southchild

Get ready for this “change”: Detroit-style health care. David Catron has a sobering tale of how, under Obama, the union attack dogs are about to be unleashed on our hospitals and health care institutions.

Please read Pay-to-Play Politics, the SEIU and Obamacare:

Anyone doubting that the SEIU will engage in harassment and deception to take over a health care organization should read the testimony that Karen Mayhew, an employee of Kaiser Permanente, gave before the U.S. House and Labor Committee in February of 2007. In the spring of 2005, the SEIU descended upon her Kaiser office and began what was essentially a “card check” campaign: “For the next 7 months, a union organizer … would incessantly approach us on our breaks, our lunch hours, even in the hallway on the way to the restroom.” To encourage employees to give in and sign “authorization cards,” union representatives told them they were merely agreeing to have a secret ballot election in which the employees would decide whether they wanted to be unionized.

This assertion was, predictably, an outright lie: “On October 17, 2005, my department was brought into a meeting with our senior management and told that as of that date, we were officially represented by the SEIU. There was never an election and no further information was available to us.” The union had acquired the signatures of 50% of the employees, plus one, and now claimed to represent all of the workers. Naturally, Ms. Mayhew and her fellow employees were very angry. Eventually, they were able to escape the SEIU’s clutches by filing an Unfair Labor Practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. NLRB scrutiny revealed the obvious — the union had conducted a deceptive organizing campaign and then bullied Kaiser into acquiescence.

These Kaiser employees succeeded because the NLRB’s Division of Advice took their complaint very seriously and acted accordingly. It is lucky for Mayhew, et al that their complaint was processed before the advent of the Obama Administration. Even without EFCA, it is unlikely that an NLRB packed with Obama appointees would have come to their rescue. The passage of card check, combined a union-friendly Labor Relations Board and a Labor Secretary who has been a staunch proponent of health care unionization, would make such workers easy prey for the SEIU. With EFCA in its arsenal, the SEIU’s march through health care would make Sherman’s march to the sea seem diffident by comparison.

Nor will Stern and the SEIU be diffident in their demand that the new President make good on his substantial debt to them. Indeed, Stern has made it clear that he expects EFCA to be introduced during the first 100 days of the new Congress-with the full support of the new administration. And Barack Obama, having cut his teeth in Chicago’s pay-to-play political culture, knows what the consequences will be if he doesn’t cooperate. It doesn’t matter that unionization of our medical delivery system will exacerbate health care inflation while stifling badly needed innovation. And allusions to Detroit will fall on deaf ears. The SEIU has paid. Now it expects to play. The President-elect knows the rules of the game. So, expect Obamacare to come with a union label.

It’s change you’ll die for. Literally.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 12:43 pm and is filed under General, libtopia, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.