On September 12, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) wrote to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Member Craig Becker, asking him what role he had in drafting a Service Employee International Union (SEIU) manual instructing union organizers how to intimidate business into taking away the secret ballot from workers.

Becker served as Associate General Counsel for SEIU before being recess-appointed to the NLRB by President Obama in March 2010. His nomination was stalled in the Democratic controlled Senate because enough Senators to uphold a filibuster felt his views on labor law were too controversial.

Becker, despite being a former union attorney, is now supposed to be a neutral judge on the NLRB. His writings and many decisions since being appointed indicate a strong bias against business.

The manual, first exposed by The Washington Times in July, came to light during a lawsuit brought by the catering company Sodexo Inc. against SEIU. Sodexo claims that SEIU engaged in an “illegal campaign of extortion,” and brought Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act charges against the union.

However, the revelations came too late for the Senators who questioned Becker during his NLRB nomination hearings.

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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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There has been a good deal of discussion of late about whether or not the IRS should launch an investigation into Media Matters’ tax-exempt status.  In today’s part two of a three part series from FOX Business’ Elizabeth MacDonald, details of the civilian complaint filed by C. Boyden Gray demonstrate why the former White House counsel to President George W. Bush believes that Media Matters should have its tax-exempt status yanked.

Citing a pattern of “unlawful conduct,” Gray writes in his petition, which FOX Business has obtained, that the nonprofit has “executed a partisan strategy” in violation of U.S. tax law as it exists “no longer to educate the public but, rather, to declare ‘war on FOX,’” Gray says, quoting from an interview its founder, David Brock, gave to the website Politico.

Also unlawful, Gray says, is the nonprofit’s reported goal to “disrupt” the commercial interests of News Corp. (News Corp. is the parent of FOX News and FOX Business.)

Read the whole article, Former White House Counsel to IRS: Pull Media Matters’ Tax-Exempt Status.

Among the activity noted in the complaint:

• Conducting a campaign to get chain book retailers to stop selling the book, “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry”
• Advocating for legislation such as the Fairness Doctrine, which would be in violation of tax law if such activity exceeds an insubstantial amount
• Stating that it is “looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network,” and intending to “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to [sic] disrupt his commercial interests.”
• Using tax-free dollars to fund the “Progressive Talent Initiative,” an endeavor “geared toward members of the Netroots community” and aimed at producing “camera-ready liberals” who can speak to the media on progressive issues

So many other examples not even mentioned in the article are readily available.

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You may recall that Sodexo slapped the SEIU with a RICO suit in March, citing the labor union’s “blackmail, vandalism, trespass, harassment, and lobbying law violations designed to steer business away from Sodexo USA and harm the company.”  SEIU had filed a motion to dismiss the suit, but according to a press release just issued,  a United States District Judge has denied the SEIU’s motion and ruled that Sodexo’s case can proceed.

“The court has validated our decision to file this lawsuit using the federal racketeering statute,” said Sodexo General Counsel Robert Stern. “This ruling clears the path to discovery and trial, allowing us to present evidence the SEIU has conspired to extort Sodexo by threatening financial damage unless we cave in to its demands. The SEIU’s campaign was designed to illegally threaten our company. We will continue to challenge the SEIU’s illegal behavior until it ends.”

The food services corporation has accused the SEIU of engaging in nefarious activities intended to harm the company, some of which include:

• Hacking into a Sodexo education website, in knowing violation of federal computer crime laws, and posting a link to one of the union’s own websites where malicious and disparaging claims were made about Sodexo
• Infiltrating, under false pretenses, a prestigious medical conference and throwing plastic roaches onto the food being served by Sodexo
• Falsely claiming that the Company’s food production plants have “rodent problems” and scaring hospital patients by insinuating that Sodexo USA food contained bugs, rat droppings, mold, flies and maggots, and that Sodexo provided linens contaminated with the “remnants of someone else’s hospital waste”
• Harassing Sodexo USA employees by threatening to accuse them of wrongdoing

The complaint also describes, among many other things, activities that are similar to other instances of the SEIU’s exploitation of college students to manufacture outrage against Sodexo and opposition to the company’s food services on campus.

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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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I don’t usually engage in snarky posts, but every once in a while, I need a little snark to put a ridiculous situation into perspective.  So please indulge me for the next three minutes…

It’s a good thing the government’s taken over the student loan industry.  Now our precious young college students will receive every opportunity to spend hours learning in the college classroom, enlightening their minds and enriching their lives.

Oh wait, no, that’s not how that “free money” is spent.  Why use our hard earned tax dollars for an education when you can waste our money and spend that time instead on becoming a pawn in someone else’s propaganda?  Why not abuse the money that’s been confiscated from our paychecks at a time when we so desperately need it and instead enjoy the benefits of union indoctrination on your college campus?

So let me get this straight.  Students all across the country have suddenly all taken a collective interest in the economic performance of their university’s cafeteria?  So, instead of attending classes like grateful students excited to learn, they’re sitting in the middle of a busy intersection at a red light, arm in arm, donning their SEIU-provided purple shirt, blocking traffic and taking cops away from important things – like responding to emergencies.  And last week, 20 were arrested for doing this at Ohio State University.

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In the wake of yesterday’s terrible tragedy outside of Vancouver at the Whistler Sliding Center, where Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili sadly lost his life, safety is on the minds of many.  Only hours before the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, the 21-year old lost control of his sled at 88mph and was catapulted over the track wall into a steel support column.  All throughout the week, coaches, commentators, and even other Olympians have questioned the safety of the track, as nearly a dozen other athletes have also crashed during practice runs, including a Romanian women’s slider who was knocked unconscious and defending Olympic luge champion Armin Zoeggeler of Italy.

The President of the World Luge Federation said the track is too fast and thinks it is a planning mistake, while Australian luger Hannah Campbell-Pegg questioned whether athletes were being treated as “crash test dummies“.  The shocking footage of the accident was replayed all throughout the day and evening yesterday, leaving horrified viewers focused on discussion about the safety of the track.

But in all of this shock, horror and sadness over the tragic death of an athlete in his prime and the dangers of the track on which he lost his young life, what has the SEIU focused on?

Food safety. (Translated =  unionizing)

Reports of the horrible accident in Vancouver began surfacing in the press as early as 12:30 pm EST  Friday.  Yet, the SEIU still felt their unionization Food Safety concerns were so paramount that they went ahead and issued a press release anyway, after 5:00 pm EST:

“PRESS RELEASE:  Healthcare Union Raises Concerns Over Safety Of Food to be Served to Olympic Athletes at Vancouver Olympics“

“Sodexo is providing catering services for athletes during this key moment in their sporting careers, and we’re concerned about the food they will be providing,” charged the SEIU in Friday’s press release.

It’s not as though the SEIU could not have known about the tragedy  – the story had been broadcast all over the news for at least five hours before SEIU pushed out its attack.  If they didn’t know, then they’re even more disconnected from reality than we thought they were.

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