Recently, the UAW’s Stellantis National Council held a meeting. This isn’t news, national councils do need to meet, after all. What is news is the venue they chose for it. Rather than taking a meeting close to home, Shawn Fain, Rich Boyer, the UAW’s local Stellantis officers decamped from a cold Michigan March to the Sheraton Resort and Casino in sunny Puerto Rico for a week by the beach. 

The Sheraton Puerto Rico is a luxurious spot, offering Puerto Rico’s largest casino, an infinity pool, expensive restaurants, and even catamaran trips. As a cherry on top, it’s all just a few minutes away from the beach! It’s definitely a little expensive, but with so many nice amenities it’s easy to see why the UAW leadership would prefer it to a convention center in Michigan. There isn’t a single Stellantis manufacturing facility in Puerto Rico, but we suppose that’s not important compared to working on a good tan. 

While the UAW-Stellantis council was soaking up the sun, UAW members with Stellantis were suffering. 

This year, hundreds of supplemental (temporary) employees working for Stellantis have been laid off, with some estimates expecting thousands to be out of work once layoffs are finished. During the strike against the Big Three, Shawn Fain promised to “end the abuse of temps.” The UAW even bragged about how much they “won” for temps at Stellantis when trying to ratify their contract.

Your UAW national negotiators went into this round of negotiations focused on ending the abuse of Supplemental Employees. SEs have helped make Stellantis billions, but they have not been rewarded for their work. This agreement changes that…  they will finally be put on a real path to seniority employee status. But even before gaining full-time status, SEs will receive better benefits, more rights and more respect.

Mass layoffs are a funny way of putting temps on “a real path to seniority employee status.” 

Perhaps UAW leadership should spend more time trying to keep their promises and less time drinking margaritas at a Puerto Rico resort. 

Today, the Center for Union Facts released a new ad highlighting the devastating impacts of California’s new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers, which goes into effect Monday. It will run in the coming days as a television and digital ad buy in the Los Angeles and Sacramento markets.

The tongue-in-cheek video features fast food workers “thanking” the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for the damaging and inconsistent law, leading to higher prices, business closures, and layoffs. In fact, California restaurants are already killing jobs and cutting hours ahead of the increase.

The SEIU was behind the bill that created the California Fast Food Council as well as the new $20 wage—a hike that continues to be championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom despite fierce opposition from impacted workers, employers, and economists. 

The California Fast Workers Union is based in Washington, D.C., not California; it’s not a legal labor union and can’t bargain with employers; and it represents far less than one percent of the state’s fast food workforce. For more on CUF’s take on the SEIU’s fake union, read our recent OC Register op-ed here.  

A CUF survey of California restaurant workers released in March found that the workforce isn’t aligned with the SEIU’s agenda. We asked restaurant workers what they thought of the $20 wage hike and its potential consequences. Below are some key findings:

• 60 percent said it would lead to higher prices; 
• 51 percent expected fewer shifts or hours scheduled;
• 40 percent anticipated staffing cuts;
• 39 percent predict fewer new highers.

The SEIU alleges that restaurant employees face an abusive environment, and do not feel they are heard at their place of work. The same survey asked these workers to share their experiences working in the restaurant industry. Here’s what they had to say: 

• 92% enjoy working at their restaurant; 
• 76% feel that their concerns are heard; 
• 95% feel safe at work; 
• 88% have the tools they need to solve problems at work.

A key ally of Unite Here Local 11, the Democratic Socialists of America, Los Angeles (DSA-LA) recently endorsed a radical school board candidate who praised an anti-Semitic book and liked a speech that called Jews “satanic.”

Kahllid Al-Alim, a candidate for the Los Angeles Unified School District Board and an SEIU 721 member, claimed in an Oct. 18, 2022, X post that the anti-Semitic book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews should be “MANDATORY Reading in Community Schools.”

The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews falsely posits that Jews played a disproportionate role in the slave trade. The book was once called the “bible of the new anti-Semitism” in the pages of the New York Times.  In 2018, Al-Alim also liked an X post of a Louis Farrakhan speech in which he calls Jews “satanic.”

The DSA-LA previously posted a message highlighting its parent organizations support for Palestine, a post that came just one-day after the Hamas terrorist attack.

Unite Here Local 11 has several ties to the DSA that go back years, this has included a close relationship throughout the hotel strikes in 2023 and the union’s  support for DSA-LA candidates – most notably Nithya Raman and Hugo Soto-Martinez. 

DSA-LA started a strike fund for Local 11.

A Unite Here Local 11 spokesperson touted the arrests of DSA members as a show of “solidarity.”

Local 11 even allowed the DSA’s Phoenix based operation to use its headquarters for a 2024 rally promoting a speaker that posted “All Out For Palestine” just days after the horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Hotel workers deserve to know where Unite Here Local 11 stands on the fight against anti-Semitism and the union should issue an immediate condemnation of its ally’s endorsement of an anti-Semitic candidate. 

This month, the Center for Union Facts (CUF) launched the latest phase in its ongoing national education campaign focused on the United Auto Workers (UAW).

The campaign initially aimed to shed light on a pattern of corruption within the UAW. Now, it has expanded to scrutinize the union’s new leadership (including president Shawn Fain), controversial stances on hot-button issues, and failure to fulfill promises made to members.

To kick off the launch, CUF released a candid video featuring Ford worker and former UAW member Terry Bowman. A proud hourly automaker in Michigan, Terry says the UAW doesn’t represent his values and doesn’t keep its promises.

CUF placed a series of billboards next to non-unionized auto plants to spread the word about this new campaign. A mobile billboard (view creative here) also drove around the UAW headquarters in Detroit.

The ads direct audiences to a new website, UAWUncovered.com, to provide comprehensive information on Shawn Fain and other high-ranking UAW officials.

Content highlights include insights into the UAW’s anti-Israel stance, as well as a closer look at how the UAW’s final contracts with Detroit’s Big Three automakers failed to deliver on the union’s promises.

After months of anti-Israel rhetoric from SEIU officers, employees, and affiliates, the union released a carefully worded statement condemning violence on both sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict and called for a ceasefire. 

This recent statement is a far-cry from SEIU President Mary Kay Henry’s initial social media post that failed to condemn Hamas’ terrorist attack. This more recent statement may strike a more even tone, but it doesn’t seem to reflect the true sentiments of hundreds of SEIU leaders across the country.

Controversy around the terrorist attack first arose at the SEIU when the union’s former Connecticut executive director – Kooper Caraway – was forced to resign after claiming “our enemies are not in Gaza, our comrades are in Gaza” just days after the murders of over 1,200 Israelis. 

The incident with Caraway took place just as SEIU’s affiliate union – Starbucks Workers United– began to draw heat for celebrating the attacks on social media. 

As the war continued, anti-Israel sentiment at the SEIU kept building. A month following the terrorist attack, more than 500 officers and employees of the SEIU came together under a petition titled “Purple Up 4 Palestine” to demand the union call for President Joe Biden to stop arming Israel and to begin supporting the anti-semitic boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS). 

One of the most notable names to show up on the list is Larry Alcoff, the SEIU’s lead negotiator. Alcoff appeared at a Palestinian rally in New York on Oct. 28, 2023, with his wife and son (Larry’s son, Joseph, is a known communist and Antifa leader). His wife was wearing a sticker that read, “Zionist donors and trustees, hands off our universities.”

Unfortunately, the anti-Israel attitude of SEIU officials is not just relegated to the East Coast.

In California, John Beynon — who is listed as an officer of SEIU Local 1983 on the petition — retweeted accounts accusing Israel of genocide and has even re-posted a BDS account that called Hamas terrorists the “armed resistance.”

Jonah Paul — a self-described officer of the SEIU 1000 out of California — also defended the Palestinian cause in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack. Paul vocally critiqued an X Post for calling out Hamas terrorism and claimed that he is an advocate of a “free Palestine” and not just when “it is convenient.”

Purple up 4 Palestine also has an official Instagram account where slogans like “Stand Against Genocide” and “Hands off Yemen” are routinely used. The account is followed by the official Instagram pages for the SEIU Local 140 (SEIU 503, Portland), SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, Nurse Alliance of SEIU California, and SEIU Local 121RN (Southern California). 

Despite the national union’s recent call for peace, the mounting evidence showing the SEIU has routinely sided against Israel since the early days of the terrorist attacks is damning.  

Today, the Center for Union Facts (CUF) released a new report exposing the union ties of Nicole Berner, whom Biden nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The long-time Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday regarding her nomination.

You can read the full report here. 

The report highlights Berner’s long history of backing the union’s harmful policies and pushing policies that could force employees into union representation. This track record suggests she will use the position to promote the SEIU’s agenda—potentially at the expense of both employees and business owners throughout the country.

The report is part of an ongoing national campaign to educate the public on the SEIU’s controversial track record – one Berner could soon be advancing from behind the bench. You can learn more about the campaign and view additional research at SEIUExposed.com. 

Key report findings include:

• In 2019, Berner declined to launch a sexual harassment investigation against top union leaders—including President Dave Regan—of the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW). Berner instead left the allegations to be investigated by the SEIU-UHW, the same union whose leadership the alleged victim had accused of sexual misconduct.

• Berner supported sectoral bargaining in the United States. In 2019, Berner co-authored an editorial in which she supported a “national fast-food industry bargaining table.” Berner stated in the same editorial that the old model of unionizing by company/employer needed to be thrown out and that it needs to be possible to unionize by the “millions.”

• Berner echoes the SEIU’s radical call for “unions for all” which seeks to organize workers throughout the country by almost any means necessary—with little regard to the individual choices and freedoms of these workers. Berner has noted that “right to work” advocates are “anti-workers extremists,” and has said the U.S. economy is “rigged.”

• Berner stood against freelancers in California. Independent contractors across the state opposed Berner’s position on Proposition 22 – which allowed workers at certain gig companies to remain classified as independent contractors instead of employees.

Big Labor’s agenda has no place behind the bench. Berner’s close ties to the union and her support for its misguided platform should be a glaring red flag against her nomination.

Last week, UAW President Shawn Fain announced he was “proud” of the union’s decision to endorse a ceasefire in Gaza, despite the terrorist group Hamas still being in power. He implied that the state of Israel was akin to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. The UAW went on to call for a “divestment working group” to study the “union’s economic ties to the conflict.” This position led former Economic Policy Institute President Lawrence Mishel to publicly call out Fain for excusing the barbarism of Hamas. 

That’s a strong criticism coming from Mishel, who has been a longtime supporter of the UAW.  The Economic Policy Institute has even hosted Fain as a speaker in the past, including on October 6 – just a day before Hamas launched its terrorist attack that killed about 1,200 people. 

The official UAW call echoes a number of statements made by various UAW locals. 

NYU graduate employees in UAW local 2110 released a statement blaming Israel for the terrorist attack it suffered. Student Workers of Columbia, affiliated with UAW local 2710, accused Israel of participating in a genocide and demanded that Columbia University divest from Israel. UAW members at Make the Road New York and The Bronx Defenders – affiliated with UAW locals 2320 and 2325 respectively – also accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing. 

Unfortunately, this latest ceasefire call is the capstone to a troubling number of connections between Shawn Fain’s United Auto Workers union and anti-Israel radicalism. 

Chris Brooks, Fain’s strategist, is a former member of the national caucus of Marxist organizers (Bread and Roses DSA), which made a statement in support of “resisting military occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing” the same day as the Hamas terrorist attack. 

The UAW’s legal counsel Benjamin Dictor has been accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing since October, and has even suggested that Israel is attempting a “literal holocaust.”

Both Brooks and Dictor were brought on by Fain and are now part of UAW leadership.

It’s been two months since Israel suffered one of the most devastating attacks in its history, and instead of condemning terrorism, the UAW seems to be doing everything it can to stand against Israel.