SEIU Shows It Is Not About Employee Free Choice
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), arguably the most ardent proponent of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), continues to demonstrate the hypocrisy of its true motives through its tactics and political machinations. The political maneuvering of the SEIU and its big labor brethren show that they do not have employee best interests at heart, and that their ultimate objective has nothing to do with employee free choice (see SEIU’s Insidious Tentacles). In fact, it’s the SEIU’s continued tactics, such as this past week’s fast food worker strikes that show why it is a Charade and proves once again that big labor’s Only Concern is for Dues.
Unlike past “protests,” the SEIU’s push in Fast Food Forward received little news coverage. Clearly, people around the country are waking up to the SEIU’s schemes and the truth that there are relatively few employees who are embracing its forced unionism scheme. As reported in the articles above, very few employees are participating and the majority of strikers are paid non-employees recruited to make misleading claims and intimidate fast food employers and their employees much like the Death by a Thousand Cuts tactics chronicled in The Devil at Our Doorstep.
“Death by a Thousand Cuts” is a form of psychological intimidation used by labor unions against employers. Often it involves utilizing supposed employees as pawns in an attempt to force unionize employees who are not interested in what the SEIU has to sell through Card Check. This is labor’s end game in the Fast Food Forward initiative. It is not about helping employees make more money, but rather increasing the SEIU’s membership roles, Despite the representations of big labor and its liberal supporters, the SEIU is not a knight in shining armor, but quite the opposite.
Like most unions in the country, the SEIU continues to experience loss of membership and, consequently, the loss of revenue in the form of membership dues. As a result of these losses, the SEIU and like-minded unions are resorting to the use of Corporate Campaigns against companies (as well as governments agencies and entities) in order to force unionize employees and increase flagging membership. The SEIU recently experienced such a loss as 80 percent of these forced “union members” dropped out of SEIU in Michigan. This tremendous loss of revenue is estimated at $34 Million per year (see SEIU Membership Revenues Plummet After State Ends Underhanded Scheme). Additionally, the SEIU is facing significant loss of membership/revenues in California and other parts of the country, just as the other big labor unions are experiencing similar losses.
In a desperate attempt to offset these losses, the SEIU has continued to turn to and to utilize the same tactics that have proven to be ineffective in the past (see SEIU Deploys Top-Down Organizing Tactics against California Hospitals). The SEIU is attempting to force unionize home health care workers in Illinois as chronicled in SEIU’s Hair on Fire. This despite its previous defeat of similar laws in other states — the state of Michigan, for example, just overturned the same law that allowed forced unionism of home healthcare workers.
Despite these efforts, employees across the nation are waking up to the SEIU’s motives. They are voting with their feet as verified by the lack of employee involvement in the current “Fight for Fifteen” campaign, and by home health care workers dropping out of the SEIU when provided the opportunity in Michigan. You would think the SEIU would learn that if it wants to reverse its fortunes it is going to have to develop a product that employees and employers can buy into instead of using intimidation tactics. Isn’t the definition of “insanity” to repeat the same things over and over again, with the same failed results? Maybe the SEIU should ask the question What Happens When You Give Workers a Choice? While the SEIU would not grow as a fast as it would like in order to achieve its socialistic political agenda, it would truly be serving the employees – which is supposed to be mission of the labor unions. This is not likely and employees will continue to see the SEIU’s “Persuasion of Power” and its reliance on its allies in the white House to press for regulatory means to bail them out of their desperate condition. It’s not good for the employees, but why would Big Labor start caring about them now? What we need in this country is an Employee Rights Act that would make unions accountable to members.
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David A. Bego is the President and CEO of EMS, an industry leader in the field of environmental workplace maintenance, employing nearly 5000 workers in thirty-three states. Bego is the author of “The Devil at My Doorstep,” as well as the just released sequel, “The Devil at Our Doorstep,” based on his experiences fighting back against one of the most powerful unions in existence today.