SEIU Arbitrates Life or Death

In two recent reports revolving around the Service Employee International Union have shown their callous disregard for human life, in the name of contract negotiations and community awareness. First, the well publicized snow slowdown job in New York City.

As reported by the New York Post:

Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts — a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned. “They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.The snitches “didn’t want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation,” Halloran said. “They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file.”New York’s Strongest used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process — and pad overtime checks — which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.

The second instance occurred at a Kentucky Hospital reported by the Ironton Tribune:

The complaint alleges the union violated federal statutes by causing hundreds of automated telephone calls to be made to KDMC, but the union claimed it was in full compliance with the law.

According to the allegations, in December, “SEIU, through its agents and representatives, and acting in concert with Unknown Defendants, commenced a telephone calling campaign directed at KDMC’s hospital facilities.”

The complaint also stated that these calls obstructed and unlawfully interfered with KDMC’s business operation and its ability to provide medical care and related services to its patients by tying up phone lines for all numbers and extensions within KDMC, including emergency services and other medical departments, patient rooms, security and administration.

Joyce Gibson, SEIU organizational representative of hospital division, response to the allegations:

“The purpose of the calls was to bring awareness to the community and let the community know that the hospital gave out, after they laid everybody off in July of 2010, turned around and gave $1.1 million in bonuses in November to executives at that hospital.”

Gibson also said, “It was to bring the community awareness of what is going on at that hospital in terms of CEO and executive pay when they’re trying to impose wage freezes on healthcare workers who work at that hospital along with eliminating their pension and impose triple healthcare costs and extreme healthcare deductibles out of pocket.”

These accounts establish for moral, not political, grounds to disband any and all unions who choose proving a point over human life. In the New York slow down several people died because of the inability of ambulances to maneuver through the snow and countless more were held prisoner in their cars unable to get out of the blizzard. In Kentucky SEIU had no problem tying up emergency lines, used to save lives, of the hospital to harass employees of KDMC. Negotiating contracts and informing communities of injustices cannot come at the expense of the lives of American citizens. A stand needs to be taken against such atrocities because it is clear the strategy of the SEIU is “victory at all costs.”