This article highlights some questionable activities during the SEIU Healthcare’s organizing drive. If these PCAs can get an investigation into SEIU Healthcare started, look for that investigation to thin out SEIU leadership. Several statements in the article are important for the readers to hear about.
First, Russ Brown, who is helping with the law firm’s investigation, said “We had about three teams of canvassers, we started doing postal mailings, we started doing phone banks and a website. That was based on a list that we believed to be mostly good. We were thinking the list might be off by as much as fifteen to twenty percent. As it turned out the list was mostly bad.”
The next paragraph states “Some addresses led to empty lots where there was no house. Others led to homes where people lived that didn’t match the name provided on the list. The questionable list, however, wasn’t the only thing amiss. The campaign also alleges identity theft, unlawful due deductions, and voter disenfranchisement of those opposed.”
Then there’s this:
“There was just a lot of different weird things going on,” Brown said. “At the places where we would find people we would hear stories about how all of a sudden their dues were being taken out of their Medicaid payments and they specifically told the union they were not interested.”
Then there’s this, too:
“One woman believes very strongly and provided evidence that the union forged her signature on an authorization card,” CWF Executive Director Matt Patterson told InsideSources. “The basic picture this paints, in my view, is that the election was highly suspect, and there was possibly identify theft.”
“She is absolutely certain the union forged her signature in order to take money from her,” Patterson said. “You wonder how many people this happened to that just never noticed or they just didn’t complain about it or whatever. We suspect the number is fairly high because if they did this to one person, it probably wasn’t just one person.”
This isn’t the first time that a public employee union did questionable things. After the DFL legislature passed a forced unionization bill, reports started popping up from in-home child-care providers that the union organizers told them that the cards they were signing weren’t cards asking for a unionization vote. The organizers instead said that they were cards saying they wanted more information on the bill.
When the vote finally happened, AFSCME was defeated, losing 1,014-392.
Does this sound like SEIU Healthcare is on the up-and-up?
“At one point they turned over a list that had nothing but names on it,” Brown said. “There was no other information at all. It was just names. So we cross referenced that list with the [other] list, and we found they didn’t match. And that took place about two weeks before we got the actual supposed real list, which we cross referenced, and it didn’t match that list. It was like the state was making up names and throwing them at us.”
Finally, there’s this:
SEIU Healthcare Minnesota has hit back against the decertification campaign. The union alleged the campaign has coerced members into signing cards to authorize the decertification vote. SEIU organizer Phillip Cryan sent a letter listing 12 members who claimed to have been coerced by the canvassers. Brown notes only two of the names listed were on the membership lists the state provided.
“He sent us a letter stating that our canvassers coerced the PCAs,” Brown said. “So I got these ten cards supposedly signed by people where my canvassers went to their door, which is impossible because if we never had their name or address, we just wouldn’t do that. If we don’t know they’re there, we didn’t know they existed.”
That’d be a nifty trick … if it was possible, which it isn’t. SEIU better hope a full-fledged investigation doesn’t get started. If it’s launched, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota might be in trouble.
