It’s a dispute that has dragged on for months and the Service Employees International Union has struck over the issue twice—once in February and again in March—in order to try and get the hospital to bend to its wishes. It’s not higher wages or better benefits the union is after. No, it’s something much more important to the union—the ability to require all employees to pay union dues or have them fired if they refuse. So far, Pocono Medical Center has said no to the SEIU’s demands for a Union (income) Security Clause and this has enraged the purple behemoth.
On Saturday, the SEIU staged a massive rally, dragging members to Pennsylvania from as far away as Maryland, New York, and New Jersey to hear actor Danny Glover opine on his version of justice and injustice.
“There is an injustice here at (Pocono Medical Center), an injustice to all the workers who know they are next on the line,” Glover addressed the crowd. “When I listen to the men and women of PMC, they are the men and women whose jobs are essential to the maintenance of that facility.”
Members of Pocono Medical Center’s SEIU have been working without a contract since October 2010. The main point of contention is the union’s desire to require all hospital service workers to join its union.
The union voted late last year to maintain a closed shop, which would require all service workers, including technicians, maintenance workers and aides, to become dues-paying members as a requirement of their employment.
The SEIU (and other unions like it) that see compulsion as their only means to success demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of today’s unions.
For a celebrity like Glover to lend his star power to a union that is fighting to force workers to pay dues, as opposed to ensuring their freedom to choose, undercuts what little credibility Glover may have as a “worker advocate.”
“I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty the principles of voluntarism. No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.” — Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor
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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
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