Organizing Tactics
$17 Million Verdict Against Unite Here for "fraud, malice, and oppression"
UNITE HERE officials didn’t want Angelica employees to join the union through the normal process of organizing by holding an election with private ballots overseen by the government. Instead, union leaders decided they would pressure the company’s customer, Sutter Health to pressure Angelica to hand its employees over to UNITE HERE. How did they pressure Sutter? The union leaders turned to dirty organizing tactics: they sent a nasty postcard that told expectant mothers they should avoid the Sutter facility or their babies might become sick.
A California jury decided that UNITE HERE had to clean up its act. They convicted the union of “fraud, malice, and oppression.” They also hit the union with a $17 million verdict!
In court testimony, UNITE HERE’s top lawyer said the union would not send out the same postcard again. When asked why, he said, “Well, I could give you 16 million reasons why not actually. It is not something we’ll do again. We have changed our practices.” But later a newspaper reported a UNITE HERE spokeswoman “said the union hasn’t changed its organizing strategy since the verdict came down.”
Apparently the union’s leaders haven’t changed their aggressive organizing ways when it comes to the medical field. In February 2007, St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin filed a lawsuit against UNITE HERE, stating that the union was trying to get patients to not pay their hospital bills and to sue the hospital. The union settled the lawsuit.
Tell UNITE HERE’s leaders to clean up their act!
Spying
UNITE HERE leaders have long tried to contact employees at their homes by obtaining their DMV records – even though it seems they knew it was wrong (even illegal).
In 2006, a U.S. District judge ordered UNITE HERE to pay employees of the Cintas laundry and apparel company $2,500 each (plus attorneys’ fees and other costs) for unlawfully accessing the employees’ personal information. Union organizers in Pennsylvania had obtained the employees’ home addresses by illegally tracking license plate numbers in their DMV records. The labor leaders had used that information to make unannounced, unwanted visits to their homes and to contact family members.
The judge further noted that the union may owe Cintas employees as much as $5 million plus attorneys’ fees — which would have to be paid out of UNITE HERE members’ paychecks!
