Seems the good ol’ boys and girls at the Service Employees International Union of Communism and Illegal Immigration gave the finger to it’s labor force recently: Did a Union Doublecross Its College Activists?
“It is becoming increasingly clear that SEIU leaders often see students and campus workers as little more than pawns to use as they see fit,” the letter states. “SEIU has sought to maneuver these pawns in a way that brings new members and dues into the union in the short term but keeps workers in poverty and actually hurts our collective efforts to help unions grow at a massive scale.”
Who says college activists are stupid? They’ve figured out the SEIU’s game plan is just a particularly vile and obnoxiously obvious version of the AFL-CIO’s: act like you’re helping labor, but in reality keep the workers oppressed and poor, in order to exploit them. Capitalists have got nothing on these guys.
The letter alleges that SEIU officials encouraged students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to help organize food services workers, while at the same time entering into a deal with the workers’ employer that would insure there would never be a union at North Carolina.
The SEIU agreement, first reported upon in May by the Wall Street Journal, grants the so-called “Big 3” service employers the right to determine where SEIU will organize workers. Aramark Corp., which provides food services to North Carolina’s campus, was among those included in the agreement, the Journal reported.
“The deal ensured UNC workers could not join SEIU by letting Aramark decide which workers could join the union,” the letter states. “Not surprisingly, UNC workers didn’t make Aramark’s list.”
Local Angle
If the name Aramark sounds familiar, it’s because they have the franchises to most, if not all, of the sports temples here in Houston. And in case anyone has forgotten, it was the SEIU’s challenge through efforts to organize city of Houston employees that resulted in the formation of HOPE, a merger of the SEIU and AFCSME locals, and a first-ever labor agreement between civilian city employees and the city.
A summary of the “Big 3” agreement, which was provided to Inside Higher Ed, details how SEIU allowed employers – not workers – to dictate where unionization would take place. The agreement, forged by SEIU and another union known as Unite Here, cedes the power to declare union sites to two major food service providers, Compass Group USA and Sodexho Inc. Along with Aramark, which had a similar agreement according to the Journal, Compass and Sodexho are the major food service providers on college campuses across the country.
In addition to empowering the companies to determine where workers can organize, the agreement insures that unionized workers won’t strike or even make derogatory remarks about the companies.
Union members were not informed of the deal, which specifically stipulates that secrecy is “critical to the success” of the agreement.
The rationalization of this unprecedented agreement is the current “anti-labor” legal environment. Yeah, right.
According to the letter, North Carolina students began organizing workers – at the behest of SEIU – in 2005. They were joined in these efforts by workers from the Southwest Workers Union, a joint labor venture of SEIU and Unite Here. But after working side-by-side with the students, who said they were subjected to Aramark executives’ intimidation, the union leaders abandoned the cause, the letter states.
Doesn’t play nice with others:
And then there’s SEIU’s practice of undercutting other unions. Apparently it also undercuts the student activists that work on behalf of the workers:
Student criticism of SEIU is not limited to the events that unfolded in North Carolina. As the letter notes, University of California at Irvine students had their own frustrations about SEIU’s interference.
According to the letter, SEIU nearly stymied an effort by the local union to have Aramark employees hired by the university, thereby granting the workers the same benefits as Irvine staff. At the height of the local union’s campaign in 2006, SEIU organizers – in apparent collusion with Aramark – tried to get the workers to join SEIU and abandon their local union, students said.
“We already had a relationship [with the workers],” recalled Carla Osorio, a former student who aided the local union. “We already had our campaign going on, and then this other union comes in that was shady.”
A local student activist group wrote an open letter critical of the SEIU, although the national chapter (which gets its funding from unions, of course) disavowed the action.
“This blatant effort by Aramark to undermine the workers [sic] efforts is not surprising, but SEIU’s complicity is appalling,” the letter states.
Elsewhere in California, students have also complained about SEIU’s treatment of union members at Stanford University and Santa Clara University. Since unionized workers on those campuses were transferred into Service Workers United – part of SEIU and Unite Here — they’ve “received little to no support,” according to the letter.
The unionized workers at Santa Clara and Stanford were employees of Bon Appétit, a company owned by Compass Group. Compass Group is one of the “Big 3” employers covered under SEIU’s controversial agreement.
SEIU has been criticized in the past (on this blog and others) for supporting illegal immigration, which helps to keep the cost of labor low, thereby assuring that it will continue to have fertile ground for recruiting.
Just another day in the labor movement, where it’s all about the top dogs, not the little guys.
h/t to Instapundit.
