We told you, a couple of weeks ago, that following the release of SEIU’s internal “Contract Campaign Manual” we’d continue exploring the tactics and dirty tricks it exposed. And we feel we owe it to you reader (and USAS members, if you’re still around) to give you a little background on this internal manual. For that reason, we’d like to share with you a few extracts from a Labor Watch report on the SEIU that provides an extremely accurate and relevant insight into the development of the union’s tactics.

First, let’s give a little context to the highly controversial manual. It appears that the tactics it teaches are not exactly new in America. Beyond pure politics, their first widespread use began with the rise of the “New Left” in the 1960′s and campus-based activists groups such as Students for a Democratic Society. But for the introduction and systematization of corporate campaigns among unions’ repertoire of strategies, we must turn to John Sweeney, SEIU’s president between 1980 and 1995.

John Sweeney had the brilliant idea of taking the concept of corporate campaigns and structuring and formalizing it in a way that could be systemically useful for unions’ seeking recognition. In the process, he penned the “Contract Campaign Manual” we - and others – previously exposed on this blog. As a 2002 report by Labor Watch and the Capital Research Center put it:

“Corporate campaigns are coordinated assaults on a company’s reputation. The union goes outside ordinary procedures for seeking representation or pressing its grievances. Instead, it mounts a full-scale political and public relations campaign, often enlisting other social and religious groups as allies and threatening the employer with an economic boycott. The implicit threat: We unionize your workforce or we destroy your reputation. Under Sweeney, SEIU helped bring corporate campaigns into the mainstream of union organizing tactics.”

These few sentences could hardly do a better job at summing up what the SEIU has been all about in its campaign against Sodexo. The grand strategy is here: coerce by any means possible a company into recognizing a union by directly pressuring management instead of trying to convince employees. And the Contract Campaign Manual is at the center of this strategy, just look at how the tactics it outlines are relevant to the campaign:

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If you remember well, a few months ago, Sodexo announced it was launching a trial against SEIU under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Sodexo accused the SEIU of using disreputable tactics in its campaign against the corporation such as blackmail, vandalism, trespass, harassment, etc.

While on our side we’ve been denouncing for more than a year the feeble arguments, low-blows and overall reckless tactics of the SEIU, our main motivation was to publicly unveil SEIU’s financial motivations in the campaign. Well now it seems we weren’t totally wrong in suspecting the union of using disreputable tactics, apparently the union itself advocates them.

As part of the public inquiry undergone with the lawsuit, the SEIU was forced to release , a “Contract Campaign Manual” destined for internal use. Machiaveli fans, this is your next read. The manual is a proper A, B, C of union campaigns and how to put pressure on corporations as well as generate and exploit media attention. It provides an unprecedented peek into the union’s own policy regarding corporate campaigns.

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They say, sometimes a picture can be worth a thousand words. In order to offer more perspective on the campaign against Sodexo, we’ve come up with a presentation on the SEIU smear-campaign against Sodexo. The object is to expose the underlying mechanics at work behind the campaign, to show how grassroots movements in universities in America are in reality financially and rhetorically linked to a major international union and expose the underlying architecture of actors in this campaigns.

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There is no point in coming back to the chronology of the IAM-NLRB-Boeing case nor to the underlying interests of some stakeholders in the SEIU – Sodexo case anymore than we already did. What we would like to do in this article is to open the debate on the consequences of these events on the American business.

Entrepreneurs (both Americans and foreign ones) know that our American principles have been based on two pillars: free enterprise and a free country. Recent events in our country could change this perception. In the IAM-Boeing case, the NLRB filled a complaint against the airplane manufacturer on the basis that the company’s decision to locate its second production line had not been made on rational arguments (e.g.: diversifying its production centers) but had been a retaliation against past strikes led by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at Boeing’s plant in Everett, WA. Following the fuss made by the complaint, the NLRB felt obliged to explain that it did not order Boeing to relocate the second production line to Washington – yet this explanation was hardly convincing. A state agency that tells a company where and what to manufacture was the model adopted by some countries but had never been in place in America until now.

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This article may need a bit of contextualization first: almost two years ago, the SEIU launched a corporate campaign against Sodexo. It’s not particularly uncommon of unions to engage in vociferous campaigns against a corporation to obtain unionization rights. However, SEIU’s campaign against Sodexo differed on two notable counts. First, the scale of the campaign, with SEIU student organizations and international unions in several States as well as in other countries and spending several thousand dollars in the process. Second, and perhaps most important, the viciousness of the motives behind the campaign.

You see, in a “normal” union-driven corporate-campaign, a union backed up by company workers which are not or poorly represented, will fight to obtain the right to represent these workers. In SEIU’s case, the situation is rather different. The union has traditionally always been foreign to the catering industry. In accordance with its growth strategy, it decided to penetrate the sector. After all, unions are corporations like any other, and they make their money on the paiements of workers they represent.

In SEIU’s case, to try and secure greater financial growth (in spite of the fact that the union is already filthy rich) meant striking big. That’s why it went for Sodexo. Sodexo is the second largest company in the food-catering industry in the world and employs close to 380 000 people worlwide. For the workers-hungry union, it represented a tasty treat.

Only problem was, Sodexo has no problem with workers’ rights and is already in agreement with several unions in the United States and worldwide. Basically, noone there really needed SEIU – as a matter of fact, few workers have come forward during the campaign to specifically ask for the union to representent them. So SEIU went at it alone.

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So, recently we told you about the files we’d found on SEIU’s financial management. As we said, considering the volume of information present there, it would take us some time to explore everything. Well, it appears that we’ve had time to find some more interesting tidbits of information in that gigantic pile of financial statements.

As you may remember, last year SEIU announced it was launching a campaign against Sodexo. The union’s official position was that, outraged by gross mismanagement and faults at Sodexo, it wanted “Clean Up Sodexo”. With unabashed statements and brazen declarations about the state of things at Sodexo, the Union meant to stir workers -with mixed results – into demonstrating against the company and pressuring management for a change.

Of course, behind SEIU’s official reasons for starting its smear-campaign laid several, more or less visible, causes. Causes we’ve repeatedly explored in these pages, as it appeared that SEIU had launched the campaign not so much for its alleged humanitarian motives but rather for capitalistic and strategic intents. The union, historically foreign to the catering services workers’ demography wanted to set foot on the market and spur concurring union UNITE-HERE – with whom it shared a history of bitter rivalry. SEIU wanted to expand, more than that, it needed to expand, maintaining membership growth meant increasing fees collected and, in the end, enriching the union.

In order to give some tangibility to its claims against Sodexo, SEIU needed two things: backup data (however legitimate) and larger support. To accomplish the first of these goals, it ordered the realisation of a report on working conditions at Sodexo. The report’s final draft showed up in October 2010, largely fed with interviews obtained “on behalf of SEIU” by some unknown actor. Looking at the financial files, it appears that these interviews were the product of local union Sinaltrainal, who received a hefty $20,000 “organizing” donation from SEIU in October 2010.

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As part of our ongoing research effort into the smear-campaign conducted against Sodexo, we recently came accross a – sizeable – bit of information that might be of interest to all party in this affair. It so happens that there is an online record of all financial activities at the SEIU. While it would be a laudable step towards transparency if it could be found anywhere else than on a federal website, it does have the merit of telling us a bit more about SEIU than its official communication – for which it spends hefty sums – will let you believe. Of course we’ve taken upon us to share that information with you and it is sure to be a recurring topic in the coming days.

In light of the information present in these documents, it appears quite amusing that among the many, more or less founded, accusations leveled against Sodexo, one stands first and foremost, the alleged “poverty wages” the company pays. Note that neither SEIU nor USAS ever said Sodexo was paying its workers under the legal minimum-wage, because that would be wrong. No, the rethorical trick here is to give the illusion that Sodexo workers are being paid sub-standards wages when, in fact, they receive wages equal or superior to the legal minimum.

Well then, it’s certainly not so bad of SEIU and puppet-organization USAS to try and promote higher wages for Sodexo Employees, is it? Of course it isn’t, and we’re pretty sure Sodexo workers wouldn’t mind a few more bucks at the end of the month – unless it costs them their jobs. Yet, where it gets funny is when one looks at the “living wages” being paid at SEIU’s headquarters.

It surely doesn’t hurt to get a taste of your own medicine once in a while and SEIU surely likes the medicine it’s been trying to administer Sodexo workers. One might say the union has perhaps been over-indulging a bit too much. Indeed, if we look at salaries paid at SEIU’s head, those surely are “living” wages. Before he resigned, Andy Stern made $128,000 – not that shocking you might say -but wait, he resigned on April so that’s just four months as president, and that’s not counting with his controversial expense account and side financial activities. Yet even secretary Anna Burger now makes more than him at $180,345 a year. Even Executive Board Member Stephen Lerner – yes that guy who wanted to blow-up Wall-Street – used to make $165,498 a year.

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