Report: SEIU ‘Intimidation Manual’ Uncovered Detai

Iron Law of Bureaucracy

Pournelle has suggested several "laws". His first use of the term "Pournelle's law" appears to be for the expression "one user, one CPU." He has also used "Pournelle's law" to apply to the importance of checking cables connections when diagnosing computer problems. His best-known "law" is "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy":

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

He has restated it as:

...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

This can be compared to the Iron Law of Oligarchy and the Iron Law of Institutions. His "blog", "The View from Chaos Manor", often references apparent examples of the law.

Report: SEIU ‘Intimidation Manual’ Uncovered Detailing Union’s Dirty Tactics



According to Vincent Vernuccio in the Washington Times, it’s over 70 pages and details how “outside pressure can involve jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds.”

[snip]

Vernuccio explains the tactics in part by saying the union looks “to push businesses to the edge of bankruptcy, with little regard for the welfare of employer and employee.”

That seems to fit the union’s M.O. Earlier this spring, The Blaze exposed SEIU veteran leader Stephen Lerner and his plan to bring down the U.S. economy through an economic hit-job on JP Morgan Chase (see here, here, and here).

In that plan, the union was set to organize its members and others in a massive mortgage strike, meant to collapse the system in order to remake in a way the union best saw fit.

So why does the manual target employers instead of trying to organize employees? Vernuccio offers one possible explanation: “Organized labor is losing members at a rapid rate. In the private sector, union membership stands at less than 7 percent.”

The logic seems to go something like this: if you can’t get employees to unionize, force employers to do it for them.

That raises an important question: Who is the SEIU really working for?

The revelation comes as the National Labor Relations Board decides whether to allow faster elections regarding unionization, a move many businesses say would only serve to benefit unions and stop businesses from adequately informing employees about potential unionization.

Get more information about the SEIU manual over at the Washington Times.

The Hysterically Outdated SEIU Intimidation Manual.

Background on this: the SEIU was forced to cough up a copy of its “Contract Campaign Manual” as part of a court case – and it’s an interesting little document. The whole thing reads, as F. Vincent Vernuccio notes in the Washington Times, as a step-by-step checklist on how to manipulate… just about everything, really… in the course of forcing favorable negotiation terms. Mostly because that’s what it actually is.

Lots of people are going to concentrate on passages like this:

Union members sometimes must act in the tradition of Dr. Marin Luther King and Mohatma Gandhi and disobey laws which are used to enforce injustice against working people.

or

It may be a violation of blackmail and extortion laws to threaten management officials with release of ‘dirt’ about them if they don’t settle a contract. But there is no law against union members who are angry at their employer deciding to uncover and publicize factual information about individual managers.

…as they should, frankly. But looking at the document itself tells you something interesting about SEIU: it apparently hasn’t had an original thought in its collective head since, I don’t know, about 1985 or so*.

Seriously, are these people idiots or something? They’re using an unrevised contract negotiation manual that’s old enough to vote? The font alone is a dead giveaway that nobody’s critically thought about this thing in over a decade and a half: in fact, the generally poor condition of the copy given to the courts as part of the case suggests that the SEIU may not even have a clean version of it in digital form in the first place. There’s probably one kind-of OK copy somewhere in the files of the central office, and they use that to make as many photocopies as they need, when they need it** – and no, this isn’t nit-picking: it reveals a serious problem in their training system. I’ve been in office situations where the training manuals were done once, then never ever ever corrected or updated; and, after about three years or so, new hires quickly learn to never bother with the manuals, because they’re useless.

And there’s my point: this manual may be great on walking union goons through the finer points of descending en masse on people’s homes and scaring teenagers, but it’s less than useless when it comes to controlling the media narrative. It’s amazing that what’s supposed to be a standardized collection of labor relation wisdom does things like:

* Provide sample “community surveys” (read: data-mining) that don’t have a place on the form for an email address;
* Discussing “Using the Media” without once contemplating that cheap video cameras and ubiquitous internet access means that you can no longer designate an ‘official’ face of the moment and make it stick;
* Discussing “Organizing Your Media Campaign” with the same lack of self-awareness as the last point;
* Having a section called “Let Members Do the Talking” in the first place, when half of Big Labor’s PR problems these days involves an union member taking a slap at somebody, usually while (helpfully) in full union costume;
* Having a section called “Researching Media Outlets” that does not have the words ‘internet,’ ‘email,’ or ‘computer’ in it;
* Having a section called “Educating The Media About The Campaign” with the same omissions;
* Having a section called “Helping Reporters Do Their Jobs” that has both the aforementioned omissionsand the aforementioned lack of self-awareness;
* “Creating News.” Oh, this is the fun one! I could be boring, and belabor the point about how this section doesn’t actually tell you a darn thing about how to generate media buzz in a world where this little beauty is no longer state of the art for computers. Or I could just quote this passage: “An electronics supply store can show you the jacks and cords you will need so you can playback from your tape recorder directly over the phone line.”

hey I guess if it still works for you ....... Alinskys Rules for Radicals was laid down int the 1960s'