On Wednesday, the Service Employees International Union, as part of its four-year old plan to unionize the nation’s fast-food workers, launched a frontal assault on McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oakbrook, Illinois.
During the event, over 100 protesters, as well SEIU boss and fast-food unionization architect Mary Kay Henry, were arrested.
After her arrest, the SEIU’s self-anointed Burger Queen actually thanked the police on her Twitter feed.
The union’s event planners had rented 32 buses, ensured they had prominent civil rights leaders in tow for photo-ops as they stormed the company’s entrance and, while they had some of McDonald’s 440,000 U.S. employees, the vast majority of protesters (about 84%, according to Bloomberg’s numbers) appear to be nothing more than a rent-a-mob (or astroturf, as the case may be):
The event, the latest in a series of demonstrations by workers demanding $15-an-hour pay and the right to form a union, began at 1 p.m. local time yesterday, on the eve of McDonald’s Corp.’s shareholder meeting.
About 2,000 protesters, including about 325 McDonald’s workers in restaurant uniforms, stormed though the company’s campus entrance at Jorie Boulevard and Kroc Drive in Oak Brook, according to the organizers, holding signs that said, “We Are Worth More” and “My Union My Voice.” The Oak Brook Police Department estimated the number was 1,000 to 1,500.
The protesters — brought to the scene by 32 buses — were joined by Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry and William Barber, an official from the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. About 110 people were arrested for trespassing, police said. The protesters who were arrested included McDonald’s (MCD) workers and 36 community, clergy and labor leaders, including Henry, according to the organizers. [Emphasis added.]
When the SEIU originally launched the fast-food unionization campaign in 2011 (over a year after its plan was exposed), the SEIU boss had initially tried to portray it as a “spontaneous movement.” However, the spontaneous movement portrayal quickly dissolved as the SEIU’s role in the campaign planning became more apparent.
As a leader of the now-infamous SEIU, Wednesday’s protest will be Mary Kay Henry’s second known arrest, after having been previously arrested during the union-sponsored Occupy Wall Street protests.
Of course, one must wonder if the three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule applies to games involving pure astroturf.
The workers, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED! We will keep marching @McDonalds #FastFoodGlobal pic.twitter.com/2p0c3n1AyY
— Mary Kay Henry (@MaryKayHenry) May 21, 2014
.@McDonalds we are here to say WE WANT 15 and a UNION pic.twitter.com/oFjh8J5Iia
— Mary Kay Henry (@MaryKayHenry) May 21, 2014
TY @OakBrookVillage police for your service & for your diligence during today's actions #FastFoodGlobal pic.twitter.com/zlyoEcUJIJ
— Mary Kay Henry (@MaryKayHenry) May 21, 2014
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“Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth.”
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)
Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.com
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