The Devil at My Doorstep Read online

  All this life experience was carried into the first job at Central Soya where I was appointed a supervisor in the experimental feed mill. The pay was decent as the employees and I tested different feed additives and new processes and machines to produce feed faster, more economically, and with better quality and better results. We worked with nutritionists and scientists who formulated feeds from a nutritional standpoint providing more durable feeds resulting in less waste and better conversion for the farmers. We set up experiments, monitored them, and prepared reports. Under my supervision were 10 union people, grain millers, who worked at a plant nearby. At some point, there was a strike and I watched carefully how the process worked—all with respect, as my grandfather had been a truck driver and a member of the Teamsters, and my uncle, a printer and member of his union for a while. Whether an employee was union or not made no difference to me—they would get a square deal based on their willingness to work hard and follow the plant rules.

  One important lesson I learned occurred when a union member named Gary who was a tough cuss caught me not wearing my hard hat during a walk across the plant to talk to my boss. With a look of disfavor on his roly-poly face, he took his hard hat off and slammed it on the ground while saying, “If you don’t have to wear your hard hat, I don’t either.” Realizing this was a strong challenge to my authority by a man who was probably 15 years or so older, I walked over and slowly but deliberately picked up his hard hat. Looking Gary straight in the eye, I boldly told him, “Don’t you ever do that again. If you do, I’m going to write you up and I’m going to take you down the discipline path. C’mon, let’s not start off like this. I’d rather work together with you than against you.”

  Gary stood silent for a couple of beats while I nervously waited for his reply. Perhaps my height and girth helped me a bit, but without hesitation, Gary put the hard hat on, smiled at me, and walked away. From that day on I never had another problem with any of the guys working for me.

  Apparently my management skills must have impressed the powers that be, because within about 18 months, I was offered a plant superintendent’s job in Michigan. The plant was unionized, and once again, I was able to learn how unions worked. I appreciated what they were trying to do for the employees and worked with them when problems occurred. Each day, I had experiences teaching me more about management and how to work with employees to improve production. My philosophy was simple—if they did well, the company did well, and then we all did well as profits were good, causing management and the big bosses to do well. Smiles all around.

  Right away, I realized that the Michigan plant-working conditions were a mess—dirty and unfair to the workers. Several factors contributed to this, and I made it my priority to clean up the plant. One worker named Gerald, a rebel of sorts, wasn’t exactly a fan of mine. His dad was a big-shot farmer in the area, but they didn’t get along so Gerald worked for us. One day, he walked into my office with a sour look on his face and told me he “wasn’t paying attention” and had made a huge mistake mixing dairy feed with hog feed. He told me with emphasis that I needed to call the home office and get some advice as to what to do. I cleared my throat, thought a minute, and then replied that I didn’t need to call, but instead “Here is what we’re going to do. I want you to get a ladder, safety harness, rope and some buckets, and I want you to go get your best friend in the plant, lower yourself into the bin, shovel off the feed that’s on top into buckets, have your friend hoist it up and put it in the bin next to it.” Gerald’s eyes bulged a bit and he looked at me like I was crazy, but before he could answer I told him that the mistake was his responsibility and next time he should be more careful. He kind of snarled at me before leaving. About half an hour later, I went to check on what was occurring, and sure enough, there was the guy I knew as Gerald’s best friend working with him separating the feed. The process took a couple of days, but Gerald learned a good lesson, that he had to take responsibility for his own mistakes. And I learned that instead of getting upset with employees who make mistakes, the better way was to simply work with them to correct the problem with mutual respect as the cornerstone.

  A move cross-country was next in line for Barb and me. The decades of the 1980s, when Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan ruled the political world, had just begun when Central Soya transferred me to their Abilene, Kansas plant. But a true blessing had occurred as well with our daughter Kelly joining the family. She and Barb stayed in Michigan for a time as I approached the new plant with caution as no worthy management/employee relationships were in place. To make it even more difficult, the previous plant manager had apparently abused some of the employees. The camaraderie was nil, and worse, the plant was filthy with break rooms and locker rooms unsightly. Needless to say quality, production, and customer service were low!

  From day one, I first began to learn about the employees and attempted to secure good solid, but arms-length relationships with them. Paramount was making them feel as if they were members of a team as we cleaned up the break rooms, locker rooms, warehouse, the production floors, and patched leaks in the roof where raindrops fell through. Slowly, the employees responded to the fair treatment and quality improved. We addressed a problem with inadequate lighting, but my boss wouldn’t budge when I asked for help. To raise the money necessary, I sold a big pile of scrap equipment to a local junk dealer to purchase and install high-pressure sodium lights in the warehouse so the employees could see and do their jobs safely and productively, which held with my belief that if you treat people right, they will treat you right. My boss was happy also, because I killed two birds with one stone, improving work conditions and getting rid of an obscene pile of junk.

  Within a year, we had turned the plant around and instead of it being in the bottom five, production-wise, it was now in the top five. There were no grievances filed and employee problems were few. When the employees screwed up, I called them on it, but they knew I was going to be fair and not kick them when they were down. One such example was with a warehouse fellow nicknamed Tex. I was walking through the warehouse one afternoon after lunch and I caught Tex, a mid-fifties guy sitting on a bag of feed sleeping. I gently nudged Tex’s foot with my toe and he came awake wide-eyed and screamed, “Please don’t fire me.” I said, “Tex you know me better than that, but I need you to set an example for the rest of the crew.” From that day on Tex was one of the best leaders we had at the plant. If they weren’t doing their job, it was addressed, but it was addressed in a professional and sincere way. Easy as pie really—the Golden Rule—treat others as you want to be treated. A workable approach if ever there was one.

  Unfortunately, there are many managers in every company who handle such situations poorly and create bad attitudes toward the company. It does not mean the company is bad, but it has a management challenge it needs to fix! This is the type of scenario union organizers prey and feed upon so they can make the company look bad. Isolated incidents happen in all companies, even the best-run ones.

  SEIU Background

  WHILE I WAS IMMERSED IN SPREADING MY WINGS IN MANAGEMENT, labor unions were still a giant part of American industry. One in particular had a rich history.

  In 1921, according to the SEIU website, “members of seven janitorial unions dared to dream they could build their strength by forming a single organization, the Building Service Employees Union.” Consisting of “mostly immigrant workers chartered by the AFL,” and a constituency including janitors, elevator operators, and window washers, the BSEU changed its name to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in 1968. Twelve years later, the International Jewelry Workers Union merged with SEIU with a later addition of the Drug, Hospital, and Health Care Employees Union. Based on this rich history, Chicago-based Local 1 is still organizing workers as of 2009 more than 40 years after SEIU was born.

  SEIU officials boast that “during and following the Great Depression, the union was the first in the country to help other service workers, hospital caregivers and
public employees unite together.” This, in turn, paved “the way for the modern SEIU’s three core industries: property management, public service, and health care.”

  To bolster signs of progress as the years passed, SEIU notes that its membership “has grown from six hundred and twenty-five thousand in 1980 to more than two million today.” Key to this success, the website suggests, during a time when the majority of organized labor was shrinking, SEIU was aggressively uniting workers’ strength, largely in the growing service industries. This permitted the union by the year 2000 to “become the largest and fastest growing union in North America.”

  SEIU members include those working in more than 100 occupations across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. During its existence, it was part of the AFL–CIO umbrella organization, but winds of change began to circulate when SEIU President John Sweeney assumed command in 1995. Into the fray came a former social worker named Stern, who replaced Sweeney. By 2003, SEIU became a founding member of the “New Unity Partnership,” a collection of unions seeking reform with an eye on increased union membership. Two years later, SEIU joined with other unions to form the “Change to Win Coalition,” an organization bent on further reform while distancing itself from the old line AFL–CIO. When the AFL–CIO, the umbrella union, failed to listen to the SEIU and other union demands for change prior to the 2005 AFL–CIO convention, the winds of change began. The SEIU, the Change to Win Coalition, the Teamsters Union led by James Hoffa’s son, and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, disaffiliated with the AFL–CIO.

  Intentions to increase membership paid off with SEIU seizing control of additional workers in Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. In Houston, more than 5,000 janitors joined the union where few had belonged before. In Florida, SEIU organized a lengthy strike at the University of Miami using strong-arm tactics including a hunger strike by employees. More than 400 janitors finally joined the union with another 600 joining from a well-known medical center in the same city. These efforts pointed to SEIU’s success at recruiting low-wage sector employees, many women, minorities, and immigrants using a strategy labeled “social movement organizing.” During 2006/2007, this movement would prove especially effective in Oregon where the union organized homecare workers and family-child-providers to become an effective bargaining agent with the state.

  Among the most high profile of the union locals was the United Healthcare Workers East with a membership topping 250,000 and the Exotic Dancers Union in San Francisco, the only peep show/strip club local in the country. SEIU’s “Justice for Janitors” campaign was memorialized in the film, Bread and Roses, and the character Jerry Markovic in the hit television series ER wore an SEIU T-shirt symbolic of the union’s representation of more than a quarter million hospital service workers.

  Predictably, the union has drawn its share of criticism with two websites, www.seiuexposed.com and www.unionfacts.com packed with anti-SEIU criticism. On the former, the headlines are quite bombastic: “SEIU overloads hospital emergency rooms—threatening your care at a time of need,” “SEIU busts union drives of its own employees and gives millions of dollars to groups that are accused of fighting union drives,” “SEIU officials sell out their member interests to boost the union’s bottom line,” and “SEIU bosses have been busted for political crimes accused of stealing from their own members.” Portrayed above this final allegation are two hands cuffed behind a man’s back.

  Details provided on the “seiuexposed” website as to SEIU’s business practices include information regarding union busting where employees filed suit against SEIU for the union’s unfair treatment of its employer including allegations of “bullying” and forcing “an unfair contract including a demand to waive legally protected rights.” Former SEIU organizer Kevin Funk was quoted: “[SEIU is] characterized by an often subtle yet convoluted net of deceit, fear-mongering, incompetence, and, in fact, union busting.”

  Further evidence of SEIU’s destructive tendencies include the “seiuexposed” website’s link between the union and the controversial community group, ACORN, which rose to prominence during the 2008 election regarding its connection to then presidential candidate Barack Obama. The website concluded ACORN actually operated two SEIU locals (880 and 100) and trained union employees to “plan and execute PR smear campaigns against SEIU-targeted companies.” In 2006, the website alleged, SEIU contributed more than 2.5 million dollars to ACORN.

  On its “Crime and Corruption” page, the website provides several instances of wrongdoing on the part of SEIU. Among them was an incident in Los Angeles where “SEIU members were victimized by one of the most appalling cases of union corruption in recent history,” when Martin Ludlow, a city council candidate, was sentenced for “conspiracy to illegally funnel money from SEIU Local 99 to his campaign.” Additional “scandals” included a June 2006 ruling by the NLRB that SEIU “interfered with the free choice of employees by illegally making promises to waive initiation fees.” In California, a federal judge ruling ordered an SEIU local to pay 37,000 dollars as “punishment for failing to give members adequate information about how the union was spending employees’ agency fees,” and in Portland, Oregon, a disgruntled 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 website pronounced, the union agreed to suspend its “card check” organizing campaign after “employees alleged that the union relied on out-of-date cards and deceived or coerced employees into supporting the union.”

  Under “Terrible Tactics,” the www.seiuexposed.com alleged that 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.’” This was done, the website suggested, so “the hospital’s emergency room [would be] flooded with extra patients brought in by union officials who were simply trying to make life miserable on the health care facility targeted by an organizing drive.” Quoted was a Catholic Healthcare Partner’s spokesman who said, “We’re not opposed to unions; we’re opposed to SEIU’s tactics.”

  In Hartford, Connecticut, the website reported, SEIU’s harassing attempts to cause an employer to cave in to union demands resulted in protests against the union by the very employees it was trying to organize. According to the website, complaints included “No one wants you here. You’re not ever going to get voted in here. You’ve hurt us too much. Why would we have someone represent us who’s kicked us,” and “You’re basically strangling our income. Why would we want to join a union that wants to choke us into submission to let you in.” In California, after an alleged scam involving nursing home operators and inflated-dues paying, an SEIU member was quoted as saying, “To them, we are a huge ATM machine.”

  At www.unionfacts.com, the “Center for Union Facts” gathered a wealth of information about the “size, scope, political activities, and criminal activity of the labor movement in the United States of America.” Defending against those who questioned its motives, the site stated it was “a non-profit organization supported by foundations, businesses, union members, and the general public. We are dedicated to showing Americans the truth about today’s union leadership.” To the question of “Are you against unions,” the website text reads, “No. We are against union officials’ abuse of power, often at the expense of their own rank-and-file members. We are against corruption, violence, and intimidation. We are against the misuse of union dues. We support employees who elect to join a union, as well as the right of employees to remain non-union without intimidation.”

  According to the website reports and additional information gained through various media releases, the SEIU strategy to gather more members into its fold centered on its political agenda. The www.seiuexposed.com website suggested “to maintain its membership growth, SEIU uses its members’ money t
o build political power. It uses that power to bully legislators and coerce business leaders and to make quid pro quo agreements with politicians that cost taxpayers millions of dollars.” Perhaps the poster boy for such conduct is the scandalized former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. According to the website posting, SEIU and other strong unions supported the candidate and in return, “[He] agreed to support recognition and collective bargaining rights for both homecare and family child-care providers if he were elected governor.” When this occurred, he did just that: “granting collective bargaining rights to over 20,000 personal assistants (homecare workers).”

  In lockstep with the disgraced and indicted Blagojevich was Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, who, after being supported with more than a 130,000 dollar contribution from SEIU, promptly acted in the union’s favor as payback. Perhaps these incidents are indicative of what SEIU President Stern meant by the comment, “We [SEIU] use the persuasion of power.” If so, this power push backfired when the union was caught with its hand in the cookie jar after allegations surfaced that the union had interceded in the selection process for Obama’s replacement in the Senate. According to the Washington Post, “Blagojevich and his chief of staff wondered aloud about a ‘three-way deal’ in which he would appoint Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman . . . to Obama’s Senate seat.” In the complaint alleging the governor’s wrongdoing in attempting to “sell the seat,” apparently Blagojevich spoke in mid-November 2008 with “an SEIU official” based on the belief that the “official was an emissary to discuss Jarrett’s interest in the Senate seat.” Finally, reporter Alex MacGillis reported, Blagojevich in return would become Change to Win’s executive director; and Obama would reward Change to Win with pro-labor policies.” Messy story—an unpleasant one for Stern and SEIU.