SEIU Sends Investigators to another SoCal local

The Purple People Eating union, otherwise known as the Service Employee International Union, after suffering a crushing defeat last week at the hands of the NUHW (a new union formed by disgruntled SEIU activists), has sent investigators to investigate one of its locals in San Diego.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

International leaders of the union representing thousands of county government workers have arrived in San Diego to help sort out a dispute over management of the local group.


Andrew Stern, the international president of Service Employees International Union, appointed two personal representatives to investigate whether the local chapter wrongly paid former president Sharon-Frances Moore a six-figure severance and hired her as a consultant.


Local union officials said they welcome the investigation and help finding a new president. Moore cited personal reasons in resigning this month as president of SEIU Local 221.


Last week, the local’s executive board named three members to manage the union on a day-to-day basis until a successor can be named, but some union members complained that the action violated the organization’s rules.


In a Jan. 22 letter to local union officials from his Washington, D.C., headquarters, Stern said he was looking into the complaints and advised them to withhold any payments to Moore.


“I have directed my representatives to report to me within 30 days on the situation in Local 221,” he wrote. “In the meantime, I counsel the Local 221 officers and executive board not to execute or implement the challenged payments or contract at this time.”


Local 221 spokeswoman Melinda Battenberg said decisions regarding the severance and consulting agreement are internal union business that she cannot discuss publicly.


Specifically, rank-and-file members complained about a $107,000 severance package awarded to Moore and objected that she will keep working for the union as a consultant. Several people wrote to Stern to demand an investigation.

Read the rest here:

For more on the SEIU, go here, here, here and here.

We're pre-emptively tagging this for the Union Corruption Corner (just in case).

SEIU's 2009 Bloopers

LaborUnionReport has posted a compilation of SEIU bloopers from 2009, originally posted in two-parts by Stern Burger with Fries (a blog written by former SEIU members).

It's well worth the read, especially if you're familiar with the SEIU's Civil War with its own members.

Read the compiled list of SEIU Top 10 Bloopers here.

Card Check Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

From the Truth About EFCA blog:

OK, that title was borrowed from the book by now-Senator Al Franken. But it’s a good title to kick off what is a sadly continuing discussion on just how far proponents of card check (in the form of the Employee Free Choice Act) will push the bounds of honesty. So far, it appears they will seek or surpass those bounds with vigor.

The latest salvo comes from the Service Employees International Union, which is demanding Nebraska television stations stop airing an anti-EFCA group’s educational advertisement. The union’s lawyers say claims that EFCA will effectively end secret ballots — which it effectively does — are ” demonstrably false.”

Hmm. That’s pretty strong language. That would require, we imagine, a pretty strong factual case and, most likely, a finding by a court. Funny thing, then, is that history shows us courts have specifically found these claims are not false.

So SEIU’s claims of “demonstrably false” claims are themselves "demonstrably false.”

Then there’s the AFL-CIO’s Stuart Acuff going on television and misleading viewers when he said EFCA’s effective destruction of the secret ballot is untrue and that “The Wall Street Journal has said that that is a lie.” Again, “demonstrably false” as the SEIU, which had again stretched the truth. In fact, the newspaper took the rather extraordinary step of writing another editorial just to correct the union and those following its misrepresentations:

These guys must really be desperate. As we’ve written many times, “card check” effectively ends secret-ballot elections because it would allow labor organizers to automatically organize a work site if more than 50% of workers sign an authorization card. Thus our words: “dead letter.”

Obviously, EFCA is crucial to a handful of top union officials, who see billions of dollars in potential revenue by denying employees a private ballot to vote on whether they want to join a union. But we’d think they’d be a little more careful when throwing around loaded terms — because like a grenade with the pin pulled, the explosion can hurt the one throwing the bomb.
We’d be happier if everyone stuck to the truth. Of course, that’s an advantage for opponents of EFCA since the truth about EFCA is pretty powerful.

Purple Reign: The Hypocrisy SEIU Foists on Thee & Me

As Congress debates the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, the bosses of one of the largest unions backing the bill (the notorious Service Employees International Union) is engaging in the very tactics they claim EFCA is designed to protect workers from.

Indeed, bloggers at the Truth About EFCA point to an editorial in the Daily News, which states:

The Service Employees International Union, a strong supporter of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, would appear to be having second thoughts on a key provision of the bill — allowing workers to join a union solely on the basis of signing a petition. Los Angeles Times writer Paul Pringle reports that the SEIU is challenging a rival union’s attempt to represent nearly 100,000 SEIU members. SEIU officials don’t believe the petitions are an accurate representation of what its members want. They want the federal government to throw out petitions signed by those members, which would block an organizing election.

The SEIU’s argument for federal intervention is particularly ironic. It maintains that the nearly 100,000 California members who signed cards indicating their wish to be represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers may have been subject to intimidation by NUHW organizers. This is the same reasoning used by opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act. They contend that elections by secret ballot are necessary because workers can be pressured by union activists into signing authorization cards.The irony isn’t lost on NUHW Vice President John Borsos, who told Pringle, “The SEIU is advocating free choice for every employee in the United States, unless you’re an SEIU member." [Emphasis added.]

Union hypocrisy has exposed the simple fact that, once again, the union emporers (like those at the SEIU) are not wearing any clothes. They want rules that apply to everyone else but themselves.

For more about the Service Employees International Union, go to 1-888-NO-UNION.COM's SEIU profile page here.

For more about the job-destroying Employee Free Choice Act, go here and here.