Reeking hypocrisy.
Via Business Insider:
With the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFL-CIO spending tens of millions on political activism, including the recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, union members might do well to see where the money is coming from.
Big unions are morphing into the kinds of big businesses and banks they decry, hawking to their members everything from high interest credit cards to home loans.
And contrary to Big Labor’s claims, these products offer no real benefit to union members — only to the union bosses.
As the collection of union dues have dipped, union bosses are increasingly looking for ways to bend the revenue curve in their favor by profiting off loans and credit extended to their members.
Consider, for example, the “SEIU New Rewards Visa Card” and the AFL-CIO “Union Plus” card. With each new enrollment and subsequent swipe of the card, the union bags a fee and a percentage respectively.
This turns into huge money: In FY2011, according to its LM-2 filing with the Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO received approximately $28,163,266.00 from credit card revenue.
Given the labor movement’s high-wattage rhetoric against the big banks, issuing credit cards to union members seems like an odd revenue source for Big Labor to pursue.
After all, SEIU has blasted the banks for pushing “credit cards and other banking products with unfair rates or traps in the fine print.” Furthermore, they’ve enlisted their members to report banks offering “new products designed to push consumers further into debt.”