SEIU's Disreputable Tactics Exposed, Turns Out We Were Right, Entirely

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.

As cold and hard as the manual seems, it certainly doens’t come as a surprise to regular observers of unions that such an item should exist. However, what comes as more unsettling are the tactics appraised in the manual. Vincent Vernuccio’s dissection of the manual in the Washington Times provides an excellent – and highly readable – look at some of the worst of those tactics.

We urge you to go get a better look for yourself, if not in the manual at least in the article, as we are at last provided with an – unwilling but public – acknowledgement of SEIU’s new strategy to organize workers: “don’t convince workers but force corporations”. Without boasting, that’s a direct validation of everything we’ve been claiming about the SEIU for more than a year.

With that perspective in mind, the manual clearly shows that SEIU’s tactic is to target shareholders. To do so, the union advocates “[damaging] an employer’s public image and ties with community leaders and organizations”. Now that hits a bit too close to our case.

By the same token, the union recommends using legal pressure to “threaten the employer with costly action by government agencies or the courts”, something that’s not without reminding us of the overload of complaints against Sodexo the SEIU has sent to the NRLB. It definitely seems like we’re gonna have a good time reading more of it. Stay tuned for more as we’ll keep on exploring the campaign manual in the following days.

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