Posted on 08/31/2023 8:10:24 PM PDT by lightman
Two Pennsylvania State Education Association staff members were arrested Wednesday for trespassing on HACC’s Lancaster campus.
The union employees, who had set up a table with information supporting HACC’s unionized faculty members, refused to leave when asked by campus security. East Lampeter Township police were called to remove them.
“We have every right to be on campuses talking to faculty,” said Kathy Sicher, president of HACCEA, the union representing faculty. “We’re part of the campus, whether HACC likes it or not, we’re part of HACC.”
The representatives – Lauri Lebo Rakoff, region advocacy coordinator, and Adam Weber, union representative – were only there to provide information about the union, according to Sicher. When they were asked to leave, they refused because they believed it was their right to be there.
“I’m not quite sure why HACC has a problem with that,” Sicher said. “We weren’t disruptive, it was peaceful, it’s non-confrontational, it’s just informational, it’s part of democracy.”
Lt. Rob Eachus, of the East Lampeter Township police, confirmed two people were arrested for trespassing at HACC Lancaster campus Wednesday afternoon. Both individuals were released soon after.
HACC faculty voted to unionize in April 2022 as a PSEA affiliate. At the time, HACC President and CEO John J. “Ski” Sygielski said, “The faculty have made their decision, and we respect that … We will work with the PSEA to reach a fair and equitable contract from both the College’s and faculty’s standpoint.”
Chris Lilienthal, spokesperson for PSEA, said the last time union representatives were at a HACC campus was on Aug. 22 in York. The same two union employees were present, and it went off without a hitch.
“We believe HACC management made a very bad decision to involve the police and limit protected activity in violation of state labor law,” Lilienthal said. He added their representatives had a right to be there, and them being forced to leave amounts to a violation of the Public Employee Relations Act.
HACC administrators issued a statement calling the presence of the union representatives on campus a “deplorable and disgraceful” publicity stunt.
The statement said HACC received a request from the union on August 21. On the 28th, HACC said it informed the union that it could not set up a table at the Lancaster campus. The statement referenced a January 2017 Shared Governance Policy that states, “External entities may not utilize College facilities for the purpose of promoting or advancing political, religious or other special interests.”
HACC did not respond to questions about the union’s assertion that the same employees distributed information on the York campus last week without interference.
State Rep. Izzy Smith-Wade-El, a Lancaster Democrat who supported the HACC faculty’s unionization effort, said he can’t think of any reason why faculty and their union representatives shouldn’t be allowed to share information about a recognized union in that union’s workplace.
“I’m confused, frankly, about the process by which it came to pass that it was deemed a good idea to have these folks arrested or to interfere with the faculty … ability to spread information about their union,” he said.
The HACC statement said PSEA’s decision to send representatives to the Lancaster campus was “unfortunate” and was done with the intent of forcing an arrest to generate media interest.
“We have received reports that some students were traumatized by seeing armed law enforcement officers making arrests on their campus during the first week of fall classes,” HACC said. “This publicity stunt has caused, for some of our students, irreparable harm and could result in some students deciding to withdraw from their HACC courses.”
The representatives – Lauri Lebo Rakoff, region advocacy coordinator, and Adam Weber, union representative – were only there to provide information about the union, according to Sicher. When they were asked to leave, they refused because they believed it was their right to be there.
“Labor Day weekend” is not merely a time for beach trips and barbeques but a time to remember the ongoing struggle of hard working Americans to secure just compensation from management.
This story illustrates that the struggle was not confined to the early 20th century coal mines and steel mills but continues even to this day.
Full disclosure: I absolutely loath the PSEA and much of which it stands for but my loathing is on steroids for those who flaunt labor organizing law and the First Amendment!
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It’s a college? Students so traumatized by witnessing an arrest they may drop out? I don’t know anyone like this. 😂
Okay, I read the article twice. Is there an explanation what HACC stands for?
I used to have a dinner/drinking budy who wrote for the Lancaster New Era. He covered the courts among other things.
H arrisburg
A rea
C ommunity
C ollege
Multiple campuses, including York and Lancaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_and_Iron_Police
Reconstituted in Lancaster County.
Some things belong in the past.
Thank you
Labor unions are Big Business with a host of special rights that should be stripped from them.
Unions as they are now are totally unAmerican.
We do not need more special classes of citizens. We have enough in the government.
Union thugs are suspiciously absent from that cartoon.
A real Amish name. Must be from the Ohio Amish. The whole state is going to crap.
Some circumstances have changed.
Some have remained the same.
There has been violence and force a-plenty from both labor and management.
Labor Unions were desperately needed in the early 20th century in the “company towns”; but they morphed into self aggrandizing enterprises which sought the lining of their mis-leaderships’ pockets instead of the advancement of those they purported to protect.
The PSEA/NEA is a prime example...see my post # 2.
If that was all unions did, they would be a wonderful thing.
But it's not.
Unions fund the DNC, provide thugs when "needed" by leftists.
Many of their work rules strangle the very employers of their members and make life boring for many of their members.
Totally agree.
The PSEA/NEA has essentially become the one of the most radicalized plank-layers of the DNC.
AOC and Bernie might be a little to their left, but I seriously doubt that.
Don't kid yourself that they "morphed" at all. There is a reason that the unions were run by organized crime and communists. And the union members preferred organized crime. The gangsters just wanted the money, the commies were guano crazy.
Could it have been different? Of course. But it wasn't.
I once ran the numbers, starting in the fifties when the union power was at it's peak to see how often the "strikes" gave the workers any actual benefit. The answer was never. It always would have been to the advantage of the employees to take the offer rather then strike.
You have put your finger on the problem with modern on-line journalism. They make so many assumptions about what the audience already knows that they completely fail to provide full, accurate and intelligible information. They also make dramatic assumptions about how their readers should perceive an issue or event. This is bad writing, bad reporting and bad editing; and common on local news websites.
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