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SEIU dues members were miffed when they found out that their dues were going to pay for the $4000/per month DC office space rent for the protest group Occupy.
“We’re not happy,” SEIU member Kandy Gonzalez told Fox News. “When you pay dues, you think you’re paying for a better work environment.”
SEIU reportedly agreed to pay for at least 6 months of rent for the DC Occupy group, when they were told in February that they had to vacate their rat-invested illegal camp on McPherson Square.
Occupy still refuses to acknowledge their relationship as a puppet for SEIU. According to occupy protestor John Zangas, “We’ve got full control of how we allocate space, time, resources, access. Nobody’s telling us what to do. We still have our own brand name. We continue with unbridled decision making.” As long as SEIU holds the purse strings, this appears a bit idealistic.
Continue reading SEIU Dues Money Pays Protesters DC Office Rent
In this issue:
Union Bailout Update Bill Would Permit Merit Pay in Union Shops Machinists Striking Once a Member Always a Member Labor Relations Insight, Sticky Fingers and more…
NOTICE: You can make a PDF of this issue of INK directly from the post. Click here for instructions on how to do so.
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Labor Relations Insight by Phillip Wilson
What have we learned in the first week of the “ambush election” rules?
There are two questions I’ve been asked a lot over the last couple of months, and especially in the last week:
Will petitions increase after the new “ambush election” rules go into effect? How far will election times decrease under the new “ambush election” rules?
Here’s what we’ve seen
Continue reading INK May 10, 2012
 SEIU has filed a complaint with Mexico’s Department of Labor claiming Alabama’s new immigration laws violate provisions of NAFTA. According to the complaint, the U.S. committed to uphold international labor guidelines when it entered into to NAFTA agreement that does have a clause that requires immigrant workers enjoy the same legal protection as U.S. nationals in respect of working conditions.
According to the complaint, the Alabama law violates the trade agreement by “creating a climate of fear and intimidation that chills immigrant workers and their co-workers who seek to form trade unions, bargain collectively or participate in other worker advocacy organizations.”
SEIU also filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland on April 2, charging that the Alabama statute violates
Continue reading SEIU Goes International Law on the State of Alabama
 The NLRB’s inspector general Dave Berry released exhibits last week from his ethics investigation of newly appointed Board member Terence Flynn. Included were copies of about fifty email exchanges between Flynn and former Board members Kirsanow and Schaumber while Flynn was serving as chief counsel to Schaumber and later current Board member Brian Hayes. The exhibits also include a transcript of Flynn’s March 15 interview with investigators and Flynn’s formal response to the accusations.
The March 15 transcript includes verbal sparring between Berry and Flynn’s legal counsel over the legitimacy of the investigation. Flynn’s team has characterized the behavior in question as “innocuous” (and most likely typical for Board staff) and the information passed along by Flynn “non-substantive.” They also accused the IG of cherry-picking
Continue reading Union Bailout Update
 An employee of Complete Cleaning in Lynn, MA has filed a complaint with the NLRB against SEIU Local 615 in Boston, accusing union organizers of harassment and coercion in the union’s ongoing push to unionize Complete Cleaning’s 80 member workforce. The National Right to Work Foundation is aiding that employee with his complaint.
Employee Jairo Hernandez says he speaks for most of his co-workers when he talks about fear tactics, harassing house visits and relentless pressure on both the workers and the company to unionize. “There has never been a vote but they’re trying to force us,” Hernandez said. “They have gone to a lot of the (employees’) houses and I don’t know how they got the addresses … We’re tired of this. One lady was telling (workers) that
Continue reading SEIU Watch
Sticky Fingers
 Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:
Laura Dixon UBC
$170,000
John Morton Watson CFA
$150,000
Robert Misuraca USW
$17,566
Curtis Reed USW
$3,694
Cassandra Briggs LPU
$11,000
Kelly Dull AFGE
$32,119
Joseph Barnes SEIU
$4,380
Michael Bechtold RAFA
$63,000
Marqueeta Tibbs UBC
$84,903
Brianna Gates USW
$3,975
John Wayne Walker AFGE
$16,058
Ronald Witt IUOE
$150,000
http://www.nlpc.org/union-corruption-update
   Continue reading Sticky Fingers
 Unions have been yowling about the Citizens United decision since the election of Scott Walker was attributed by Democrats to pro-business Super Pacs and big donor bundlers like the Koch brothers. What rarely gets mentioned is the power the controversial decision gave to labor unions that they will only first fully exploit this election year.
Citizens United gave unions the power to spend union resources attempting to politically influence the general public. Before Citizens United, unions could only campaign for or against a political candidate to their own members. The decision removes that restriction granting unions the same freedom of political speech the new law grants to corporations.
And it appears labor intends to take full advantage of the gift; the AFL-CIO has announced it
Continue reading Unions Made More Powerful by Citizens United
SEIU is collecting signatures in California to put two measures on the ballot this fall. Both measures are written in a manner that rewards the two major hospital chains with SEIU contracts and punishes hospitals the union has been unsuccessful in organizing.
 Dignity Health, the state’s largest hospital chain, and Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO, will not be subject to the proposals. SEIU represents nearly 60,000 workers in those two systems. The measures would prohibit their private competitors from charging more than 25% above the actual cost of providing care and require nonprofits to devote at least 5% of their patient revenue to free care for the poor.
At least a quarter of California’s private hospitals would be exempted from the measures, according to the state’s
Continue reading SEIU Watch
 The Machinists union (IAM) and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) made a surprise announcement last week that the two unions were looking into affiliation. And while the marriage might seem a head scratcher, the rationale for the move is simple – NUHW has healthcare turf cred and the Machinists have money.
The IAM has been in the headlines this year for their attack on Boeing through their friends at the NLRB. NUHW is the infamous upstart union of Sal Roselli that broke away from SEIU in 2009 and then went to war with the purple Godzilla to maintain that autonomy. NUHW continues to raid SEIU shops in California and Michigan and is establishing itself as the skilled organizing force to be reckoned with in healthcare, but
Continue reading Strange Hospital Bedfellows
 Gee, and we thought this was common knowledge! Last week the Daily Caller “broke” the story that SEIU has built a secret network of front organizations in cities around the country. Incorporated by SEIU as local non-profits, these front organizations hide their management by SEIU and pretend they act as independent grass-roots agents of change somehow spontaneously aggregated around an outrage. They wage concerted attacks against conservative political figures and targeted corporations.
 The individual activist groups use benign-sounding names including This Is Our DC; Good Jobs, Great Houston; Good Jobs, Better Baltimore; Good Jobs Now ; Fight for Philly; One Pittsburgh; Good Jobs LA; and Minnesotans for a Fair Economy. And they have of late grown
Continue reading SEIU Watch
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