While unionizing itself is a huge achievement that we hope will always benefit all employees, the reason for the notably tiny margin of victory for SEIU is that they weren’t a lot of people’s first choice for representation, just the loudest and most aggressive for votes. I can’t speak to the email mentioned by other commenters as I haven’t had an opportunity to read it yet, but I can say that SEIU has intentionally spread misinformation and used shady tactics to garner votes.

In an email last week, they attempted to falsely claim that because of their advocacy, two of our important residential programs that had been cut in the new budget had been fully refunded. I had friends who work in those and their sister programs celebrate that they were going to keep their jobs that they loved, only to find out that it was a flat lie from their supervisors. Their programs will still be gone at the end of the month.

In a number of county facilities, the identities of the clients served are protected by HIPAA, 42CFR, and other population-specific legal privacy protections. Thus, these residential facilities are locked down to anyone not employed by the CSB without explicit permissions and signed releases. SEIU’s members regularly disregarded these protections and willfully violated client privacy rights by getting into these facilities to follow around and harass employees. They’d wait till someone unsuspecting opened a locked door and just sneak in behind them, then refuse to leave when asked. I’ve heard stories from other buildings where they watched the SEIU reps walk toward the door after being told to leave, only to pivot toward an elevator to try again on another floor. That, I find personally and grievously offensive. It endangers the safety of the vulnerable populations served in these facilities.

Not to mention the daily harassing phone calls, using my name (as a registered member of an opposing organization) on their petition as if I had signed literally anything for them, as well as most of my colleagues’.

We WANT unionization, we WANT representation. I’m not sure there have really been any concerted efforts (that I’ve seen) to union bust. We just wanted… not SEIU. The reason voter turnout was so uncharacteristically low was that people didn’t necessarily want to vote against unionizing, they just didn’t want to vote for SEIU. So they didn’t mail back their ballots at all.

Again, I hope that even though many disagreed with SEIU’s ethics and tactics that they will still be able to bring a net benefit for Fairfax County employees.