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.
Engage the purple shirts (and release the hounds!)
In the wake of the Madison showdown, the Service Employees International Union (affectionately known about these parts as the purple shirts) is holding a number of local rallies to show their support. I don’t think they have the cajones to show up in Salisbury, so they’ll be in friendlier Maryland territory – Annapolis.
The details are as follows (h/t to Ann Corcoran and Potomac TEA Party Report):
Time: 12:00 PM (Tuesday, February 22)
Location: Lawyers’ Mall, Maryland State House
Address: 100 State Circle – Annapolis, MD. 21401
What a way to sully George Washington’s birthday – a real group of freedom fighters would be on Governor Scott Walker’s side, not backing Wisconsin’s ‘cut-and-run’ Democrats. But we know how the SEIU rolls, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see a few of their toadies in the General Assembly sneak out and show their support. (It would be even cooler for GOP members to mount a counterprotest – like these union thugs would vote for Republicans anyway. Our job is playing to the real people of Maryland who believe unions should be kept in check and do what they are supposed to do – organize workers, not play political games.)
As of this moment, the SEIU website shows 26 rallies in 22 states – mainly those where union presence is heaviest. A notable omission from the list is Virginia. Delaware isn’t on the list yet, either; then again, Annapolis isn’t all that far for them.
This would be a great opportunity for those TEA Party activists (well, the ones who aren’t trying to make a living like yours truly) to bring your cameras and verify that these purple shirts act with decorum and respect for opposing views. Yeah, like that will happen – the 1-2″ of snow predicted for Tuesday morning will arrive too soon to cover the mess they’re sure to leave given the track record of lefty protests. It also may give the Anne Arundel County schoolteachers some cover if school is cancelled due to the wintry conditions. (Saves them from calling in ‘sick.’)
In the meantime, I stand with Governor Scott Walker. Maybe we’ll find one of those cut-and-run Democrats hiding in Annapolis at the rally – if so, make sure he or she is returned to Madison, Wisconsin.
Friday night videos – episode 31
Back to politics again after my foray into local music. Let’s see what I can dig up here, all right?
The other day it was Earth Day and needless to say I don’t go in for the hype – neither does Mario Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Three guys who were too much into Earth Day are Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman. They are a creative bunch, though, as they spin cap and tax. Again, from CEI:
Speaking of big government, the Environmental Protection Agency has a video contest going to explain why government regulations are a good thing. Needless to say, someone had to poke fun at it – why not the gang at Americans for Prosperity?
This spotlight is on a group which wants government regulation (in the form of higher taxes) to fatten their coffers.
Perhaps the Maryland GOP can borrow this from their California brethren?
Instead, our state is faced with too many voters like this group Bob McCarty found at an Illinois rally.
This is the same rally where TEA Partiers were greeted by a riot squad.
A protest of a different sort occurred right here in Maryland. Disaffected workers in the film industry aren’t too happy with our present governor – WBAL reports.
Newt Gingrich always has something to say as well. Here he talks about President Obama’s “secular socialist machine.”
I wrote about Daniel “The Whig Man” Vovak earlier this week as he proposed to legalize pot. Nick Gillespie of the Reason Foundation agrees.
But I didn’t forget local music! Here’s the hard-rocking Christian group Not My Own recorded live (not by me) at Circles in Milford, Delaware.
Until next time, that’s a wrap.
Who’s running the government now?
This from Americans for Limited Government explains a lot. A few excerpts:
An email sent from an Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lobbyist to Democratic members of the U.S. Senate shows that the SEIU had advance knowledge of when key votes on Craig Becker were to be held. Becker is one of Barack Obama’s nominees for the National Labor Relations Board.
The email was released by Jeri Thompson, co-host of the Fred Thompson Show. Thompson described the email as “marching orders to the Senate HELP Committee, telling them what their schedule was going to be.”
According to the email sent from Alison Reardon, legislative consultant for SEIU, “Your attendance at is crucial to appointing Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Please attend Thursday’s HELP Ex. Session to report out President Obama’s nomination of Craig Becker for Senate confirmation.”
The memo continues, “This is the highest priority for organized labor, and Majority Leader Reid will file Cloture on Friday 2/5, and has assured us that Senate will vote to end debate at 5 p.m. Monday 2/8.”
The email also asks for Senators to confirm their attendance at the executive session of the HELP Committee.
In essence, the Senate was working at the beck and call of the Service Employees International Union. Talk about buying access! Their millions in campaign contributions sure are coming in handy as far as that goes.
Fortunately, it doesn’t look like the Becker nomination will go through because the GOP has another helper against him: Senator Ben Nelson, in full panic mode after word of the Cornhusker Kickback got out, has signaled he’d join with the GOP in filibustering the nominee. So the SEIU will be thwarted for now into getting their toady onto the National Labor Relations Board. (The vote today was 52-33 to invoke cloture with Democrats Nelson and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas joining the GOP cause.)
But just imagine if ExxonMobil or Halliburton had been behind a memo such as this – do you think the mainstream media and leftist bloggers wouldn’t be screaming about impeachment hearings? Yet most of what we’ve heard about this issue from the folks at the mainstream media (like this CBS News example from today) talks about how business groups held his nomination up, not the machinations to grease the skids.
Obviously the situation ended well, but the question remains whether this sort of influence exerted by the SEIU and Big Labor in general is too much for America’s good.
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