Latest SEIU target: The American Red Cross

In a stunning encore to its attacks on the Boy Scouts of America and the Grace Baptist Church, the Service Employees International Union has launched a strike against The American Red Cross Blood Services operation.  From Investor's Business Daily (via Big Government):

Big Labor: Is there any low to which the SEIU won't stoop? Now it's interrupting blood donations in a strike against the American Red Cross. The Boy Scouts and Baptist churches are also on unions' enemies list.

Demanding higher wages and better benefits, the Service Employees International Union on Wednesday launched a three-day strike against the Red Cross' blood donation operations. The job action comes as the nonprofit, in a realistic response to the weak economy, is cutting salaries, ending bonuses and reducing pensions.

SEIU thinks its members should not only be exempt from the Red Cross' efforts to live within its means, but actually get a raise.

But it's not about the money, you see. It's really about safety. "Cutting jobs, slashing wages and benefits of employees and cutting corners are affecting the safety of the blood supply," the union's Frank Hornick told the Parkersburg (W.Va.) News & Sentinel.

So SEIU's way to get a safe supply is to pay higher union wages? It's hardly compassion for consumers to hold 40% of the nation's blood supply hostage.

The union's strike probably won't affect blood supplies much, but it sends a message: Consumers who need transfusions come second to union wish lists. Feel safer now?

Parents of children with leukemia, cancer patients, victims of motor vehicle accidents and many others need blood products on a daily basis.  Blood donations typically decline in the summer as donors become busy with seasonal and family activities.  The SEIU's claim that its members are striking to protect the safety of the nation's blood supply is laughable on its face.

SEIU crossed the line with a police escort

When the Montgomery County (MD) Police responded to 911 calls to the home of Bank of America exec Gary Baer Sunday, they discovered that D.C. Metropolitan Police officers were already there.  What?  From Big Journalism:

The family of Greg Baer, Bank of America executive, is located in a jurisdiction protected by the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD), which responded promptly to a disturbance call from his neighborhood last weekend.

According to Corporal Dan Friz, an MCPD spokesperson in Rockville, Maryland, the department received a disturbance call from one of Baer’s neighbors at 4:10 pm last Sunday. Four MCPD units arrived at Baer’s Greenville Rd. address at 4:15 pm. At least two Metropolitan Police Department units from the nearby District of Columbia were already at the scene when they arrived.

Why? Because police cars attached to the Washington MPD’s Civil Disturbance Unit had escorted the SEIU protesters’ buses to Baer’s home. Such cross-jurisdictional escort activity is not uncommon for both departments according to Friz and Metro Police Department spokesperson Officer Eric Frost. Still, the District police did not inform their colleagues of what was about to happen in one of their Maryland neighborhoods.

Like birds of a feather, I guess D.C. unions stick together.

John Fund has an interesting comparison of media scrutiny of the Tea Parties and Unions at The Wall Street Journal.

SEIU thugs storm private residence of Bank of America exec

Last Sunday the Service Employees International Union doubled down on its largely ignored thuggery when it dispatched fourteen buses of protesters to the private home of a Bank of America executive in Washington D.C.  Fox News Contributor and Washington Bureau Chief for Fortune Magazine, Nina Easton, witnessed the whole spectacle from her home across the street:

Every journalist loves a peaceful protest-whether it makes news, shakes up a political season, or holds out the possibility of altering history. Then there are the ones that show up on your curb--literally.

Last Sunday, on a peaceful, sun-crisp afternoon, our toddler finally napping upstairs, my front yard exploded with 500 screaming, placard-waving strangers on a mission to intimidate my neighbor, Greg Baer. Baer is deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), a senior executive based in Washington, D.C. And that -- in the minds of the organizers at the politically influential Service Employees International Union and a Chicago outfit called National Political Action -- makes his family fair game.

Waving signs denouncing bank "greed," hordes of invaders poured out of 14 school buses, up Baer's steps, and onto his front porch. As bullhorns rattled with stories of debtor calls and foreclosed homes, Baer's teenage son Jack -- alone in the house -- locked himself in the bathroom. "When are they going to leave?" Jack pleaded when I called to check on him.

The police were called, but refused to arrest anyone for fear of further inciting the mob. Terrific.

Read the whole thing.

Liberty Chick provides entertaining coverage of SEIU's indignant and sophomoric response to Ms. Easton's reporting at Big Government.

Obama's big labor payback

President Obama made 15 recess appointments on Saturday, bypassing the Congress during its Easter recess.  The most controversial of these is Craig Becker whom the President placed on the National Labor Relations Board after his nomination was scotched by the Senate in a failed 52-33 cloture vote last month.  Becker is a leading lawyer for the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union, has a long and very public history of holding extreme pro-union positions.  The Wall Street Journal claims that Becker's appointment will have a devastating effect on workers rights:

Mr. Becker has written extensively about the National Labor Relations Act, the law that the NLRB interprets and enforces. In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, he said that the "core defect in union election law . . . is the employer's status as a party to labor representation proceedings" and that "employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees' election of representatives." In other words, employers should be barred from telling their employees they shouldn't unionize.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Becker tried to walk back this and other oft-expressed views, including a prior assertion that union-election rules can be rewritten by the NLRB without the consent of Congress. Now he says he'll defer to Congress if appointed, but the modern union movement is bloody-minded about the will to power and Mr. Becker is one of its fiercest partisans.

Time is running out—it has until Election Day—for Big Labor to get a vote in Congress to rig labor laws in its favor. Mr. Becker would give unions a majority at the NLRB and is their political Plan B. Recess appointments are the President's prerogative, but overriding the bipartisan Senate opposition to Mr. Becker would show once again that this White House dances to the tune of the left.

The National Right to Work Committee blogged about Becker before the appointment:

In other words, you can forget about employees getting truthful and non-coercive information about the downsides of unionization.

But there's more. Becker has publicly argued union goons should have the privilege to repeatedly harass workers at home until the workers sign "card check" union authorization cards; advocated allowing government arbiters impose contracts on workers without even allowing the workers to vote on the contract; and has even compared union organizing elections to US Congressional elections, stating that the only question decided in such elections should be which union gets monopoly control over workers, not whether they wish to remain independent and union free.

Mr. Becker's appointment is only part of Obama's payback to Big Labor that was essential to his election.  The Washington Times reminds us of an executive order the President signed last year:

Worse, Mr. Becker's appointment would not mark the end of the payback. An executive order Mr. Obama signed last year will go into effect soon, requiring federal contractors to have project labor agreements that effectively shut out the 85 percent of construction workers who are nonunionized and requiring contractors to make contributions to union pension funds. In other words, Big Labor will cash in while taxpayers are stuck with bills some 20 percent higher.

Rick Moran sums up the President's strategy succinctly at American Thinker:

Do we detect a pattern here? Obama can't get cap and trade through the senate so he tasks the EPA with doing the dirty work. Now that it looks like card check is stalled, Obama is "reaching out" to the NLRB to fulfill his dream of the Unionized States of America.

Oh, by the way - if Mr. Becker isn't radical enough for ya, how about Lesbian activist Chai Feldblum for EEOC commissioner who has promised never - repeat never - to rule in favor of religious liberty when opposed to sexual liberty.

Welcome to the new Mainstream.

This is unsettling announcement is unlikely to get any traction.  In addition to the fact that it was made under the news radar on a Saturday, it was made the day before the President took a surprise trip to Afghanistan.

Brilliant.

SEIU threatens legal action over Eagle Scout project in PA

A prospective Eagle Scout in Allentown, Pennsylvania has run afoul of the local Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city's largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

"We would hope that the well-intentioned efforts of an Eagle Scout candidate would not be challenged by the union," said Mayor Ed Pawlowski in an e-mail Friday. "This young man is performing a great service to the community. His efforts should be recognized as such."

Balzano said Saturday the union is still looking into the matter and might cut the city a break.

"We are probably going to let this one go," Balzano said .

Quite charitable of you Mr. Balzano.  What happened to the President' call to service?  And this from candidate Obama?

Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service.

We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we'll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom.

I guess $27 million in campaign contributions trumps the selfless contributions of this young American Eagle Scout.