The SEIU Intimidation Handbook

There has been considerable civil unrest nationwide because of sensible governors and legislators who decided that the need to cut costs was vital to their states' survival. The fattest cats on the cat farm are the public employees unions, and their turn to join the rest of us in recession mode has come. They don't like it, and they've acted like a mob on multiple occasions as a result.

The mainstream media have treated the "spontaneous demonstrations" as proof that unions are viable, popular, and righteously indignant. But those with the ability to see through the hype have long suspected that these demonstrations and occupations of public property were hardly spontaneous. Most have reasonably suspected that there was some sort of vague but organized effort among union management and membership to interfere with the workings of government and private enterprise. Recently, in regard to the most visible of the unions and its agitators, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nebulous plan has become concrete.

During the discovery portion of a pending court case, the blueprint for union disruption of government and businesses and intimidation of individuals has turned up. In a seventy-plus page manual which will be entered into evidence, the SEIU sets out its demands, strategy, and tactics for use by the thugs and unwitting SEIU membership in disrupting civil society in order to strengthen the waning union movement. It is the first, but likely not the last smoking gun that will turn up during the unions' self-created class war.

The manual contains the usual garbage about predatory businesses and heartless corporations which had some truth decades and even a century in the past. But after justifying unionism even in the public sector, the manual goes on to describe tactics that can only be described as "mob-like." Though aimed largely at damaging medium to large businesses and corporations, the manual also includes elected officials among its targets. Worst of all, it encourages mob action against high-profile business owners and corporate management as well as boycotts and personal action against public officials, at their homes, not at their workplaces.

The SEIU manual, addressing banking institutions, promotes "outside pressure jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds." It also encourages "lawfare," advising the use of lawsuits and regulatory shenanigans to threaten employers with cripplingly expensive action in the courts and at regulatory agencies (NLRB anyone?).

The manual encourages slinging mud with [phony] charges of exploitation of immigrants, racism, sexism, and rape of the local economies by taking money out of the community to pay dividends to rich shareholders. In the words of the manual: "Leafletting outside meetings where targeted managers are speaking (not to mention shouting the speaker down), 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."

It gets better: "It may be a violation of blackmail and extortion laws to threaten management and public officials with release of dirt about them if they don't settle a contract [favorable to the union]. But there is no law against union members who are angry at their employer deciding to uncover and publicize factual information about individual managers and elected officials." In short, a smear campaign. This is what former SEIU CEO and frequent overnight White House visitor Andy Stern calls "the persuasion of power."

This is not abstract theorizing. It's a manual for action. This past May, the SEIU organized busloads of demonstrators and ferried them to the home of Bank of America deputy general counsel Greg Baer. Unlike the AWOL union mob, Baer was at work, and his wife was at a local charity event. Only Baer's young son was at home, and he was terrified. The mob went onto the property from time to time, but mostly shouted into bullhorns and waved scurrilous signs which attacked the character of the boy's father. The boy was comforted by Fortune Magazine's bureau chief. He asked her, in tears, "when are they going to leave?"

As so often happens with leftist organizations, the SEIU invokes the names of legitimate human rights icons as if racial discrimination and colonialism were on a par with union contract demands. "Union members sometimes must act in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi and disobey laws which are used to enforce justice against working people." The manual doesn't include an explanation of why public employee union members should be paid substantially better than their private sector counterparts, or have their outrageous pensions paid for by the taxpayer. But clutching that manual (in spirit, at least) hundreds of union demonstrators occupied the Wisconsin state capitol, doing considerable property damage during their "spontaneous demonstrations."

We now no longer need to infer that there is an organized and thuggish movement on the part of SEIU and its union allies. We have their roadmap.

In case you're interested, the court filing involves a RICO case launched against the SEIU by Sodexo, Inc. Filed in the Virginia federal court, the case alleges that "S.E.I.U. has waged a relentless campaign to damage Sodexo’s reputation, interfere with its contracts, make false allegations of serving contaminated food to its customers, and otherwise bring the company to its knees. Sodexo claims this campaign has cost it millions of dollars in lost business and the Complaint specifies several contracts it contends were lost as a direct result of the union’s tactics."

Sodexo already had many union employees from various unions. The remainder of its employees had shown no interest in unionizing, but the SEIU came to Sodexo and demanded that all employees not already affiliated with another union be organized under the SEIU banner via card check. The company refused to negotiate on that basis, demanding that any such unionization be done by traditional secret ballot, and the intimidation campaign began.