If you can't persuade them, threaten them!

That appears to be the modus operandi of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), according to a report in the Washington Times.

SEIU is in federal court defending itself against charges of racketeering and extortion filed by one of its unionizing targets, the catering company Sodexo Inc. Sodexo's court discovery recently revealed an SEIU “Contract Campaign Manual” on “Pressuring the Employer”. Union pressure is nothing new, but what SEIU recommends is not limited to organizing drives and strikes. Rather, the pressure takes the form of a so-called corporate campaign, whereby the union allies itself with outside third parties to raise intimidation to a new level.

SEIU’s manual details how “outside pressure can involve jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds”. The union advises using legal and regulatory pressure to “threaten the employer with costly action by government agencies or the courts”.

It details the use of community groups to “damage an employer’s public image and ties with community leaders and organizations”. SEIU recommends going after company officials personally. Not mincing words, SEIU states, “It may be a violation of blackmail and extortion laws to threaten management officials with release of ‘dirt’ about them if they don’t settle a contract. But there is no law against union members who are angry at their employer deciding to uncover and publicize factual information about individual managers.”

The “dirt” includes charges such as “racism, sexism, exploitation of immigrants or proposals that would take money out of the community for the benefits of distant stockholders”. SEIU recommends “[l]eafleting outside meetings where [targeted managers] are speaking, their homes, or events sponsored by community organizations they are tied to are some ways to make sure their friends, neighbors, and associates are aware of the controversy.”

Putting this into practice, in May SEIU drove 14 busloads of protesters to the quiet suburban home of Bank of America’s deputy general counsel, Greg Baer. Fortune magazine’s Washington bureau chief, Nina Easton, Mr. Baer’s neighbor, reported on the “hordes of invaders” shouting into bullhorns and waving signs. Ms. Easton wrote that “a more apt description of this assemblage would be ‘mob.’ Intimidation was the whole point of this exercise.”

. . .

In some areas, the manual blatantly advises breaking the law, stating, “Union members sometimes must act in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King and Mohatma [sic] Gandhi and disobey laws which are used to enforce injustice against working people.”

There's more at the link, including allegations that the federal government's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is actively siding with the SEIU and other unions to further their objectives. I've written before about the cozy relationship between the Obama administration and trades unions. Looks like the unions are getting more and more blatant in their tactics, because they know they've got the federal government covering for them.

It's high time these union thugs were removed from honest society.





Peter