In September, a civil court jury ordered the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to pay $7.8 million to the Professional Janitorial Service of Houston (PJS), ruling the union was too aggressive in its interference with the corporation’s business relations. The SEIU has stated it will appeal the decision on what appears to be the first such ruling against a union for defamation.
On September 6th 2016, Houston county jury awarded a local commercial cleaning firm, Professional Janitorial Services (PJS), $5.3 million in damages for the union’s aggressive campaigning practices. An additional $2.5 million was awarded in prejudgement interest on September 26th, totaling a hefty $7.8 million payout order for the union. The SEIU has roundly criticised what it sees as an attack on its freedom of speech and said it would appeal the verdict. In a statement, the SEIU called the outcome an assault on free speech rights and said the trial was “riddled with procedural errors and blatant appeals to the prejudices of the jury.”
Ten years of legal battles and other wrangling. The PJS of Houston fought the SEIU from its very beginnings of unionizing in the area. The first suit against the SEIU was filed on May 3, 2007, when the union had just started organizing the employer’s janitorial staff. According to a former SEIU organizer, the SEIU followed its traditional model of organizing through contractors: pressurizing building owners in particular those who controlled the contract awards. The verdict said the unions had spread ‘pure lies’ among these property owners in a bid to ‘denigrate’ the company.
Over the next nine years of legal suit, SEIU filed 19 unfair-labor-practice complaints with the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which were all either resolved in the employer’s favor or retracted by the union, and 25 wage claims with the Department of Labor of overdue wages and employees forced to work off the clock. Only one wage claim was ruled in the union’s favor in 2008, awarding one employee $1,854 in wages.
‘Card check’ refusal and more intensified action. During SEIU’s organizing, the PJS refused to accept cards signed by employees in favor of joining a union and instead required that SEIU win a secret-ballot election to be able to represent its employees. In response, the SEIU launched its “all-out” corporate campaign, explaining the successive years of aggressive organizing against PJS and its business reputation.
The company convinced the jury by proving that over the course of the SEIU’s lengthy corporate campaign, an estimated dozen companies had terminated their contracts with PJS as a result of various organizing and protest tactics used by the union workers. The company also presented a number of employee testimonies that contested the union’s allegations over working conditions and over certain employees contracts having been terminated. Union Emails, memos and the like also showed the union as being particularly ‘aggressive’ in its aim to harm the company’s economic interests.
