LaborPains.org

California’s SEIU can’t stop themselves from p*ssing people off.

From the LA Times Blog yesterday entitled “California Democratic Party chief says SEIU has threatened to cut off funding”:

California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton says one of the state’s most politically powerful unions has threatened to cut off funding for the party over his support for a group that has broken away from the labor organization. The rift could drive a wedge between the party and one of its most generous donors. The state council of the Service Employees International Union has directed $700,000 to the Democratic Party since 2007 and millions more to Democratic candidates and causes.

Burton said SEIU’s California president, Bill Lloyd, made the threat as Burton was set to appear last week at a San Francisco fundraiser for the splinter group, the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

“They threatened me,” said the 76-year-old Burton.

Burton said that he was championing union workers “when [SEIU's national president] Andy Stern was in college.” He hailed the breakaway union’s leader, Sal Rosselli, as a lifelong friend and “one of the strongest labor leaders in this state.” Mary Gutierrez, a spokeswoman for SEIU’s state council, would neither confirm nor deny any warning from Lloyd to Burton. “Formal discussions haven’t been had with our board,” which would have to vote to cut off funding, she said.

– Shane Goldmacher in Sacramento

BeyondChron’s Randy Shaw, a prolific pro labor (and very against the SEIU) blogger discussed the situation (and quite a bit more information about break-off group NUHW) last week in detail in “SEIU Wages War on Progressives.”

As for Burton’s fall back plan if the SEIU follows through, Shaw reports the following:

And when I suggested to Burton that he could probably make up the funds by calling the many international labor leaders who have criticized Stern, he replied that he had “already started calling them last week.”

For a few years now, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) has been the thorn in the side of the SEIU’s perfect vision of unions in California. I’ve written about it many a time, like here, and here, and here. The NUHW themselves provide the following footage …the following embarrassment of riches …for anyone who wonders if the SEIU is actually guilty.

Worth every second of your time:

The folks over at FireDogLake have whipped up a firedog-storm of Astroturf activism in favor of universal coverage, I mean, quality affordable health care.

That’s why I was surprised to see that their help wanted ad only appears to offer a “generous health care stipend.” By “generous,” I’m assuming they mean a Cadillac of coverage, but a stipend isn’t a plan.

Could it be that Jane Hamsher plans to dump her employees into the public option?

The Buffalo News reported today on….wow….how prison guards in Teamster-officiated areas just walked away from their posts, leaving prisoners unattended. Take a look:

State inspectors in a recent report describe the Erie County penitentiary as a management-challenged prison where deputies abandon their posts, legitimate inmate grievances go nowhere, and would-be reforms move slowly. Commission of Correction Chairman Thomas A. Beilein called some findings unsettling when his inspectors described their most recent tour of the Erie County Correctional Facility, from which inmate Ralph “Bucky” Phillips escaped in 2006, killing a state trooper during his months on the run. 

The inspectors said they found serious problems in areas controlled by Teamsters- represented jail deputies, who generally guard inmates who have not been sentenced in overflow areas that take pressure off the Holding Center in downtown Buffalo.

Corrections officers represented by the Civil Service Employees Association generally guard sentenced inmates, the largest number of inmates at the facility in Alden, which usually holds more than 900 people a day. The inspectors said they found Teamsters- represented deputies leaving posts that involve active supervision over presentenced inmates, a violation of the state’s basic standards. The inspectors cited a serious break in the Teamsters chain of command. Each union member is accountable to the supervisors represented by their respective union. While all of the personnel are accountable to the facility’s “chief” and “superintendent,” the correctional facility has been without a chief for more than a year.

This “break” in the chain of command makes it sound like a middle man is missing. But I’d say everyone from the bottom up has left their post.  New York’s not the only state having problems with union represented prison guards. California would now like to weigh in.

Image courtesy of suzienewsshoes.

In an article entitled “Some Organizers Protest Their Union’s Tactics,”Steven Greenhouse looks at a disgusting organizing practice known as “pink sheeting.”

The title would be perfect but for the “Some” caveat that the paper feels is necessary to include. Don’t worry, New York Times, we get the fact its not EVERY labor organizer. Just more of them that anyone should be comfortable with.

But I digress. Here’s what you need to know about “pink sheeting,” a practice that involves coercing, recording, and then using sensitive personal information about people in order to elicit loyalty from union members, organizers, and potential members.  It is, effectively black mail and a mind game, all rolled into one.  And by sensitive personal information, we don’t mean that fact I have a weakness for lemon cookies.

Take a look:

“Ms. Rivera said her supervisors at Unite Here, the hotel and restaurant workers’ union, repeatedly pressed her to reveal highly personal information, getting her to divulge that her father had sexually abused her.

Later, she said, her supervisors ordered her to recount her tale of abuse again and again to workers they were trying to unionize at Tampa International Airport, convinced that Ms. Rivera’s story would move them, making them more likely to join the union.

“I was scared not to do what they said,” said Ms. Rivera, adding that she resented being pressured to disclose intimate information and then speak about it in public. “To me, it was sick. It was horrible.”

Ms. Rivera and other current and former Unite Here organizers are speaking out against what they say is a longstanding practice in which Unite Here officials pressured subordinates to disclose sensitive personal information — for example, that their mother was an alcoholic or that they were fighting with their spouse.

More than a dozen organizers said in interviews that they had often been pressured to detail such personal anguish — sometimes under the threat of dismissal from their union positions — and that their supervisors later used the information to press them to comply with their orders.

“It’s extremely cultlike and extremely manipulative,” said Amelia Frank-Vitale, a Yale graduate and former hotel union organizer who said these practices drove her to see a therapist.

Several organizers grew incensed when they discovered that details of their history had been put into the union’s database so that supervisors could use that information to manipulate them.

Unite Here is claiming the whole thing is propaganda by the SEIU. And it probably is. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times. It’s worth the effort.

Welcome to the second installment in our series exposing SEIU’s internal documents.

This time we’re looking at the SEIU’s push for universal health care, I mean, quality affordable health care, that would include a public option like the Social Security system, I mean, strengthen Americans health care system by making smart investments in the future. It’s a plan that gives government health care for all, err, gives people control and piece of mind.

Ok, you get the point. Here’s the document complements of SEIU 1991.

Late Breaking Bonus: Here’s the complete powerpoint presentation from Lake Research. It’s always fun to read other people’s play books.

It’s a guilty pleasure reporting on anything that even smacks of a connection between labor and the mob, so yesterday’s newspaper raids were an irresistible event.  You can smell the stereotype wafting across the Hudson River.  I had to share:

According to the AP (not raided):

Investigators in the city raided offices for some of the nation’s largest newspapers Tuesday as part of a corruption probe into a powerful union that has long faced accusations of ties to organized crime, a law enforcement official said. Police officers working with the Manhattan district attorney’s office searched for paperwork related to the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union in circulation, production and delivery offices of The New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News and El Diario, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said search warrants also were executed at a labor union, but he would not specify which. “The investigation solely concerns business activity and practice and is completely unrelated to the content of any publication,” he said. The Times, Daily News and El Diario-La Prensa confirmed their offices were searched but said their companies were not subjects of the investigation. The Post declined to comment. El Diario-La Prensa Publisher Rosana Rosado said the search warrant sought information into allegations of corruption at the union, which packages and delivers newspapers across the region. The Times said the office of an employee at its plant in the College Point area of Queens had been searched.

Image courtesy of josh.liba.

(more…)

The Houston Chronicle ran an opinion piece by a local lawyer yesterday outlining “lots of goodies tucked away in the health care bill“  (as the title reads) for labor unions. Before the rundown of the list of things that labor stands to gain from the bill, it’s important to have the end goal front and center, according to the peice:

These features all encourage more unionization. The unions know that under Canada’s nationalized system, union membership among all health care workers is 61 percent, compared to just 11 percent in the U.S.  Increasing membership similarly in this country would swell labor’s coffers with as much as another $2 billion in dues.

Here are some of labor’s “goodies,” explained:

One provision epitomizes the nature of this ploy. According to research firms, unions are woefully short of funds to pay their retirees’ anticipated insurance claims. Thus, under the House resolution, union leaders who have mismanaged these plans for their members could receive up to $10 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money, innocuously referred to as a “reinsurance program.”

Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Under the proposed public option, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius would wield tremendous discretionary authority to regulate participating health care workers. She and various federal panels, where the unions would have guaranteed seats, would take the lead in recommending health care policy. Thus, labor would have considerable influence over decisions affecting most doctors, nurses and patients.

The House resolution establishes a scenario that would effectively exclude non-union employers from eligibility to work on program-funded contracts. It also requires participating health care providers to pay wages and benefits that have been collectively bargained or that union-friendly appointees determine are competitive. This is plainly a move toward coerced unionization. With guaranteed seats at the table, unions are poised to control many newly formed oversight posts and/or committees, formed in connection with new employer mandates and cooperative health care associations.

Yet another provision would establish lucrative state training partnerships that contain little or no opportunities for non-union employee organizations. Provisions in Senate proposals would exempt union-negotiated health care plans from taxes on “Cadillac” health plans.