Senator Harry Reid may be opening his Plan to Nationalize Health Care to debate on Saturday.

We just received an e-mail that links to a GOP Take Action Now page, specifying nine “potential flip-floppers in the Senate - members who would vote for Health Care bill cloture before they vote against it on final passage.”

The nine are as follows:

1. Kay Hagan (D-NC) at (202) 224-6342
2. Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) at (202) 224-5623
3. Ben Nelson (D-NE) at (202) 224-6551
4. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) at (202) 224-5824
5. Mark Begich (D-AK) at (202) 224-3004
6. Kent Conrad (D-ND) at (202) 224-2043
7. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) at (202) 224-2551
8. Mark Pryor (D-AR) at (202) 224-2353
9. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) at (202) 224-4843

Some tips:

• ANY vote to move Sen. Harry Reid’s bill foward is a vote for Andy Stern and the rest of the union bosses and against individual rights
• Only 12.5 percent of the U.S. Workforce is unionized…Voting for the union bosses’ backed plan to nationalize health care is voting against 87.5 percent of America
• The 2010 mid-term elections are only 11 months and one week away.
• Choose carefully, Senators…
• You’re either with U.S. or you’re with the union bosses.  You decide, we’ll remember.

_________________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Every now and then (actually, quite often these days) today’s union bosses will do something that leaves one to wonder: Are union bosses really that moronic? 

Some cases in point:

• Trying to deny workers the right to vote in a secret-ballot election on whether or not to unionize;
• Treading on an American citizen for passing out “Don’t Tread on Me” flags;
• Bullying an Eagle Scout for doing volunteer work;
• …and the list goes on.

The latest case of union idiocy comes from Pittsburgh, where the International Union, Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA), announced that the union would gather several hundred homeless to picket in front of the [Rivers Casino] at a later date.

Why?  Because the security guards at Rivers Casino voted to reject the union (in a secret ballot election).

Hmm.  Let’s see…  Workers exercise their democratic rights to vote against unionization and the union, P.O.’d about losing, decides to rent a bunch of non-union homeless people to demonstrate against the employer because the targeted workers voted against the union. 

Somehow, like America’s union-controlled public schools, today’s union leaders seem to have been…er…dumbed down.  [Perhaps victims of their own scholastic successes?]

According to Steve Maritas, the organizing director for SPFPA:

…the union sometimes employs homeless picketers, paying them between $15 and $20 per hour, to represent the employees inside the establishment who may be too fearful to protest themselves. The idea is to get people’s attention, he said. In fact, Maritas seemed excited by the casino’s announcement that it would collect canned food and supplies for the holidays to benefit the region’s poor. The coincidence can be a cross-promotional opportunity.

It wouldn’t, however, be the first time homeless people were hired by a union to picket.

Back in 2007, the Carpenters union became the subject of some media attention for hiring the homeless for picket duty:

Many have arrived with large suitcases or bags holding their belongings, which they keep in sight. Several are smoking cigarettes. One works a crossword puzzle. Another bangs a tambourine, while several drum on large white buckets. Some of the men walking the line call out to passing women, “Hey, baby.” A few picketers gyrate and dance while chanting: “What do we want? Fair wages. When do we want them? Now.”

Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.

They’re hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.

“It’s about the cash,” said Tina Shaw, 44, who lives in a House of Ruth women’s shelter and has walked the line at various sites. “We’re against low wages, but I’m here for the cash.”

Carpenters locals across the country are outsourcing their picket lines, hiring the homeless, students, retirees and day laborers to get their message across. Larry Hujo, a spokesman for the Indiana-Kentucky Regional Council of Carpenters, calls it a “shift in the paradigm” of picketing.

National Public Radio did a report on this ’shift in the paradigm of picketing’ as well.

Most people who pass the picket line don’t look closely at the protesters. Diego Castaneda, a doctoral student from California, snaps a picture of a marcher and gives her a thumbs up.

“I just like seeing people demonstrating and standing up for their rights,” Castaneda said.

But when I tell him the protesters are actually homeless people, his face falls.

“Are you serious?” he says in disbelief. “It’s pretty disingenuous of the union to hire people who aren’t carpenters.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s likely to change. As long as the union can hire low-wage workers to do the job for its members, it makes good business sense. After all, that’s the genius of outsourcing.

According to the NPR report (audio), when one rent-a-picket (at 3:57) was asked if she needed more pay, she responds in the affirmative.  When asked if she ever thought about unionizing, she says ‘yes.’  

Perhaps the Purple People Eaters’ union (the SEIU) would be interested in unionizing the homeless picketers?

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.

————————-

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

The Purple People Eaters’ union (aka the SEIU), one of the main pushers of nationalized health care, denying secret-ballot votes on unionization, and amnesty for illegal aliens participated in a big town hall on Wednesday to push for “a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented people currently living in the United States.”

According to event organizers and the SEIU, the event involved 60,000 pro-amnesty activists. From the SEIU’s site:

Differing from past years, the Reform Immigration FOR America Campaign is already building a field movement that outnumbers and outpaces the other side. Last weekend, the controversial “Tea Party” anti-immigrant activists held a meager 50 events in 26 states that they themselves acknowledged were “not drawing huge crowds.”

Well then. Another taunt from the purple puds.

Following this weekend’s beating of anti-amnesty camera carriers, it seems the SEIU and its cohorts are spoiling for a fight.

Instead of stepping into the gutter with the purple behemoth, perhaps energy would be better spent contacting the people who will be bowing to purple pressure. You can go here to find them.

Following our earlier post (based on a New York Times article) about union organizers who exposed the outrageous psychological warfare tactic known as “pink sheeting” that used on workers and themselves, ACORN’s former Chief Organizer Wade Rathke posted the following on his blog:

Now in one of the rare articles we have about internal union business we get to read about tawdry internal affairs and psycho-babble mind games:  kill me now!

….

I should disclose quickly that although I understand “one-on-ones” as a methodology, I have never been comfortable with their practice or their claims, largely because in my view they inappropriately elevated the role of the organizer in a way that both create a false mutuality with potential leadership and a distortion of the roles that would most effectively build the organization particularly around the issues of organizer-dependency and a conflation of organizers and leaders making them almost synonymous.  It is neither the way I have trained or supervised organizers nor the way I have been involved in building organizations or organizing models.  Nonetheless, I have always been respectful of the practice, despite my reservations, because I was confident that the best practices in the craft probably protected against some of these potential problems.  In organizers’ shoptalk we used to kid about talking to organizers from other “schools” and having the conversation turn creepy when they started “one-on-one-ing” us and crossing boundaries on a personal level.  But, realistically in doing leadership visits and building leadership relationships over time, all of us understood that real personal friendships would emerge and rigid protocols would evaporate over years of work and mutual understandings.

As the use of “one-on-ones” from community organizing morphed into some labor organizing, I think the adaptation got even more bent.  In looking under the hood with HERE UNITE organizers, part of the construction of the “one-on-one” was more deliberately an effort to pull out of the organizers a core motivation for why they did the work that was deeply rooted in explaining their motivations, angers, and sense of powerless they shared with the workers based on intensely personal experiences in the organizer’s life.  Divorces, family issues, dependencies, addictions, and whatever else frequently emerged as core issues for sharing in the one-on-one.  Staff meetings and training sessions described to me were sometimes too eerily reminiscent of some of the old, hugely discredited Synanon sessions so notorious from the last years of the United Farm Workers under Caesar Chavez. [Emphasis added.]

Psycho babble indeed.

To read our earlier post, go here or see below.

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.

At a time when union bosses are desperately attempting to appear to be on the “up and up” in order to convince lawmakers to pass the delusionally-dubbed Employee Free Choice Act, the New York Times has published an article about the dirty (and what many would likely consider unethical) tactics unions use on workers to convince them to unionize.

Surprisingly, in this case, the whistle blowers are the union organizers themselves. And, according to them, they are as much the victims as the workers they target are.

According to the NYT story, using a tactic called “pink sheeting,” union bosses of UNITE-HERE pressured union organizers to reveal highly personal information about themselves to potential members in order to convince them to unionize.

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.”

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 cult like 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.

“This information is extremely personal,” said Matthew Edwards, an organizer who had disclosed that he was from a broken home and was overweight when young. “It is catalogued and shared throughout the whole organizing department.”

[Emphasis added.]

Once the information was catalogued, how did the union bosses use this information on workers?

Several organizers said supervisors wanted this information so organizers could inspire prospective union members by telling them things like, “I suffered sexual abuse or I was an alcoholic, and thanks to the union, I overcame it.”

Numerous organizers said their supervisors, having pink-sheeted them, had in turn ordered them to elicit highly personal information from workers they were seeking to unionize. [Emphasis added.] 

Separately, in an open letter published last month in the Monthly Review, four UNITE-HERE organizers detailed how “pink sheeting” works.

…[P]ink sheeting is actually a serious problem in the union. It entails union staff gathering sensitive personal information about the lower-level staff that they directly supervise, as well as unorganized workers and members, in order to discover their personal weaknesses. This information is then used at a later point to “push” them to follow the union’s program if they are resistant. For example (and this is a scenario we have heard about from multiple organizers in different cities), a lead organizer will share personal struggles that they have experienced in their life with a new organizer. The lead will then ask the new organizer about hardships they have experienced. Thinking that their fellow staff is simply opening up to them, the new organizer often shares sensitive information of their own. The information that the new organizer shares is then remembered by the lead (and in many cases actually recorded on a form that was originally pink). Down the line, if the organizer is told to do something on a campaign that they feel uncomfortable doing, the lead will put this information to use. They will bring up the sensitive information to convince the new organizer that, by following the lead’s direction, they are confronting their fears and insecurities and becoming a stronger person, just like when they dealt with personal hardship in the past. While the details of how the practice is used vary, the constant is that emotionally vulnerable information is methodologically gathered on workers and staff. Later, if they express doubt about the union program, it is used to convince them to follow the union’s plan.

This practice is a cynical and manipulative system of control. It creates a cult-like relationship of dependency between staff and their supervisors because staff who are successfully subjected to this come to see their supervisors as playing an important role in helping them develop emotionally.

UNITE-HERE top boss John Wilhelm publicly condemns the practice of pink sheeting but, according to the Times’ story, it may be the practice still exists but only the name has changed:

Mr. Wilhelm said that he was cracking down on what pink sheeting existed. Unite Here leaders issued new guidelines in early 2008 and again in early 2009, in theory banning the practice. But several organizers detailed numerous instances of pink sheeting in recent months despite that supposed ban.

These organizers said the question sheets were no longer pink, had been renamed “motivation sheets” and contained such questions as, “What risks or difficulties has your target undergone in her/his personal life?”

Among the information on several pink sheets was:

“Her childhood was a mess. Her mother was extremely passive aggressive. She would stop speaking to her children sometimes.”

“Has social anxiety disorder. She should have been on medication or in therapy but her parents refused.”

“Mom was not around growing up. She’s heard from her twice. Once to ask for money.”

Of course, as they push for passage of EFCA, union bosses would rather sweep this and other tactics under the rug.

However, as one of EFCA’s main provisions is the removal of secret-ballot elections on the question of unionization, if union organizers can convince a majority of workers to sign union authorization cards using tactics like pink sheeting (or “motivation sheets”), as well as a variety of other tactics, there should be a re-examination of the authenticity of all practices such as these.

The reality is, if unions are permitted to use tactics like this and more, the workers they target are not really wanting to join a union but are getting brainwashed into joining a cult with as much skills and ability to manipulate individuals as Jim Jones had in convincing his followers to drink poison-laced Kool Aid.

[To learn more about common union organizing tactics, go here.]

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport

The Lavender Lapeled Lord of Labor, Andy Stern (the boss of the Purple People Eaters Union aka the Service Employees International Union [or SEIU, for short]) is hinting that the job-destroying union bailout bill known as the oxy-moronically named Employee Free Choice Act may be rigor mortis in the making.

According to The Hill, Stern (who is known for projectile vomiting whatever is on his mind) stated during a panel discussion that 2010 is going to be the year for EFCA…or not.

“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.”
….

Stern said that card check would be a testing ground for the Democrats in 2010, and “a question of whether the Democrats can act as a functioning, effective team.”

The SEIU chief seemed less than optimistic about the party’s ability to pull together to support the legislation, though.

“They just have to decide, if not I think they’re going to miss a historic moment that won’t come back for a very long time,” Stern said. “And so far I wouldn’t bet with them.”

[Emphasis added.]

This is an important video to watch of the exchange.

Correction, Mr. Stern: This is more of a question of whether the Democrats will put their party and special interests (like union bosses) ahead of their country.

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

Like the Borg on Star Trek, the Purple People Eaters Union, otherwise known as the Service Employees International Union (or SEIU) has much to gain with the nationalization of America’s health care.

The Ultimate Political Payback?

2008 was a good year for the bosses of Sheet Metal Workers Local 73 in Chicago.

Well, for starters (according to the DOL report) the union had its business to take care of.

In 2008, SMW Local 73 spent:

• $20,998 on “furniture and equipment” 
• $88,011 on automobiles to add to its $174,226 fleet of “automobiles and other vehicles”
• The local’s “business manager” brought in $274,705 in total compensation with another $190,903 going to the “financial secretary.”
• $185,967 went to the local’s “recording secretary”

And then, of course, there were the employees of the local union that were taken care of:

• “Business representatives” took in in ‘total comp.’ $165,700, $162,667, $165,946, $164,361, $166,183, and $166,242, respectively; while…
• “Organizers” (the union’s salesmen) also took in in ‘total comp.’ $143,530, $138,805 and $120,417, respectively.
• The local even had an office manager that cost the union’s members $98,122 in 2008.

But, it doesn’t end there. The local also spent:

• $177,309 on legal counsel.
• $11,162 in hotel expenses for a conference in Washington
• $8,014 at Caesar’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas (for another conference)
• $13,697 on Disney Reservations (in FL) for yet another conference
• $21,091 to the Chicago Sun Times for “Death Announcements”
• $13,751 for flowers
• $10,745 for jackets and St. Patrick’s Day T-Shirts
• $40,154 for Building Maintenance (cleaning services)
• $14,220 to “Steve the Snowman” for snow removal (is this a union snow remover?)
• $6,646 to Build-a-Bear for a Christmas party for members’ kids (aaah!)
• $7,141 for caterers for an “executive board meeting” (yum!)
• $21,820 for caterers for a “PIN party” (sounds like the members got stuck with the tab for the pin)
• $24,000 for the local’s newsletter (Here’s a newsflash: The newsletter probably didn’t tell say much about the local’s spending habits.)
• $8,657 for more caterers…
• $14,100 for a Christmas party (were the members invited?…Because that seems light for 5,000 [+] members.), and…
• $192,767 went to the union’s officers and staff retirement fund.

Meanwhile, the local is telling its members that their dues could increase from $337 to $562 per quarter, or from $1348 per year to $2248.

Perhaps, instead of taking more from their members (600 to 700 of whom are unemployed), the union bosses might cut back on their expenses like any other business would.

Just a thought.

______________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.

Just when you thought the Purple People Eating union known as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and their thug-like tactics couldn’t sink any lower comes this story from Allentown, Pennsylvania.

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city’s largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union,
told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

“We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn’t targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city’s decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said “there’s to be no volunteers.” No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

“We would hope that the well-intentioned efforts of an Eagle Scout candidate would not be challenged by the union,” said Mayor Ed Pawlowski in an e-mail Friday. “This young man is performing a great service to the community. His efforts should be recognized as such.”

Balzano said Saturday the union is still looking into the matter and might cut the city a break.

“We are probably going to let this one go,” Balzano said.

[Read full story here.]

Back in July, after two weeks of negotiations with the SEIU failed to reach an agreement, the City of Allentown was forced to lay off 39 SEIU-represented employees. According to Allentown’s newspaper the Morning Call:

[Allentown Mayor] Pawlowski wanted members to defer roughly half of a 8.9 percent increase that kicked in on Saturday in exchange for no lay offs, but members narrowly rejected the offer two weeks ago.

On Monday, the mayor made a second offer that included a second pay cut in the form of a shorter work week for the remainder of the year. That offer was rejected by union heads and not taken to members for a vote.

“During the current economic downturn, the city has been attempting to reduce costs to avoid the layoff of city staff,” Pawlowski said in a written statement this afternoon.

“Unfortunately, the union rejected both of these offers leaving the city no choice but to reduce the workforce through layoffs.”

Now, when an Eagle Scout does something good for the City of Allentown, the SEIU bosses make a stink!

Does this mean that whenever a cub scout helps a little old lady cross a street SEIU bosses will file a grievance too?

Unbelievable!

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.

To say they are good at multi-tasking would be an understatment, as the White House agenda just keeps getting busier and busier with…

1. Nationalizing Health Care
2. Taking away secret ballots from workers through EFCA
3. Killing the economy through ‘cap & trade’
4. Devaluing the dollar by printing it like it’s Scott toilet paper
5. Dithering over ‘the war that matters’
6. Winning faux Peace Prizes
7. Conferring the rights of U.S. citizens onto terrorists by trying them in New York

…the list goes on.

And now this:

The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants as it pushes early next year for legislation to overhaul the immigration system, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday.

In her first major speech on the overhaul, Ms. Napolitano dispelled any suggestion that the administration — with health care, energy and other major issues crowding its agenda — would postpone the most contentious piece of immigration legislation until after midterm elections next November.

Laying out the administration’s bottom line, Ms. Napolitano said officials would argue for a “three-legged stool” that includes tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and employers who hire them and a streamlined system for legal immigration, as well as a “tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.”

With unemployment surging over 10 percent and Congress still wrangling over health care, advocates on all sides of the immigration debate had begun to doubt that President Obama would keep his pledge to tackle the divisive illegal immigration issue in the first months of 2010.

Speaking at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington, Ms. Napolitano unveiled a double-barrel argument for a legalization program, saying it would enhance national security and, as the economy climbs out of recession, protect American workers from unfair competition from lower-paid, easily exploited illegal immigrants.

“climbs out of recession”…?  How about ‘puts us in a depression’?

The one thing the President was correct on:  ObamaCare would not include illegal aliens.  The reason is, he’s going to legalize them.