SEIU’s Zac Altefogt Joins Purple Pinocchios

SEIU at Labor Notes and Zac Altefogt

Remember how SEIU officials rigged the contract-ratification votes at Luther Manor Nursing Home and Mercy Health Partners’ Hackley Hospital… even going so far as to stuff ballot boxes and block union members from voting?

Well, here’s what SEIU’s Communications Director Zac Altefogt told the Muskegon Chronicle after Hackley’s workers delivered a landslide defeat to SEIU in last week’s NLRB election:

“We're a democratic union, and that was their choice,” Altefogt said of a group that SEIU began representing in 2007 at the time of the Mercy-Hackley hospital merger. “We provided this group with a strong first contract. People can join a union or leave it at any time.”

Yeah right… Looks like Zac has conveniently forgotten how SEIU has blocked workers’ NLRB elections for up to 2 ½ years in an effort to stop them from leaving SEIU. Or how SEIU committed such severe violations of federal labor laws that a judge tossed out the largest private-sector union election in the past 70 years.  

Well, it turns out this isn’t the first time that Zac has massively misinformed the Michigan media. Readers might remember an infamous episode that took place in Dearborn, Michigan in 2008. That’s when SEIU sent busloads of people to attack a Labor Notes conference attended by union reformers from 50 unions throughout the U.S.  During the attack, SEIU knocked workers to the floor and even bloodied a 67-year-old woman who ended up in a nearby hospital's emergency room. And tragically, an SEIU homecare worker named David Smith died of a heart attack during SEIU’s assault.

So how did Zac -- after summoning every ounce of integrity -- describe SEIU’s attack on the Labor Notes conference to Detroit’s Metro Times newspaper?

"It was a peaceful protest," says Zac Altefogt, spokesman for SEIU Healthcare Michigan.

Just recently, Tasty discovered that Zac knew the event wasn’t gonna be a peaceful even before it happened. Here’s a message that Zac sent through SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s twitter account in the days leading up to the attack: "Getting ready to RAID the RAD!"   “RAD” refers to Rose Ann DeMoro (the Executive Director of the California Nurses Association), who was gonna speak at the conference and was the focus of SEIU’s attack that day.

As you can see, it's no great wonder that "Zac" rhymes with "hack" -- because he's a big one.

P.S.  For analysis of last week’s election at Hackley Hospital, check out this article by journalist Mike Elk in In These Times.

Michigan Hospital Workers Join NUHW in Landslide Vote!

Today, technical workers at Mercy Health Partner's Hackley Hospital in Muskegon joined NUHW in a blow-out election victory over SEIU. The final tally of the NLRB election was 65 (NUHW), 9 (SEIU) and 3 (No Union). A total of 92 workers were eligible to vote in the election.

The technical workers first asked the NLRB to hold an election nine months ago, but SEIU officials worked overtime to block and stall the election while they ran rigged contract-ratification votes. Meanwhile, Dave Regan flew Amado David and other California staffers to Michigan to beg workers to stay in SEIU.

The Hackley caregivers are the second group of Michigan workers to join NUHW in recent months. In September, workers at Luther Manor Nursing Home in Saginaw voted by a two-to-one margin to join NUHW.

SEIU's local union in Michigan is well-known for its corruption and ineffectiveness. In 2008, Rickman Jackson was removed as President of SEIU Healthcare Michigan after stealing more than $30,000 from SEIU members. SEIU’s top officials promptly appointed him to a $130,000-a-year staff position inside the Purple Palace.

Jackson’s replacement in Michigan, Marge Faville, is well known for nepotism and corruption… including a $160,000-a-year salary, a union-paid SUV and a union-paid apartment -- despite the fact that most of the union’s members earn only $8 an hour.

Faville is reportedly so busy stuffing wads of cash into her pockets that she's forgotten to have SEIU staffers actually respond to members’ calls for help or to make sure employers are actually honoring their union contracts.

Sounds like NUHW members will be getting more calls from Michigan workers! Congratulations, Hackley workers!

Michigan Workers Vote NUHW!

This just in. The NLRB finished counting the ballots from today’s election at Luther Manor Nursing Home and… workers voted by more than a two-to-one margin to leave SEIU and join NUHW! The final tally was 47 (NUHW), 22 (SEIU), 1 (No Union) and 4 challenged ballots.

Sounds like it’s been quite a week for Luther Manor workers. Last weekend, SEIU tried to lure workers to a barbeque where SEIU promised to raffle off a flat-screen TV. Then, SEIU deployed 15 organizers who knocked on workers’ doors and pushed a fear campaign to try to convince them to stay in SEIU. This morning, when workers arrived at work, they found 8 purple-shirted SEIU organizers standing on the corner near the nursing home trying to offer workers free coffee and donuts.

In the end, all of SEIU’s tricks, bribes and threats weren’t enough to overcome workers who stood strong through repeated rounds of SEIU’s hookin’ & crookin’ … from backroom deals with the boss … to ballot-box stuffing … to SEIU’s forced re-votes of already-rejected contract deals.

The workers are NUHW’s first members in Michigan.  Although not for long. Workers at CHP’s Hackley Hospital are waiting for the NLRB to cut through SEIU’s stalling tactics so they can have their vote. Congrats, Luther Manor workers!!

Crookin' in Michigan -- Round 3

Just nine weeks after the NLRB found SEIU guilty of threatening Kaiser workers during last year’s giant NLRB election, SEIU is doing it again -- this time in Michigan. Here’s what’s going on.

On Friday September 23, workers at Luther Manor Nursing Home will be voting on whether to dump SEIU and join NUHW. Workers requested the NLRB election back in March, but SEIU has been using bogus “blocking” charges to stall the election since then. As the election gets closer, SEIU organizers have been threatening workers that they’ll lose all their benefits and scheduled pay increases if they vote for NUHW. (Sound familiar, Kaiser workers?).

Readers might remember that in early September, SEIU used every dirty trick in the book to ram through a new contract despite workers’ strong opposition. Why was SEIU so desperate to ram through its contract? Because SEIU’s new contract just happens to schedule workers’ next pay increase for right after the NLRB election. This sets the stage so SEIU can threaten workers that they’ll lose next month’s scheduled pay raise if they vote for NUHW.

Of course, SEIU’s threats are total lies. Not only did the NLRB find SEIU guilty of illegally threatening Kaiser workers, but a federal judge found SEIU’s corporate bunkmate, Kaiser CEO George Halvorson, guilty of illegally withholding more than $1 million of scheduled pay increases and benefits from the Southern California workers who’d earlier voted to dump SEIU and join NUHW.

So, Mr. NLRB Man, Tasty humbly requests that you do something about repeat offenders like SEIU. Come on… can’t you do something? Here’s an idea: What about locking the SEIU officials in a room and forcing them to read Andy Stern’s crappy-ass book over and over again? Or what about forcing Stan Lyles to play his video about SEIU’s backroom deals during SEIU-UHW’s upcoming Leadership Conference in Fresno?

PS. Remember this post about SEIU stuffing the ballot box so they could steal the 2nd ratification vote at Luther Manor? Well, it turns out SEIU’s vote fraud was even worse than Tasty first reported. Right after the fraudulent SEIU vote, the NLRB published a list of all the SEIU members employed at the nursing home as part of the NLRB's routine preparations for the upcoming decertification election.

Guess what? There were only 79 SEIU members at the facility -- not 84, like SEIU said. That means that SEIU stuffed the ballot box with almost more votes (77) than the number of actual workers (79). If you wanna believe SEIU’s vote totals, then a whopping 98% of the nursing home’s workers turned out to vote during a two-hour period in the middle of the day… even though all of the night shift workers were still asleep in their beds.

Hey, Marge, don’t you think you cut your ballot-stuffing scheme a little too close for comfort? You might wanna study the numbers a bit more carefully before your next attempt at stealing the vote!

Crookin’ in Michigan-- Round Two

On Friday -– just three days before Labor Day –- SEIU offered an odd tribute to America’s workers when SEIU's members at Luther Manor Nursing Home were forced to re-vote a sell-out contract deal that they’d already rejected a week earlier.

So why did SEIU decide to shred workers’ first vote? According to SEIU officials, workers simply hadn’t understood the ballot. Hmmm… Too confusing? ... a “yes” or “no” vote on their own pay and working conditions? Guess it had nothing to do with SEIU being upset that workers rejected SEIU's concessionary contract.

So on Friday, SEIU dug deeper into its bag of dirty tricks to ram through the contract. SEIU dispatched two of SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s top officers -- Secretary Treasurer Johnnie Jolliffi and Recording Secretary Sheila Guinn –- to run the re-vote by the nursing home’s 84 workers.

Like in San Diego, SEIU pressured workers inside the polling place to accept the deal. In fact, Tasty hears that Secretary Treasurer Johnnie Jolliffi, who got paid $140,000 from members' dues money last year, resorted to yelling at Luther Manor's workers when they challenged the misinformation she was feeding them.

But that’s not all… Workers report that SEIU resorted to old-fashioned ballot stuffing. Jolliffi and Guinn reportedly allowed SEIU supporters to mark extra ballots for “their friends who couldn’t make it.” And they apparently let other people vote, even though they weren’t even in the bargaining unit.

The results? Let's take a look at the numbers. During workers' first vote (that’s the one that SEIU later shredded), workers rejected the contract by a margin of 36 (No) to 26 (Yes). In the re-vote, the same 36 workers voted “No,” but SEIU miraculously produced 15 more votes for its side so it could “win” by a tally of 36 (No) to 41 (Yes). 

Quite a feat… a 92% turnout of the nursing home’s 84 workers… in just a two-hour period… even though many graveyard workers were still sleeping.  

Tasty wonders if SEIU President Mary Kay Henry happened to share SEIU’s profound commitment to ballot-rigging and vote-stealing when she joined Obama today for a Labor Day event in Detroit. Somehow, Tasty thinks that topic probably didn’t make it into her purple talking points.

SEIU Michigan: “United We Beg!”

What’s the latest from Michigan? Well, SEIU put out a leaflet telling workers at MHP’s Hackley Hospital to ratify the bad contract deal negotiated by SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s president Marge Faville. The only problem is… the leaflet doesn’t really inspire lots of confidence in SEIU. Here’s how the leaflet ends:

“United We Beg”???  Hmm… Was this an inadvertent mistake by Marge’s children, who hold down several positions on the union staff? Or is Marge finally coming clean about her strategy for contract negotiations?

Tasty can’t wait to see Marge’s next leaflet!

SEIU: Hookin’ & Crookin’ in Michigan

Many readers will be familiar with the dirty tricks that SEIU is using in Michigan. Here’s what’s going on:

Workers report that SEIU just cut a backroom deal with Mercy Health Partners’ Hackley Hospital in Muskegon, Michigan. The tentative contract settlement would apparently hit workers with a wage cut of 6%-11% over the life of the contract by letting management push more health insurance costs and other benefits costs onto the backs of workers.

So how’s SEIU trying to sell this bad deal to union members?

First, SEIU waged a fake fight against the hospital to try to rally workers’ support for the deal. SEIU staged an informational picket at the hospital, and then hours later SEIU Healthcare Michigan president Marge Faville announced she had miraculously reached a wonderful deal for workers (…that’s the bad deal that Faville cut before the picket).

Next, SEIU pushed workers to ratify the deal while conveniently refusing to provide them with copies of the tentative agreements (TAs). Here’s one worker’s report:

After many phone calls and messages to the SEIU union hall, I finally spoke with Norma Kersting on Friday, who referred me to Matt Carpenter. I asked him to fax me the tentative agreements so I could review them over the weekend. He said they didn't want them to “proliferate through the department” and he didn't have time to fax them. SEIU must have a very difficult procedure to fax, because our way is very quick and easy. He told me to come to the “informational” meetings on Monday and gave me the times. When I told him that I couldn't make any of those times, he said I could come to the union hall any time, staff would be there all day, and that because of the "really complicated language" he would need to sit down and "explain it all" to me. No Matt, all I need you to explain to me is why I can't see the TAs that will have a major effect on my life.

Here’s what another worker wrote:

They act like people are stupid and they need their wisdom to figure things out. It's insulting. We can read and use a calculator. And if this is a good contract like they claim, then why are they scared of people seeing it?

Hmm… Marge?? Tasty realizes you have a lot on your mind. There’s your $160,000-a-year salary, your union-paid SUV (price: $47,242) and your union-paid corporate apartment for those weekend trips to the big city ($17,600 per year). And then, of course, there are the union staff jobs you gave to your daughter, son and niece.

Despite the many pressures of your job, Tasty humbly suggests that you tell your salaried children to photocopy the TAs. Then, you should hop in your fancy SUV and deliver those TAs to the workers, who're the ones who actually pay your salary (umm, and the kids' salaries, too). Tasty hears the workers kinda really wanna see what you agreed to with their boss.

Oh, and by the way, Marge. No need to swing by Luther Manor Nursing Home in Saginaw. The workers there saw through SEIU’s bag of tricks. Last week, they voted down a separate sell-out contract settlement that you were trying to push down their throats, by hook or crook, SEIU-style.

The SEIU Charm Offensive Continues

Since SEIU has a pretty significant problem in Michigan they have sent a load of SEIU staff out there to "calm" the workers.

So the workers have gotten used to seeing SEIU staff at their facilities. Olga Vasquez, CNA, from Luther Manor is a NUHW supporter, and she wasn't surprised to see SEIU supporters and staff in her facility trying to stop workers from choosing NUHW...but she was surprised when one of SEIU's staff FLIPPED HER THE BIRD!

Nice, SEIU.

In more Michigan News...Maybe another Trusteeship?

From a reader,"Apparently Marge Faville isn't indespensible. In an attempt to get Techs to engage with them, SEIU organizers have begun telling them that the SEIU is considering getting rid of Marge. I wonder if Marge knows. I doubt that this is an honest statement, though I'm sure SEIU would throw Marge under the bus to avoid an all out exodus to NUHW."

SEIU's Michigan Corruption -- Round II

In case you're wondering why healthcare workers in Michigan are organizing to join NUHW, check out this leaflet (see below). Union members say they can't get a return call from SEIU Healthcare Michigan, but that's because the local's president, Marge Faville, is so busy hiring all of her relatives and putting fistfulls of cash in her pockets.

First, there's the $160,000 in pay she got in 2010. Then there's the union-paid SUV that costs $47,242. On top of that is the union-paid corporate apartment that cost $17,600. And then there's the $163,732 that the local paid to Marge's daughter, son and neice last year. Not a bad year for Marge, who also sits on SEIU's International Executive Board.

Of course, it wasn't such a good a year for the local's members: more than 75% of the local's 55,000 members are homecare workers who earn only $8 an hour.

Looks like Marge has followed in the famous footsteps of her predecessor, Rickman Jackson. Readers might recall that Rickman was ousted from the local's presidency after the Los Angeles Times revealed he'd stolen more than $33,000 from low-waged homecare workers in California.
 

B/t/w, while Rickman was in Michigan, Tasty hears he was a big spender with the local's credit card. Tasty wonders if Marge, too, will soon be assigned to a high-paying job in the Purple Palace in DC! Is there room for another desk in the Secretary-Treasurer's office??

 Marge Faville Compensation[1]

Amado Brings those Skillz to Michigan

Tasty hears that SEIU officials are flipping out about Michigan workers' petitions to decert SEIU and join NUHW.

So last week, SEIU's head honchos sent SEIU trusteeship staffer Amado David from California to Michigan to sit in the hospital's cafeteria and try to convince workers to stay in SEIU.

Amado and a boatload of SEIU International organizers phone-banked and house-visited workers and invited them to attend a special SEIU meeting. So how many workers turned out? Exactly 4.

Way to go, Michigan workers!

Where did all the organizers go? Outsourced for something cheaper!

Apparently the state of Michigan's Economic Development Corporation gave $2 million to SEIU to locate a call center in the state. This will create hundreds of jobs for organizers? Nope, the staff will be operators to "service" the Michigan members.

SEIU lays off the organizers and get Redevelopment $ for call center operators?

Let's hope that SEIU Michigan members hold these call centers accountable...

check out the story here