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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Union Thuggery Run Amok Union Thuggery Run Amok Big Labor: Having lost its war on economics, the SEIU has declared war on the economy. Literally. One of its top minds was caught vowing to crash the stock market to redistribute wealth. Is this a union or a subversive group? Six years ago, after breaking from the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union was hailed as a new kind of organization, whose dynamic leader Andy Stern would make labor strong again. His union vowed to increase its "political muscle to pressure entrenched politicians who didn't vote in the interests of their members," wrote Matt Bai in his 2007 book, "The Argument." Today, it's all over. One of the leading lights of SEIU-thought, Stephen Lerner, declared last week at Pace University: "Unions are almost dead. We cannot survive doing what we do." But that didn't mean introspection, or renewed efforts to persuade the public. Union frustration, as Bai wrote, meant it was time to "blow the place up." Lerner has a "secret plan" scheduled for May to "destabilize" the U.S. economy to redistribute wealth. "What does the other side fear most?" Lerner asked. "They fear disruption, they fear uncertainty." It was crazy talk, but with specific aims: a mass mortgage strike and student loan default to crash banks such as JPMorgan, which SEIU has been trying to unionize since at least 2007. Nevermind what a stock market crash to teach Wall Street a lesson would do to workers' pensions. Although Lerner was edged out of the union late last year shortly after Stern left, it wasn't because his idea was too vile. It was because his many ideas cost too much. It's an indicator that Lerner's talk has been going on at that union for years and beyond. Lerner's had face time with high-level White House officials over the past two years, in at least two documented meetings. His close colleague Stern got even more. And right about now, the SEIU, still furious about its failed Wisconsin strike, has begun to take on a radicalism that stands to take the rest of the economy hostage. This week, a screaming union mob stormed ESSA Bank in Stroudsburg, Pa., over a banker's hospital board stance on a labor issue. It had nothing to do with the bank — and everything to do with terrorizing the banker into submission. A week earlier, food company Sodexo USA filed a suit against SEIU, accusing it of extortion and "dirty tricks." Among other things, union thugs are accused of flinging plastic cockroaches over the company's meals and terrorizing patients about rat droppings in their food to muscle Sodexo workers into its union. Then there are the two SEIU leaders in Chicago whose close ties with terrorist groups Hamas and Colombia's FARC are under FBI probe. Sound like a merger? They're all disturbing signs of a union going mad over its own irrelevance and taking up more goonish tactics. Whatever it is, it has no place in civil society, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Poster Comment: Unions were a good idea 100 years ago, now they're just parasites.
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