First in a series.
The Portland Occubrats have announced they will “Occupy” the Portland’s Steel Bridge on Thursday, Nov. 17.
It interests me that the Service Employees International Union is featured so prominently in the Occubrats press release as a participating member of the “We Are Oregon” (sic) non-organization which declares itself to be to be the unelected representative of “the 99%.” In that alleged capacity, they intend to shut down the Steel Bridge disrupting, among other things, the ability of Oregonians who actually work to pay the taxes which pay the SEIU to serve the public, not to usurp the public’s bridges, streets, parks, and other public spaces.
SEIU is the nation’s largest union, representing public sector workers (I use that term loosely as it has become an oxymoron). They used to call themselves, and be called generally with respect, “public servants.” However, in the neo-socialist era of Obamacrats and SEIU Andy Sternites, they are now existentially public enemies, e.g., by closing down the public’s use of a public bridge, just as they closed down the public’s use of public parks in Portland,
It should be publicly remembered that under Andy Stern – Obama’s most frequent White House visitor in his first year of office before Stern’s retirement—SEIU, and the Amerian Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSME), has utterly corrupted public service by paying off politicians for sweet deals providing public sector employees with wages, hours, working conditions, benefits, and pensions that private sector workers, i.e., taxpayers who pay the the public sector workers, can only dream about.
I think SEIU’s participation in the illegal usurpation of parks, streets, bridges, and other public places without complying with constitutionally sound time, place and manner limitations including seeking permits, raises interesting legal as well as moral questions.
For one instance, SEIU members are employees of the public, working pursuant to a contract in which they are the “certified bargaining agent” of those who have chosen to be employed in safe and secure public positions rather than in the much more risky, and demanding, private sector which actually creates wealth rather than consuming it.
By participating in the closure to the public of a bridge, SEIU is taking actions which are manifestly “work actions,” tactics ordinarily arising in an employer-employee labor disputes. Such disputes, and such tactics, are governed by law. Not all “work actions” are lawful. For instance, while a private sector union may strike an employer under relevant labor law, it may not “sit-in” in the employer’s workplace to prevent the employer from operating. Here the public employer’s mission is to protect and serve the public, including maintaining and keeping open the public’s streets, roads – and bridges. Notwithstanding, SEIU members are identified as among those who will “sit-in” so to speak, so as to close the Steel Bridge to the public’s use.. Those who are paid to carry out the public’s work, prevent that work from being done. Yet, they insist they may engage in such acts and keep their jobs. Now, isn’t that interesting.
SEIU announces through the press release that it will participate in this bridge closure, what is a “work stoppage” or “sit-in” in relation to SEIU members, although there is no articulated labor dispute. SEIU has not sought to open bargaining on their contract, let alone declared an impasse.
It must be noted that SEIU members include first responders, and, of course, an absolute herd of well-paid “social workers” who are supposed to be “helping” the public in the social workers (sic) “helping profession.” Closing a bridge not out of necessity, e.g., for repairs, but to engage in a work stoppage, preventing first responders and the oh-so-caring social workers from “helping,” is incompatible with acting to serve the public.
Moreover, consider the irony: “Civil service” protected public employees actively participating in “civil disobedience,” i.e., disobeying the civil laws applying to the public, while claiming a “right” to remain employed by the public they abuse.
Every SEIU member is subject to the control and direction of management. That’s why its called “management.” In this instance, management is managing the public’s government, not a private enterprise. The sovereign isn’t Mayor Sam Adams or any of the other Portland Commissioners, like Commissioner Fish (who is ambulatory evidence that fish is not brain food). The sovereign is “the public” not the politicians, nor the SEIU members, who are supposed to be public servants, not public masters.
Yet SEIU announces SEIU members will be participating in preventing the public from using the public’s bridge during ordinary work hours, i.e., 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. [lunchtime, of course]. First, this appears to be a work stoppage as public sector workers (sic) cannot carry out their public duties on a bridge blockaded and Bogarted by SEIU public sector workers (sic) aligned with an arrogant portion of the public which declares itself to be “representatives of the 99%.” Second, just how are public employees to cross that bridge if ordered and directed to do so by management acting on behalf of “the public”?
What I am suggesting is, obviously: Even with “good cause” protection, public sector workers have no “right” to participate in a de jure or de facto work stoppage by closing to the public a public bridge. Thus, the public should demand that those “public servants” of SEIU should be ordered and directed by the public’s legitimate elected representatives not to participate in the bridge closing as their leaders have publicly endorsed. If any employee violates that order or direction, they should be fired, and replaced.
If SEIU defies the law, to carry out de facto or de jure strikes, “sit-ins,” or work stoppages, then the example should be that of PATCO, the public sector union of air traffic controllers who grew so arrogant that they carried out an illegal strike. Ronald Reagan took a stand for the public–and fired them. So, here, the public needs public office holders to stand for the public, not for the arrogant SEIU, whose past-president Andy Stern arrogantly threatened the public: “‘Workers of the World Unite’ is no longer just a slogan. It is how we must do business. … We will use the power of persuasion, but, if that doesn’t work, we will use the persuasion of power.”
That is the voice of the leader of America’s largest union of “public sector workers, paid for by taxpayers to serve, not to rule.This is America, not Greece. or the old Soviet Union, or Communist China, in which the public is to be threatened by its own “servants.” Not yet, anyway.
Simply stated, if SEIU public sector workers want to “occupy” and close down bridges or streets or parks, to pressure the hands that feed them — the private sector workers who create the wealth the public sector “servants” consume — then they should be fired.
If Sam Adams and his Fish won’t enforce the law, then they should be removed and replaced by public office holders who will faithfully execute the laws, as the oath states
At the risk of sounding outdated or just “corny,” allow me to suggest that public service should be a calling — to serve the public’s interest and put the public’s interest above one’s own. If SEIU’s public sector employee members cannot be “public servants,” then they should not be in public service. Period.
[Rees Lloyd is a longtime California civil rights and much-honored labor attorney who now resides in Portland.]
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