“I didn’t want it to get out to the other side that the organization was going through this turmoil, but it’s reached a point where I think it needs to get out,” — that’s from a former employee of Missouri Progressive Vote, known as Pro-Vote. It’s an organization that counts among its members the liberal union-funded group ACORN and at least forty unions. Yet unhappy employees of Pro-Vote have blown the whistle on management’s controlling behavior and union-busting attempts:

Typical of life inside a grassroots political organization, the pay is meager, and the work is intense. But Fey and several other former Pro-Vote staffers say it was Hickey’s controlling behavior that drove them out.

They say it only grew worse this summer, after they tried to get union representation.

Hickey is named in a charge filed September 10 with the National Labor Relations Board in St. Louis. The Brotherhood of Union Support Staff, an independent union, alleges Pro-Vote interfered with a petition for representation.

For the record, Pro-Vote is far from the only union-allied group to keep unions out of their own offices. ACORN has been found guilty of union busting, and the PIRG foundation’s staff has made similar allegations about that organization’s leadership. Even an organization used by unions to organize other employees has been tied to union busting.