More fighting over card check - 'typical union goons'

July 29, 2009 Yesterday on the Hill, the Alliance for Worker Freedom had an event on the 9th floor of the Hart building, involving invited guests and a congressman or two, talking about ways to beat Card Check. It was a Q/A sponsored by the Alliance for Worker Freedom that included folks from the Chamber of Commerce, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, the Hudson Institute and a private business owner and a labor attorney. A few minutes before the event was to begin, Alliance for Worker Freedom Executive Director Brian Johnson noticed a few guys who "immediately stood out," he says. He asked them what they were there for, they said for the Q/A. He then asked who they were with as it was an invite only Q/A. They said the SEIU. Johnson told them, "you and your organization are not invited, I need to ask you to leave." They sat down and told Johnson they weren't going anywhere. Johnson tells Shenanigans he then politely asked them to leave at least five times. They refused. At that point, Johnson went to find a Capitol Hill police man to remove them. "The cops had to check with the Rules committee," Johnson says, "and then told me, 'we're going to ask them to leave and if they don't leave we'll have to physically get them out and then you'll have to file charges,'" Johnson recalls. Of course the gang left - they said they weren't trying to cause any trouble. "Typical union goons!" groused Johnson. And then Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) got underway with his remarks and said "I think I missed all the fun!" "We weren't saying anythign we wouldn't say on camera," Johnson says of the event, "but it wasn't a public education seminar. It was clearly 'how do we defeat [card check]?'" As for the SEIU they admit they were there but wonder just how private that event could have been. SEIU Secretary/Treasurer Anna Burger told Shenanigans, "We love the irony of a so-called 'Worker Freedom' group actually turning the cops on workers who wanted to attend a public forum-in a taxpayer-funded building-- on the rights and freedoms of workers. What's next, Democracy briefings by Kim Jong-Il?" from Politico's Shenanigans blog