Posts Tagged ‘NUHW’
Sham Union Justice: Why You Don’t Want Card Check
There’s some fantastic theater going on as the card-check-pushing Service Employees International Union is attempting to strangle a renegade former unit in California to stop a potential exodus of dues members away from the powerful international.
Perhaps even better than the actual trial underway — SEIU says the breakaway leaders misused resources — is the recap on Huffington Post by an SEIU member who seems to write propaganda in roughly the style of Communist China.
Consider: SEIU has the “very well prepared and articulate” lawyer who “delivered his opening statement with clear oversight and transparency.” Of course, he’s only delivering justice to the former leaders who “deliberately committed acts that bring harm to the working members of SEIU-UHW when they were the officials of our union.”
They “conspired” and “devised a plan” and exhibited a “long laundry list of unethical behaviors.” Ahh, that air of fairness and objectivity comes right through! Somewhere in the annals of authoritarian propaganda a place is being made for the newcomer who shows promise.
Who’s right and who’s wrong here? Probably no one’s right and everyone’s wrong, based on the record. SEIU went on a warpath that ended up undermining its own members’ right to vote — a good reminder why Congress should not pass the Employee Free Choice Act. And the breakaway union leadership can be viewed as either good or bad depending on how one views rabid, no-holds-barred union bosses (there’s an argument that their job is to be rabid, no-holds-barred union bosses and are actually serving employees better than SEIU, which is regarded by many in the labor world as a corporate sell-out in California).
In the end, only those in the California courtroom will see what’s going on with any clarity. They will certainly only be getting spin from the Purple People Beaters’ version of Tokyo Rose.
SEIU, Armies of 60, and Card Check
Mike O’Brien at the Hill has a great post with a quote from SEIU Generalisimo Andy Stern on making the violently misnamed Employee Free Choice Act a priority in 2010:
“The Democrats really have a historic and decisive moment, for anybody who runs a business there are moments where you sort of make big choices,” Stern told the audience. “They have 60 votes for the first time and probably the last time they’re gonna have it. They have to decide if they are an army of one or an army of 60.”
It’s interesting (again!) at labor leaders’ language of aggression tied to the issue of card check, which is really kinda the point, ya know?
It’s all the more interesting when one continually reads about allegations of — shall we say — zealous union tactics even as they claim that there will be no problems of coercion under a card check world.
The latest allegation comes from California, where a report says “NUHW supporters from UNITE HERE Local 11 were also targets of eggs and water bottles, with reports that one organizer was
SEIU Gives Card Check Another Lump
The Service Employees International Union is becoming Big Labor’s biggest pain in the neck as union bosses seek to pass the sneakily misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.
The latest comes from the Wall Street Journal, which reports that a rival union is accusing SEIU of intimidating workers and changing ballots in an election.
The NUHW filed charges Nov. 6 with the California Public Employment Relations Board, which oversees the election. Included in the charges are statements from a former SEIU organizer, who said that he was encouraged “to pressure voters to change the ballot” and that on one occasion he himself changed a vote to SEIU’s favor.
The charges also contain statements from workers who said SEIU representatives came to their house as many as five times a day, pressuring them to vote for the SEIU. In one instance, a woman said she was questioned about her legal status. Others were told they would lose wages and benefits if they voted for the NUHW.
SEIU, for its part, denies the allegations, but the case certainly recalls concerns that employers and labor reformers have long harbored about “card check” and the Employee Free Choice Act because they would strip away the protection of the secret ballot. Now it looks like even that is under attack, once again, by SEIU.
Don’t forget the long list of recent allegations against SEIU that directly relate to the fight over card check: accused of intimidation, threatening employers, muscling other unions and their own members, and making demonstrably false claims about EFCA, just to name a few. See more here.
