Union thugs: SEIU lives up to the reputation

It probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day if not for a court case, but an organizing document put together by the purple shirts at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) shows that the bad old days of workforce strife may be returning.

“It’s not enough to be right. You need might as well.” That’s how the SEIU’s chapter on organizing tactics begins, and the tome shows they’re out to play hardball. Some of the means to their ends:

  • “Job actions, such as refusing to do more than the bare minimum required by the contract or engaging in short work stoppages, or on-again, off-again ‘rolling strikes.'” In short, a work slowdown.
  • “Outside pressure (involving) jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds.” Read: a point just barely short of extortion.
  • “Community action and use of the news media can damage an employer’s public image and ties with community leaders and organizations.” If you hear it on the news, it must be true – even if the union is lying like a rug.

They also talk about escalating tactics – if something doesn’t get the employer’s attention, another more radical idea might just do the trick. This is why you get instances like the 14 busloads of shouting protesters who invaded the front yard of a Bank of America executive.

The problem is that sometime, somewhere, somebody is going to decide to fight fire with fire, and then you get an Auto-Lite situation. The difference will be that it likely won’t be the National Guard doing the shooting.

For all they’ve done on behalf of the American laborer in decades past, the labor movement can be thanked. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with organizing a workplace if the workers decide on their own to organize. But that outside pressure placed on employers also can be used to intimidate employees into signing their rights away as well.

The idea of their employing intimidation tactics like those was the reason unions, for all their political power in the Democratic Party and control of both Congress and the White House from 2009 to 2010, couldn’t pass ‘card check.’ Note that once the Dana plant’s employees made the union go to a secret ballot, the union lost. It doesn’t always happen that way, but in about 1/3 of the cases the union loses an organizing election.

So the SEIU is going over the head of the employees in a particular workplace and trying for the jugular of the employers themselves.

Sodexo, a catering company, was a target of SEIU pressure (as well as a smear campaign, which continues) but decided not to knuckle under. It’s their RICO lawsuit against the union which brought the SEIU pamphlet to light. (Worth noting, too, is that many Sodexo workers are already organized under UNITE HERE, a rival union to the SEIU.) But Sodexo isn’t taking the SEIU’s attacks without stating their own case, like this example.

How many companies, though, can withstand that sort of outside pressure? And what happens when government comes down on the side of unions rather than being a fair arbiter?

For one thing you get bills like Maryland’s “Fair Share Act of 2009,” which allow unions to collect a service fee from non-members. Even more troubling is the fact the state isn’t negotiating from a profitability standpoint because they have the power to tax and redistribute that largess to a union constituency, something a private employer doesn’t have. It’s not quite a license to print money but it’s a close as one can get. The unions then take a portion of those fees and reward their political friends. It’s a pretty sweet deal for everyone – except the taxpayer.

And the unions get mighty uppity, flexing their muscles if someone comes in and tries to upset the apple cart. There were quite a few SEIU members present and accounted for there as well as here.

So it’s good that the SEIU was busted, but of course you’re not seeing this on the nightly news or in the major newspapers. It’s living in the shadows, sort of like the Gunrunner scandal has been confined mostly to investigative blogsites like this.

With freedom of the press comes responsibility. I’m trying to do my part.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

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