Glenn Beck: Shady Chicago-Style SEIU Connections to Obama Health Care Strategy (Video)

Will Service Employees International Union gain from health care reform?

Why did SEIU Healthcare Chair Dennis Rivera broker President Obama's strategy meeting on health care yesterday?

SEIU was worked closely with former Illinois Governor and Obama friend Rod Blagojevich.

California officials say the union may have influenced a federal requirement that a pay cut be reversed for home healthcare workers.

According to the LA Times the California SEIU, the most powerful public employee union in the State of California, demonstrated by their $33 million contribution to Obama’s Presidential campaign, are getting an unprecedented seat at the highly sensitive talks regarding how federal “stimulus” dollars will be used in California. The union is currently blocking attempts by the White House and State officials to cut some healthcare related union wages by 20% as a pre requisite to federal stimulus funds totally $6.8 billion to be given to the fiscally broken State. The SEIU is standing firm that their members' receive all of the wages and benefits under their
current contract.

So how much influence does this Leftwing bully have?

Politico reports:

Rivera runs a war room that’s now the epicenter of the left-wing mobilization in support of the reform legislation.

From the ground floor of the Service Employees International Union headquarters in Washington, Rivera is preparing for the moment a bill drops.

At that point, he must make sure the right members of Congress are contacted, the right message is delivered, and his shaky coalition of industry, labor and consumers stays intact.

“We are running a political campaign, and our candidate is basically health care reform,” said Rivera, head of SEIU Health Care.

Rivera and his team have been laying the groundwork for months, with a war room staff of more than 50 and more than 400 organizers in the field.

They have developed profiles on more than 100 members of Congress, collecting mounds of data on voting records, district demographics and health statistics — and influential allies — “people closest to them who could, at some point, talk to them and be more persuasive than us,” Rivera said, citing clergy, former staff members and business leaders.

With a reputation for getting the job done, Rivera helped SEIU become the most aggressive and ubiquitous player in the health care debate, forging unorthodox partnerships if that’s what’s required to win.

The union has forged marriages of necessity with pharmaceuticals, insurers and hospitals. Rivera talks to his new allies several times a week, if not every day, and will play a key role in deciding how closely they all move forward together.

So who is this man, Rivera?

Dennis Rivera is the Chair of SEIU Healthcare, the healthcare division of Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Launched in June, SEIU Healthcare unites over one million healthcare workers in an effort to provide the highest quality health care to every patient, heal our nation’s broken healthcare system, and bring hope of better jobs and better lives to millions of caregivers throughout the U.S. Rivera is also the Chair of the Partnership for Quality Care (PQC), a new coalition of healthcare providers and healthcare workers committed to ensuring that affordable, comprehensive healthcare is available to every man, woman and child in America. Modern Healthcare, the industry’s foremost publication, recently ranked Dennis Rivera sixth on its list of the “100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare.”

As President of 1199SEIU from 1989 to 2007, Rivera oversaw dramatic growth in union membership within the healthcare sector. His knowledge of hospital systems and his desire to improve the quality of patient care helped transform the state of labor-management relationships in New York. With Rivera’s guidance, healthcare workers emerged on the national stage as a united, passionate voice for working families on a host of social issues, including healthcare access and affordability, economic justice, immigration rights, and the Iraq war.

Further, SEIU has been implicated in the Rod Blagojevich "pay to play" scandal over Obama's vacant Senate seat.

Among the revelations contained in the complaint brought against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich yesterday was the description of an official with the Service Employees International Union acting as an apparent intermediary between the governor and Barack Obama's camp in discussions over Obama's Senate seat.

The alleged role of the SEIU official was surprising, given that the union had not figured publicly in the investigation into Blagojevich (D). But on another level, the SEIU's apparent involvement is an indication of the extent to which it has, under the leadership of its ambitious and controversial president, Andrew L. Stern, become an omnipresent force in Democratic politics.

With organized labor holding such high expectations for the Obama administration -- notably, hopes for legislation fiercely opposed by business leaders that would make it easier to form unions -- officials of other unions were hoping yesterday that the SEIU's apparent involvement in the Illinois scandal would not undermine their cause in Washington.

The U.S. attorney's complaint states that Blagojevich mused aloud with his advisers about the possibility that he could seek a high-paying job with Change to Win, the
coalition of seven unions -- dominated by SEIU -- that broke away from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Blagojevich and his chief of staff wondered aloud about a "three-way deal" in which he would appoint Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman believed to be the woman identified in the complaint as "Candidate 1," to Obama's Senate seat; Blagojevich in return would become Change to Win's executive director; and Obama would reward Change to Win with pro-labor policies.

The complaint also states that on Nov. 12, Blagojevich spoke by phone with an "SEIU official" who was in Washington and with whom Blagojevich had met a week before on the understanding that the official was an emissary to discuss Jarrett's interest in the Senate seat. In the conversation, the SEIU official is alleged to have said that Obama now wanted Blagojevich to consider candidates other than Jarrett.

Fox News reported in February that Obama's Army, including moveon.org and the SEIU were running TV ads in some Republican Senator's states to put pressure on the Senators to support the "stimulus" bill.

Why would the SEIU push for that? Money and profits. Like ACORN, the SEIU is simply in the business of using politics and exploiting those they claim to represent as a front to lining the pockets of these "non-profit" organizations.

And these are the groups heavily involved in both the financing Liberal politicians like Obama and in shaping their policy simply to serve their own greed.

What a mess!

Read more at Michelle Malkin.