets of our existing board members.

SIGA then rewarded Stern with tens of thousands of shares of stock and hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash. SIGA reportedly mounted a full-court press for the half-billion-dollar federal contract, which later prompted investigations into illegal bid rigging by U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

And those aren't the only questionable connections between Stern and his sugar daddy, Perelman. 

SIGA’s majority owner also created and funded a custom-made job for Stern – the Ronald O. Perelman Senior Fellow at Colombia University's Business School in NYC where Stern pulls down a handsome paycheck.

Last month, SIGA filed for bankruptcy after a Delaware court ordered it to pay damages of $232 million for ripping off another company.

Check out the HuffPo story here. 

Does Bankruptcy Signal End of Billionaire's “Bromance” with SEIU's Andy Stern?

Ron Perelman

There's an interesting wrinkle to the Andy Stern/SIGA Technologies bankruptcy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, SIGA filed for bankruptcy because it "doesn't have the money to post the necessary bond for the full amount of the damages, plus interest” …which total $232 million or more.

However, Stern’s billionaire patron -- Ron Perelman -- owns 24% of SIGA and could bail out the company with a single swipe of his ATM card. After all, Perelman is one of the world's richest people and is worth $14.4 billion!

So what's going on?

Tasty realizes that Andy is merely an errand boy for Perelman. But hey, $232 million is just pocket change for cigar-chomping Perelman.

Here's what Bloomberg reports about this made-for-TV drama about the latest chapter of their "bromance:"

The bankruptcy filing also signals that billionaire Ronald Perelman, whose MacAndrews Forbes owns about 24 percent of Siga, won’t bail the company out, Selvaraju said today. “He could have written a check for the bond himself,” the analyst said. Christine Taylor, Perelman’s spokeswoman, declined to comment on whether he considered covering Siga’s bond liability.

Hmmm. Doesn't look good for Andy...

So... has SEIU’s Andy Stern begun delivering dramatic, personal pleas to

SEIU's Andy Stern

Perelman for financial assistance? "Pretty PuhLEASE!!!"

Or is Andy hunkered down in his apartment nervously preparing a series of text messages to Ron design to carefully kiss his ass in preparation for the big ask: “Yo Ron, did I tell u that u r like totally the bomb!”

Has Andy begun performing unsolicited favors like, uh, mowing Ron's lawn, washing his car, “liking” all of Ron’s Facebook posts even if they're totally stupid?

Or more likely... has Andy begun lobbying SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry to sign more back-room with Perelman and his vast array of companies? 

SEIU's Andy Stern Breaks New Ground with Corporate Bankruptcy

SEIU's Andy Stern

Remember when Andy Stern, SEIU’s President Emeritus, pocketed thousands of stock options in a pharmaceutical company after billionaire Ron Perelman appointed him to serve on the company's Board of Directors?

Well… SEIU’s "maverick" leader has accomplished yet another "first" for a "labor leader."

Corporate bankruptcy!

That's right.  Stern’s pharmaceutical company -- SIGA Technologies -- recently filed for Ch. 11 bankruptcy.

So how did Stern's corporate wet dream turn into a scene from Enron?

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Delaware's highest court ordered Stern's company -- SIGA Technologies -- to pay damages of $232 million or more for ripping off another company that helped to fund the development of SIGA’s main drug product.

“SIGA says it has grounds to appeal, but doesn't have the money to post the necessary bond for the full amount of the damages, plus interest,” says the WSJ. That's why SIGA is filing for bankruptcy.

 

SIGA's stock price: 99 cents

As these events unfolded, SIGA’s stock price plummeted to just 99 cents a share.

Ain’t karma a bitch!

When Stern was the President of SEIU, he abandoned thousands of low-waged security guards at AlliedBarton after he reportedly cut a backroom deal with their boss, billionaire Ron Perelman, according to the Huffington Post.

Next, only weeks after Stern resigned as SEIU’s president, Perelman returned Andy’s favor by placing Stern on the board of SIGA, where Stern has pocketed bags of cash.

Ron Perelman aka 'Sugar Daddy'

Stern quickly employed the D.C. political connections he acquired during his time atop SEIU to apparently lobby the federal government to award SIGA a massive no-bid, $433 million contract, which prompted investigations into illegal bid rigging by U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

To help out his SEIU buddy, Perelman also created and funded a custom-made job for Stern – the Ronald O. Perelman Senior Fellow at Colombia University's Business School in NYC where Stern pulls down a handsome paycheck.

And now… the bankruptcy.

Like Tasty said… karma is a bitch!

Stay tuned for more...

SEIU’s Andy Stern Joins For-Profit Company to Make Piles of Cash for Big Business

SEIU's Andy Stern

Andy Stern, SEIU’s President Emeritus, has joined the board of yet another for-profit corporation.

Stern, who already serves on the board of SIGA Technologies (a pharmaceutical company controlled by billionaire Ron Perelman), recently joined the Advisory Board of “BeneStream,” a start-up venture headquartered in New York. 

BeneStream pledges to deliver "piles of money" to large corporations by helping them push their low-wage workers onto the taxpayer-funded Medicaid rolls.

What does BeneStream do?

Under Obamacare, large companies will be required to provide health insurance to all of their employees beginning in 2015. That costs money, right? Fortunately for the Bosses, there’s a loophole built into the law. If workers happen to sign up for Medicaid, then companies are no longer on the hook for their health insurance.

That’s where BeneStream comes in. 

Stern's company says it’ll save companies buckets of money for the Bosses by helping them identify low-wage workers on their payrolls and then signing them up for taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefits. Here's an excerpt from BeneStream's website:

And here's what BeneStream’s CEO says on a slick video featured on the company's website:

The one solution that’ll save you a pile of money as an employer is the BeneStream solution… We work with employers that have 50 or more employees to screen their low-income workforce for Medicaid and then enroll those people in Medicaid when we can, saving employers the cost of insurance… The employer wins because they save the cost of insuring someone...

Stern serves on BeneStream’s five-member Advisory Board with people like Kevin Hill, a fatcat insurance exec at companies like Oxford Health, CheckpointHR, HealthPlanOne, and United Healthcare. 

According to a press report, BeneStream recently raised "$1.58 million from angel investors.” 

So how much is SEIU’s President Emeritus pocketing for pimping for BeneStream?

Not clear. But when Stern first joined SIGA’s board in 2012, he took home 35,000 stock options and $116,094 in cash. 

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