Labor unions in Seattle have become very adept in recent years – with the help of the elected officials who benefit from their campaign dollars – at using the coercive powers of government to pressure businesses to unionize. From the $15 minimum wage law to the recently-passed regulation on how businesses can schedule their employees, unions are exempted from the provisions of the new rules.
As Shift has pointed out, that’s so unions can tell businesses they can get out from under the new regs, if only they unionize. It isn’t too far off from a burly man in a sharkskin suit walking in to say, “Real nice shop here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.”
Now a new union-backed initiative in Seattle is being marketed as being about “safety.” How unions love to call whatever they’re pushing for “safety,” whether it has anything to do with safety or not. This is a favorite trick of SEIU. In 2008, they ran a “training” initiative, I-1029, that purported to increase patient safety but was really about the union making huge money running the training sessions. This year, the union’s I-1501 is purportedly about protecting seniors from identity theft, when it’s actually about hiding home care providers’ names so they won’t find out that they’re no longer required to pay dues and fees to SEIU.
Now, union activists are taking a page from the same playbook. They’re running I-124 in Seattle, which the Yes on 124 campaign calls “Seattle Protects Women.” In Crosscut today, a hotel executive explains the Yes campaign’s marketing and the initiative’s real purpose (you won’t be shocked):
“Earlier this year, a group of hotel labor advocates wrote an initiative with the specific goal of putting burdensome regulations on hotels, most of which can be negotiated away by unions in bargaining. The purpose is to ultimately force the unionization of all Seattle hotels.
“But, that’s not what you will hear about I-124. You will hear that the initiative protects women. The initiative mandates ‘panic buttons’ in hotels where any employee is conducting work in guest rooms.”
Like we’ve seen with so many other worker “protections,” businesses can avoid the requirements – so long as their employees are unionized. Lens explains the big exception written into I-124:
“However, much of the initiative can be undone if workers unionize, suggesting the ballot measure is actually a lever on employers and a stealth strategy to boost union membership.
“According to Part 7, if employees unionize and reach a joint contract agreement with their hotel, then all provisions of I-124 can be waived except for those on assault accusations and guest blacklisting.”
So once again “safety” turns out to be but a canard – this initiative is about growing the union rolls (and bringing in those union dues), not safety.
Your concern for the actual workers in these hotels is truly touching. How about asking if their safety concerns are warranted, instead of just dismissing them as a “union” issue?
Apparently you didn’t read the part about if the hotel is unionized it then becomes exempt to the provisions of I-124.
Apparently you guys missed the point that unionized workers already have protections against such abuses in their workplaces.
Only if it’s in the contract, doofus!
Your concern for your union’s dues revenue is also truly touching. If their safety concerns were paramount, why are unions exempt? Perhaps because unions care more dues revenue than actual worker safety?
If workers have legally-mandated protections, but will lose those protections if they join a union, then that is an incentive against forming or joining a union. Trading something they already have from the law for something they might get through union negotiations is not a good deal; all workers know this.
(Even Clay, our very own pampered and spoiled government bureaucrat, now lollygagging about on his taxpayer-supplied pension, knows this; see his comment about union negotiations in this comment thread.)
Your ability to shout your Party’s line is never in doubt, comrade; did they threaten to negatively increase your chocolate ration again?
“If workers have legally-mandated protections, but will lose those protections if they join a union”
Did you really mean to say unions shouldn’t be exempted from I-124?
Because if they weren’t, nobody would have to worry about losing any legally-mandated protections, regardless if they are a union shill or a free American. Your confirmation and praise of my point is unexpected, to say the least.
Chocolate rations, or rations of any kind, are the stuff of you National (Democratic) Socialist’s dreams. You get moist just thinking about imposing lack, hardship, rations and mandates on as much of the proletariat as you can. I can go to the capitalistic grocery store and buy enough chocolate to make me burst if I so desire.
Did you really mean to say unions shouldn’t be exempted from I-124?
No, I merely wanted to note that Shift had described the incentive provided by I-124 completely opposite of how it would actually work in the real world.
That is all.
No, You mainly wanted to obfuscate what the union writers put into I-124 to give an advantage to themselves. Or perhaps you’ve missed the “legislation for sale within” sign the silly clowncil put up at city hall.
Again, the provision in I-124 which exempts Union-represented workers is a disincentive for workers to form or to join unions. Why go through all of the trouble to unionize, when you can obtain the same protection with a simple vote?
Again, you may be fool enough to believe your gyrations that the union authors of I-124 would write a disincentive for workers to join or form a union into their self-serving initiative, but thankfully not everybody is that stupid. The exemption is purely an incentive for employers to hire union employees. Why go through all the trouble to write in an exemption, when you all workers can obtain the same protection with a simple vote?
Unions should be subject to these laws and the unions should be prohibited from negotiating any agreement with requirements less than the law demands for other workers.