Backyard barbecue bashes and offering up flat screen TVs and other prizes was attempted by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to try to get Saginaw health care employees to stay in the union. It didn't work.

By a more than 2-to-1 margin, workers at Saginaw's Luther Manor Nursing Home voted themselves out of the SEIU Healthcare union last week. They're now joining the newly formed National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

The final vote count was 47 in favor of leaving SEIU to 22 for staying. One vote was cast for nonunion status. With the results of the election, the Luther Manor workers became the first SEIU members outside of California to join NUHW.

According to Peggy Norman, a medical receiver and certified nursing assistant at Luther Manor, the SEIU Healthcare put on two barbecue parties for employees as the date of the election approached.

“They called them backyard bashes,” Norman said. 'They barbecued ribs and had door prizes; including a flat screen TV, a boys' bike and a girls' bike.”

Norman was asked if she would have changed her vote if she'd won a TV.

“I wouldn't even go to their bashes,” she responded.

Hasan Zahdeh, a cardiovascular interventional technologist at the Hackley Campus of Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, said he was keeping a close watch on the union election in Saginaw.

“They rejected the SEIU despite all of the misinformation, intimidation and efforts to buy votes,” Zahdeh said. “In addition to the barbecues, where they raffled off big screen TVs, the SEIU offered coffee and donuts on election day.

“Basically, this was a big win for the employees,” Zahdeh continued “It was an overwhelming vote to leave a corrupt union.”

Workers at the facility in Muskegon are waiting to get an election date scheduled to vote on possibly leaving the SEIU, too. Zahdeh said he believes the election in Saginaw could lead to a domino effect with workers at other health care facilities across Michigan jumping the SEIU ship.

“Other groups are just waiting for their contracts to come up,” he said.

Norman said the employees at the Saginaw facility were fed up with SEIU Healthcare.

"We were looking for somebody who would do a better job representing us." Norman said. “I was a stewardess for the union. They wouldn't even honor our vote to reject a contract. Instead of going back to the employer, they waited a week and came back to us. I had employees come up to me wanting to know how they could get out of it (the union).'”

Zahdeh said the SEIU is now attempting to hike its union dues.

“SEIU is trying to do the same thing Barack Obama wants to do,” Zahdeh said. “They know that the MQC3 (Michigan Quality Community Care Council) is being dissolved. That means they'd lose about 48,000 members. So they're trying to change dues to a flat 2.5 percent. That's huge. For instance, it would change my dues from $39.45 a month to $130 a month. It's like Obama wanting to raise taxes on the rich instead of finding ways to cut spending.”

MQC3 was created under former Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Through a secret election, fewer than 7,000 votes placed more than 40,000 Michigan home health care workers into the SEIU. Then SEIU Healthcare was created, apparently, for the sole purpose of becoming the union Michigan home health care workers would be forced to join through the MQC3.

Obviously the loss of 40,000 dues-paying members is a huge blow to SEIU Healthcare, which had previously claimed to have roughly 55,000 members in Michigan.

“I think they're trying to find a way to squeeze every last dollar out of us before we leave,” Zahdeh said. “When we finally get a chance to vote in Muskegon, we're really going to kick their butts.”

SEIU Healthcare has been plagued by scandals since it was created in 2008. Its first president, Rickman Jackson, was forced to resign within two months of taking office.

As Capitol Confidential previously reported, the timing couldn't be much worse for SEIU, which just lost a major battle with NUHW. In July, NLRB administrative judge Lana Parke found SEIU guilty of coercion and unlawful threats in an October 2010 statewide labor election involving 43,000 California healthcare workers.

According to the NUHW, corruption has been the legacy of how the SEIU operates in Michigan. Former SEIU Healthcare Michigan President Rickman Jackson was forced out of office on Oct. 15, 2008. The story, which was covered by the Los Angeles Times, apparently fell below the news media radar screens in Michigan.

SEIU officials did not respond to telephone calls offering the opportunity to include their comments in this article.

Graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan who do not want to belong to a union have some high-profile allies who have kept a low profile.

The Mackinac Center has obtained a confidential letter to U of M Provost Philip Hanlon expressing a “deep and collective concern about the potential negative impacts that would result from the unionization of the University’s graduate student research assistants.”

The letter was signed by 18 Deans of the university’s 19 schools and colleges. Also signing was the University Librarian and Dean of Libraries. The lone holdout was Christopher Kendall, Dean of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

Kendall, however, told the Mackinac Center in an email that he was on board as well:

"The School of Music, Theatre and Dance strongly supported the position articulated in the deans' letter. We didn't sign it simply because the role of our two GSRAs doesn't correspond precisely with the description in the letter. Again, however, the School was strongly in accord with the principles expressed by the deans."

The union, known as the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), was founded at U of M in 1970, which, according to its website, makes the GEO ”one of the oldest graduate employee unions in the United States.” The GEO currently represents graduate student instructors and graduate student staff assistants, but earlier this year made moves to expand its membership at the Ann Arbor campus by including graduate student research assistants.

The GEO petitioned the Michigan Employment Relations Commission in April to be allowed to move forward with its unionization attempt. The following month, the U of M Regents voted 6-2 to support the GEO’s effort, saying in a June 2011 statement, “We took this action because GSRAs are employees as well as students.”

This directly contradicted university President Mary Sue Coleman, who told the Regents in May: “I do not see research assistants as our employees but as our students. … When I was a graduate student, I did not see myself as working for the university and I did not see my faculty mentor as my employer. Far from it.”

Coleman went on to suggest the university’s provost agreed with her: “I know I speak for Provost Hanlon as well when I express my concern about characterizing our research assistants as University employees.”

While Coleman’s comments were publicly stated, the similar sentiments expressed the deans of 18 schools and colleges* were not. In a letter dated June 24, 2011, and labeled “Confidential – By Hand Delivery,” the deans told Provost Hanlon that they respect the Regents’ decision, however, “We believe that such a union would put at risk the excellence of our university and the success of our graduate student research assistants.” Further remarks in the letter explain their position:

 “We note that graduate student research assistants are not unionized at the peer institutions against whom the University competes for faculty and graduate students …We worry that a GSRA union would make Michigan an outlier when the best and brightest graduate students compare research opportunities, and when we work to recruit excellent research faculty. A vast majority of the faculty members with whom we have spoken do not support GSRA unionization because of the potential negative impact on their one-on-one relationships with students and the University’s competitive position among its peers.”

For now the deans, along with Coleman and Hanlon, may breathe a little easier.

In response to a motion filed by the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation in July on behalf of Melinda Day, the Michigan Employment Relations Commission stood by its 1981 decision that these GSRAs are not public employees who can be unionized. What this means is MERC essentially refused to grant the public-sector GEO permission to organize this group of graduate students.

This is not to say the matter is entirely finished.

"There is still  time to appeal the MERC decision and the union and the Regents may be concocting another legally dubious plan to work around the 1981 decision," said MCLF Director Patrick Wright. "Regardless, students working towards their dissertations are not 'public employees' and cannot be forced into a government employees union.”

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*Editor’s note: Two of the deans’ letter signatories no longer occupy the positions held at the time of this letter. They are Robert Dolan, former Business School Dean and Rosina Bierbaum, former Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment.