Right to Work Blog

Those that follow the long and sordid history of abuse by big labor, were not shocked to see the SEIU activists pummel a protester at a town hall meeting for having differing points of view.  The Washington Examiner took note: 

To hear the White House and its Democratic congressional allies tell it, Americans who have vigorously questioned their representatives about Obamacare are nothing more than paid protesters organized by right-wing extremists and evil corporations determined to stop health care reform in its tracks. Earlier this week in a USA Today op-ed, for example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, described the protestors as “un-American.” Over on the Senate side, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the dissenters “fear-mongers,” and Reid’s deputy, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, told CNN the protests were “being orchestrated.” And a new Democratic National Committee (DNC) video claims the protests are being staged by “desperate Republicans and their well funded allies [who are] organizing angry mobs — just like they did during the election.”

But the reality is that when it comes to organizing angry mobs, the real professionals work at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This union has organizing resources and experience that ordinary citizens can only dream about. Their goon squads have heckled, harassed and even assaulted concerned citizens who favor less-costly private options to government-run health care.

Just ask Kenneth Gladney, the victim of an assault outside of a town hall meeting in St. Louis last week by a group of thugs wearing purple t-shirts emblazoned with the SEIU logo. Similarly clad union operatives also blocked critics of the Obama health care plan from attending other meetings, notably in Florida. Former Oklahoma Rep. Ernest Istook notes that in January SEIU announced a plan “to hire more than 1,000 activists to work in 35 states on behalf of the Obama agenda, committing 30% of the union’s total resources to the effort. You’ve seen SEIU’s purple-shirted members in videos of town hall altercations.” He calls them the “Purpose People Beaters.”

SEIU has a long history of partnering to generate angry mobs. The union helped fund the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) Muscle for Money program that was set up to pressure corporations in shakedown campaigns, including demonstrations at the homes of corporate executives. Labor Department disclosure forms show more than $600,000 has changed hands between SEIU locals and ACORN affiliates under the Muscle for Money initiative. It is not an exercise in subtlety. How’s that for coordination?

From RedState.Com:

Early reports coming in from Florida indicate the hastily scheduled townhall with Kathy Castor ended badly, as predicted, because of SEIU thugs.

The event was conveniently held in a forum where only 250 people could fit. 1000 people showed up. SEIU members were given reserved seating that took up at least half of the 250 seats. As people came in who visibly oppose the Democrats healthcare plan, SEIU members barred access to the room.

According to local media

Some say they were barred because they are against President Barack Obama’s agenda to change the current health insurance system.

Democrat event organizers slammed one senior citizen into the wall as he and his wife tried to enter. The couple were opposed to Obamacare and made it known.  Kathy Castor, for her part, showed up, spoke briefly, then fled the scene claiming it was not really her event.

The New York Carpenters’ Union has a long history of connections to the mob and corruption — one which continues to this day.  A new 29-count indictment charges the union’s boss and nine other officials with racketeering, bribery, fraud and perjury.  Incredibly, the indictment alleges almost exact crimes to a racketeering lawsuit that was brought against the union in 1990.  The more things change the more they stay the same.

The New York Times has the details:

The indictment was unsealed in Federal District Court in Manhattan hours after a 6 a.m. roundup in which seven of the defendants were arrested, some as they prepared to go to work. It charges that in exchange for bribes valued at about $1 million, they helped corrupt contractors steal millions of dollars more from the union and its benefit funds by allowing contractors to pay members cash wages below union scale without benefits, hire illegal aliens and nonunion workers and skip contributions to the union’s benefit funds.

The 20,000-member district council, which oversees 11 local unions around New York City, has remained not only a major player in the city’s labor movement but also a major force in its politics, despite a history of mob influence, labor racketeering and bribery.

Indeed, six weeks ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s re-election campaign put out a news release announcing that the union had endorsed his bid for a third term.

The release included a video clip showing Michael J. Forde, the district council’s executive secretary-treasurer, who is now indicted, giving the mayor a rousing introduction at a union event and sealing his support for Mr. Bloomberg with a hug.

Mr. Bloomberg, asked on Wednesday for his response to the indictment, said he was surprised and that he hoped the union members themselves would not be hurt, calling the situation “sad.”

“I don’t know whether any of the charges that I read about late this afternoon are true or not — I’ll leave that to the courts,” he said. “It’s the men and women of the carpenter’s union that have endorsed me, and I’m thrilled to have it.”

The charges, a result of a lengthy investigation by Manhattan prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Labor Inspector General’s Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations, were not Mr. Forde’s first brush with such accusations. He and another district council official went to trial on bribery charges involving the union in state court twice in recent years, with the first case ending in a conviction that was later overturned, and the second in acquittal.

Lev L. Dassin, the acting United States attorney, who announced the charges in a news release, said that the union’s leaders had failed to protect their members.

“Instead of protecting the financial interests of union members and their families, corrupt union officials and the contractors who bribed them are charged with betraying the carpenters’ union and its benefit funds to enrich themselves,” he said.

Union workers dues money is already mostly diverted to politics — ad campaigns, lobbyists, consultants — but the apparent next union boss of the AFL-CIO says that unions aren’t doing enough politicking.

Richard Trumka, described by Politico.com as “unapologetically old-school labor in his view of corporate America,” is preparing to take the reigns of the organization.  

Trumka also known for his tacit support of violence against fellow union members.  When Trumka and United Mine Workers Boss Cecil Roberts came to Bentleyville, Pennsylvania in April 1998, fifty rank-and-file union members gathered outside the hall where they spoke to protest their leaders’ policies. “Within minutes,” wrote leftwing journalist Paul Scherrer, “a group of UMWA officials and their supporters attacked the protesting miners, ripping leaflets and protest signs from their hands. Several miners were punched, knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly. [Richard] Cicci was hit with a piece of lumber and suffered a large gash on his head.” “Richard Trumka,” reported Scherrer, “refused to answer questions about the assault.” In other words, by his silence he gave tacit assent to such violence.  On another occasion in 1993, Trumka (whose brief biographies usually mention that he was given an award by the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change) urged striking miners to “kick the s— out of” employees and businesses resisting UMWA demands.

Workers who are forced to pay union dues and fees as a condition of employment should be prepared to see more and more of their money go to politics.    A Trumka lead AFL-CIO is exhibit 1 in why we need a National Right to Work law more than ever.

The New York Post has the details: A Queens electrical contractor who did business with the city admitted today to paying off a union boss as much as $70,000 in return for “nothing.”

Santo “Sandy” Petrocelli admitted in Manhattan Federal Court to giving the money — along with the keys to a new Crown Victoria — to disgraced labor boss and former Democratic assemblyman Brian McLaughlin.

In a plea deal that could get Petrocelli as little as a year in prison, he told a federal judge that he gave McLaughlin the money and in return got “nothing, really.”

“We didn’t want any problems,” he added, saying McLaughlin controlled various labor unions.

Petrocelli, whose company was based in Long Island City, pleaded guilty to the charge of paying off a union official. He is slated to be sentenced later this year.

The crime carries a five-year prison sentence.

This is an important story in these times of Big Labor’s takeover of the Federal government.  This documented true story that contains Card Check abuse, SEIU physical violence against workers, SEIU abuse of the NLRB system, orchestrated false allegations, and a corrupt Clinton appointee; and you can see and hear about what happens when Big Labor Bosses control a president’s administration like they do today.

Mr. Randy Schaber’s story begins with the discovery of an ongoing SEIU Card Check Forced Unionism scheme that included harassing employees at their homes.  Mr. Schaber offered to hold an NLRB sanctioned secret ballot election.

The SEIU organizers replied, “We will never let your employees have a secret ballot election.”  Then, Mr. Schaber began to feel the pain that SEIU’s corporate campaign is designed to inflict.

Randy’s employees were physically assaulted during this SEIU organizing campaign.

To hear Mr. Schaber tell the story in his own words, we recommend that you listen and watch his full interview (click links to video clip 1, video clip 2, and video clip 3); for a brief description view his shortened interview.  You will be amazed at the abuse of federal power coordinated by SEIU in the 1990’s when they had less control of the White House than they do today.

For more information, you can download the edited version of the U.S. House of Representatives Report and the U.S. Department of Labor Inspector General’s Report that discuss SEIU’s corporate campaign and the U.S. Department of Labor’s abuses that Mr. Schaber suffered, and it eventually resulted in the dismissal of a Clinton appointee.  

The following are quotes from that U.S. House of Representatives report:

Abuse of power at the Department of Labor

CONCLUSION

Based on the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation and the testimony of other witnesses at the hearing, it is obvious that Mr. Richard F. Sawyer abused his position as the Secretary’s Representative by intervening on behalf of the SEIU in its campaign to organize the janitorial workers of Somers.

This information establishes several irrefutable facts:

(1) Mr. Sawyer contacted officials of Somers’ largest client, and specifically discussed the Department of Labor’s active and on-going investigation of Somers.

(2) Mr. Sawyer contacted the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour investigators to request information on the status of the Somers’ investigation and to complain about the progress of said investigation.

(3) Mr. Sawyer improperly provided the SEIU with specific information regarding the Department of Labor’s active and on-going investigation of Somers—information that was used by the SEIU both privately and publicly to pressure Somers to capitulate to the union’s organizational demands.

(4) Mr. Sawyer contacted high-ranking officials within the Wage and Hour Division’s national office to complain about the progress of the Somers’ investigation.

(5) In response to Mr. Sawyer’s repeated contacts, high-ranking officials within the Wage and Hour Division’s national office assigned five additional investigators to the Somers’ investigation and directed investigators to give Somers special attention.

(6) The Somers’ investigation was kept open well beyond the point the lead Wage and Hour investigator deemed warranted by the facts.

(7) Despite the involvement of no less than six investigators and 500 hours of investigative work, the Wage and Hour Division discovered only $317.44 in FLSA violations.

These facts clearly illustrate that Mr. Sawyer was engaged in a conscious effort to use his position as the regional representative of Labor Secretary Robert Reich to assist his former employer, the SEIU, in its efforts to organize the janitorial workers of Somers. As such, the Subcommittee believes it wholly appropriate that Mr.  Sawyer’s employment with the Department of Labor was terminated.

The Subcommittee also remains concerned about the extent to which other Department of Labor employees had knowledge of, supported or assisted Mr. Sawyer in his efforts to coerce Somers into signing a union contract with the SEIU.  As noted previously, Mr. Sawyer’s position as a Secretary’s Representative falls under the purview of the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs and his official Department of Labor job description clearly states that the ‘‘Incumbent reports directly to the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs * * * [and] consults with the Director on decisions or matters which appropriately require personal attention.”  Based on this description of Mr. Sawyer’s supervisory controls, it is reasonable to expect that high-level Departmental officers, like the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, would have been aware of Mr. Sawyer’s actions concerning Somers.

It is also reasonable to assume that Ms. Geri Palast, Assistant Secretary of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, would also have knowledge of Mr. Sawyer’s actions.  If not, the Subcommittee cannot help but question the efficacy of the Department of Labor’s supervisory controls with respect to the Secretary’s Representatives.

Corporate campaigns

John Sweeney, President of the AFL–CIO, declared a new direction for the international labor unions that the Federation represents. Mr. Sweeney declared that labor would become far more militant in the pursuit of organizing and collective bargaining objectives.  The term used to organize formally non-union corporations became known as ‘‘corporate campaigns.’’ 

A ‘‘corporate campaign’’ has several distinct elements.  Two of the most prominent elements are:  having the target company perceived negatively by the company’s investors, customers, employees and the public, and initiating enforcement and oversight actions by federal, state, and local governmental agencies. In other words, organized labor in a ‘‘corporate campaign’’ does not necessarily target the employees of the corporation as it had done historically, but rather focuses on corporate management.

Perhaps Stephen Lerner, Organizing Director of the Service Employees International Union, said it best – 

Instead of asking, ‘How do we win a majority of (employee) votes?’, we should be asking, ‘How do we develop power to force employers to recognize the union and sign a contract.’

During the course of the 104th Congress many concerns were raised by targeted corporations regarding the tactics used by organized labor and their attendant relationship with the NLRB.  Employers argued that the NLRB was favoring organized labor and was indeed a willing pawn in the ‘‘corporate campaign’’ strategy.  As a result of these repeated and serious allegations, the Subcommittee conducted two hearings and one round-table discussion.

The first hearing held by the Subcommittee invited NLRB Chairman Gould, General Counsel Feinstein, and a variety of small and large employers to recount their personal experiences.  The second hearing held by the Subcommittee focused on the ‘‘corporate campaign’’ technique of salting – the placing of professional union organizers or members in a nonunion facility to harass or disrupt contractor operations, to increase costs, or to organize.

These two hearings raised a number of concerns for the Subcommittee including the following:

• Organizing nonunion employees into a unified union membership is not necessarily the objective of union organizers;
• Resources are not an obstacle for the unions when it comes to public relations;
• The cost of frivolous complaints and other federal agency charges fall on the businesses and the federal taxpayer while the unions have no direct accountability or cost; and  
• Jeopardizing jobs and employer viability is ultimately more important than ensuring that workers have good wages, safe worksites and fulfilling jobs.

In conclusion, the pursuit of injunctive relief, the NLRB’s handling of ‘‘salting’’ cases and the public comments of the NLRB Chairman have served as ample evidence that the NLRB may be biased against the regulated employer community.

(REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES DURING THE 104TH CONGRESS, 1/2/1997)

The Business Journal reports that “In two separate incidents this week, workers for the Service Employees International Union have been accused of acts of vandalism toward opposing union supporters.”

Take note, these pressure tactics are associated with a mail-in ballot — the same sort that Sen. Diane Feinstein feels will protect workers.  Not!

The phrase of the week has been “life experience” regarding President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination.  So today’s National Right To Work Committee alert looks at the real “life experience” of Federal Election Board nominee John Sullivan.  (See the video alert below or on this YouTube link.  Download full John J. Sullivan alert.)

From his time as a Steelworkers Union President (1978) through today, Sullivan’s working life experience has been focused on defending labor union boss actions and promoting their forced-dues power. 

Even during his brief time as a Teamsters election officer counsel, the public record available indicates that his actions supported power grabs by corrupt, incumbent union bosses.   In one case, he represented the Election Officer in his demand to disclose personal information about those who supported the incumbent Teamster boss’ opponents. 

Sullivan’s legal positions must have impressed some Teamster union bosses because soon-to-be barred-for-life Teamster Boss Ron Carey hired Sullivan to be the Teamster Associate General Counsel.  While Sullivan was Teamster counsel, the Teamsters and multiple organizations, including the Clinton White House and the Democrat National Committee, devised and pursued a multi-million dollar election campaign finance money laundering scheme. This scheme directly involved familiar names like Terry McAuliffe and Harold Ickes.

Despite the legal efforts of Sullivan and other Teamsters lawyers, the Federal government took the extreme and rare step of barring Sullivan’s boss, Ron Carey, for life from the teamsters union.

After this scandal at the Teamsters, Service Employees Union’s (SEIU) Andy Stern hired Sullivan.  Sullivan immediately became heavily involved in SEIU’s political activities, including SEIU affiliated groups like ACORN and America Coming Together. 

America Coming Together (ACT), a George Soros and Andy Stern creation eventually receive one of the largest fines in Federal Election Commission history – $775,000. 

“We similarly are concerned that the amount of the penalty imposed against ACT in this case represents only a tiny fraction of the nearly $100 million that the FEC found ACT illegally spent to influence the 2004 election,” wrote the Center for Responsive Politics.   

Sullivan’s life experiences with the Teamsters and America Coming Together indicate that Sullivan should be kept far away from the Federal Election Commission; certainly not appointed to the Commission’s Board as President Obama intends. 

Download and read our John J. Sullivan alert for more information and forward it to friends.  And, contact your U.S. Seantors and let them know that Sullivan is wrong for the Federal Election Commission.

The left-wing website Indy Media notes that the SEIU has undertaken “violent shock and awe tactics.” The accusations of violence come from another union — the National Union of Healthcare Workers — who are seeking to divorce themselves from the SEIU.

An Ohio union activist has been caught forging documents to take money from worker’s wages to pay for union political activity.  The organizers forged 40 “PAC cards” to take $14 a month from employees.  Besides the obvious outrage, this incident certainly begs the question — would union organizers forge Card Check cards if the law went into effect?