Terrible Tactics

What would you do if you needed emergency care, but the hospital’s emergency room had been flooded with extra patients brought in by union officials who were simply trying to make life miserable on a health care facility targeted by an organizing drive? Unfortunately, this is a real problem faced by citizens living in communities where SEIU is trying to add new health care members.

During a ruthless campaign to unionize employees at two Chicago hospitals, SEIU and its “community organization” ally at ACORN reportedly brought uninsured sick and injured people “by the vanload” to those emergency rooms “beyond their own communities.” The chair of emergency medicine at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital warned, “When a person with chest pain bypasses several emergency departments and is brought unsuspectingly 40 miles to get care at a facility, that’s dangerous.”

The Illinois Business Ledger reported:

Lucrecia Balgemann, a Spanish-speaking shift coordinator in the ER the day of the occurrence, said it was clear to her that many of the Spanish speaking patients were being “coached” by ACORN organizers and were “following a script.”

One patient was under the impression that the hospital would help with a kidney transplant through its charity care, but was quickly informed that the hospital was not a transplant location.

That’s dangerous for the patients SEIU and its allies use as pawns, and it’s dangerous for community members caught in the crossfire.

SEIU Can Be Bad For Your Health

In April 2006, SEIU officials supported a dangerous hunger strike at the University of Miami for the right to avoid letting employees vote on whether to join the union by using a real secret ballot unionizing election overseen by the federal government.

SEIU’s reliance on an anti-democratic organizing method is bad enough – but using a hunger strike was beyond the pale. Former Clinton Administration cabinet Secretary Donna Shalala, who became the University’s president, said:

We are devastated that the union is risking the health and well-being of our students and the Unicco employees by sanctioning an activity as drastic as a hunger strike. Hunger strikes have never been used in this country to oppose an election. We have urged both parties to continue daily discussions until this issue is resolved. A free election for or against unionization is a federal statutory right.

But SEIU president Andy Stern turned his twisted logic to that of a hostage-taker, saying, “It appears to only have a tragic end in sight.” He may well have been right: At least five picketers were taken to the hospital – one with a mild stroke.

SEIU’s Flexible Relationship With Truth

SEIU will bend the truth to reach its ends. In May 2006, the Warren, Ohio Tribune Chronicle reported that the union’s political pamphlet took excerpts from a Columbus Dispatch editorial that were “so out of the context the Dispatch filed a complaint” with the state’s elections commission.

In July 2006, SEIU was forced to abandon a “card check” organizing drive after a Portland, Oregon employee said union organizers misled her co-workers by claiming that signing a union authorization card “merely expressed her interest for a formal vote.” Less than a year later the same SEIU unit was forced to agree to give up “card check” organizing for six months after employees alleged that the union relied on out-of-date cards and deceived or coerced employees into supporting the union.