More Union Sleaze

The Service Employees Industrial Union has stepped up it's campaign of sleaze against the Beth-Isreal Deaconess Hospital (the BI). They have plastered ads all over town with fear-mongering claims of incompetence of the physicians and managers of the BI.

Therefore it is likely that recent problems with patient care at BIDMC are related to poor decisions by the administration. From botched operations to the hiring of surgeons with tarnished records, an alarming pattern has developed at BIDMC that must be corrected immediately to restore the public’s confidence in our hospital, and ensure that the first rule of healthcare, to “do no harm,” is met.

I have no connection to the BI, but these ads really make my blood boil. I think this campaign has little if anything to do with the Union's relationship with the hospital. It seems to me that the purpose of the campaign is to harm the hospital, plain and simple. The Union feels that if the Hospital is weakend, it won't have the strength to resist Union demands.

See my previous post.

Not everyone is fooled. This article from a local news radio station reports:

BOSTON — The Service Employees Industrial Union, or SEIU, has launched an ad campaign targeting Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The campaign, called Eye On BI, addresses what the SEIU says are problems with patient safety and quality of care. But the union’s eye is really on another objective.

Kudos to the BI's CEO Paul Levy for fighting back on his blog.

As you all know by now, the ads have nothing to do with organizing workers. They are meant to denigrate the reputation of the hospital as part of a corporate campaign.
...
SEIU believes that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a periodically renewed ad campaign is effective. It has an endless source of funding for these ads from the dues it collects every week. In this environment, keep in mind which is David, and which is Goliath.

Well said Mr. Levy! Keep up the good fight.

I am amazed that the rank and file allow this sort of thing. Maybe they don't really have a say. Who would want to work for a company after your Union went out and maligned it so? What kind of environment would that be to work in? Most people have some gripes about their workplace, sure. But that doesn't mean they are not in some sense proud to be a part of the organization. I sure as hell wouldn't want to work for a company that I thought of as "the enemy" and which thought that way of me as well.