CNA Head Goon?
[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.
As you recall, this guy was slapping at cameramen at a California Nurses Association (CNA) anti-Meg Whitman rally the other day. At least, this guy was until he came to the belated realization that he was getting filmed by two different people. Well, it turns out that he’s not a nurse. Or, at least, not just a nurse. Say hi to Mike Griffing.
We start here at No Governor Moonbeam, who has pictures of both what looks to be the same guy…
…and a blowup of his nametag. If you can’t read it, try this:
And who is this Mike Griffing, do you ask? A drifter? A day laborer? A non-union worker hired to bulk up a protest?
Not… quite. The below is from CNA’s 2009 Form LM-2 Labor Organization Annual Report:
Yup. Mike Griffing was CNA’s 2009 Director of Collective Bargaining, with a salary of just under $164K. I was not aware that you could make this kind of money by going to anti-Whitman rallies and sneak-attacking people who have had the effrontery to put you and your group on the public record! Clearly we all picked the wrong career path.
So, there are three questions that have to be asked:
- Does the CNA still have Mike Griffing as its Collective Bargaining Director?
- Does the CNA consider this to be appropriate behavior by one of their current or past officers?
- If the answer to #1 is ‘yes’ and the answer to #2 is ‘no’… well, shouldn’t the CNA find that to be somewhat contradictory?
Seriously, this would be bad enough if Griffing was just some rank-and-file sorehead with a head full of misplaced entitlement and an eagerness to engage in aggressively antisocial behavior in a quasi-acceptable manner. But if he’s part of the leadership cadre… well. That’s a problem. One that his organization needs to deal with, quickly. Before he lashes out again.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
So his motivation for threatening a camera man is six figures a year from nurse union dues.
Big man. Real big man.
If the district attorney takes no action, surely there should be a civil lawsuit against Griffing as a person and CNA as one of its officers.
Sweet. Fancy. Moses. $160K a year for this bully. Yep, the liberals are just lookin out for the little guy.
Note also that he and his thug friends accused the cameramen of “filming female nurses without their permission” and “filming up their dresses”.
Truly, today’s unions are nothing more than criminal gangs, and should be treated as such.
At the very least Mike Griffing committed civil battery for which he could be sued. Legally, any unauthorized touching is a battery and a cause of action.
Griffing should be sued by the cameraman who was hit. Sounds like he makes enough money to pay a little of the judgment.
Since Griffing was acting as an agent of the CNA when he committed battery, his tort is their tort. They should be joined in the suit, and they have more to pay then this thug.
My guess, it would be settled out of court with a payment to the cameraman.
Make these bastards pay!
I’m in the insurance business and what this guy did could be considered a tort. If you want to get to orginizations, just get their insurance companies unsettled. File a lawsuit against CNA and thier access to the insurance markets will evaporate. After that they must defend themselves.
POS! Prime reason I will never join CNA.
Hey, good professional bullies don’t come cheap! (Amateurs are a dime a dozen …)
I like the idea of going after him personally and the CNA in a civil lawsuit. Oh, yes I do think he should be fired; I don’t expect that to happen.
Union Goons are union goons.. not matter their position in the union.
http://www.calnurses.org/contact-us/
Shows contact email addresses for the California Nurses Association, including press@calnurses.org for press enquiries. I sent them email asking if they had any comment about Griffings’ assault on multiple cameramen, and whether it is the policy of the CNA for its officers to rough up those who attend its rallies. Also whether Griffings would continue to be in their employ.
Actually I’d start by filing a criminal complaint against him. THEN you do the civil suit thingy.
We are going to have to fight these people with every arrow in the quiver. Relentlessly. For at least 40 years. That is how long it too them to fight us to get us all to where we are now. Maybe it was more like 140 years. As Mr. Mom said: whatever it takes.
So, let’s not anyone start getting tired, OR complacent. Not for a long, long time. Longer than my own remaining lifetime, actually.
sigh.
No backing down!
Who says crime doesn’t pay. I want that professional thug package! Where do I get that degree?
That certainly explains why he had the hired muscle (the ones with the ear pieces) so close by at all times.
I am required to belong to CNA because of my union contract. They make over $1000 a year from every single nurse who is forced to belong.
I make a good wage and have good benefits, and I have no doubt that CNA is responsible for the majority of them. There is a substantial difference between a CNA hospital and a non-CNA hospital.
However, I am also forced to watch my dues pay for this goon, go to candidates and propositions and initiatives that I want nothing to do with.
This guy makes $164,000 a year? I did not vote for him, I have no recollection of voting for anyone currently running my “union”.
CNA stopped being a professional organization many years ago. It isn’t even led by a nurse.
Professional nurses don’t dress up in costumes and break the law. They are too busy taking care of patients.
Yoo hoo! Lawyers! Guess what? California Nurses Association has deep pockets. Got that? DEEP POCKETS. D-E-E-P P-O-C-K-E-T-S. Start sending that cameraman flowers, chocolates, and your business cards.
And to you nurses out there who work your asses off for dues money to pay that creep, get set to fork out MORE because tort money comes from YOU, and CNA has deep pockets, which actually means YOU have the deep pockets.
The California Nurse Association has a long history of being extremely militant. I am a RN whose union through the Michigan Nurse Association that has recently been taken over by the California Nurse Association led new union The National Nurses United. This new union is the same union that brought 12,000 nurses out for a one day strike against 14 hospitals in June. It is the same union that has my hospital working without a contract since March because is so aggressive and militant that the hospital is attempting any strategy to get rid of it. About 40% of the nurses have signed to decertify the union. That said I have little hope that it will actually happen.
The woman who runs both the California Nurse Association and the National Nurses United is Rose Ann DeMoro. She has never done anything but organize as an adult except for when she was ringing the cash register while going through college. She went into labor organizing through the advice of a college Professor who had been a founding member of the SDS. It is she who led the CNA to disaffiliate from the American Nurse Association and who has since attempted to take as much from the ANA as possible. The CNA has a long standing history of bumping up hard against the SEIU until recently when they made an agreement that the CNA gets to organize Professional nurses, which means no LPNs, and the SEIU gets to organize the other ancillary staff in hospitals including LPNs (what few hospitals still have LPNs) Only just a couple years ago one nurse who fought against the CNA coming into her hospital had her daughter threatened and another had his pets threatened, and those calls came from the headquarters of the CNA. This was proven and the NLRB found against the CNA over it. This not the only time this union has played dirty.
Nursing unions are complicated because their structure is not the traditional form of unions, however DeMoro, an organizer for the Teamsters before being hired by the CNA has brought that union and the others that have folded into the new National Nurses United group, into old time union tactics and structure. I don’t suppose it would surprise anyone to find out that the NNU, just shortly after it was formed, gave an Truth to Power award (yes that is what it is actually called) to Helen Thomas, something that can no longer be found on the website since Ms. Thomas embarrassed herself in front of a camera.
This kind of crap gives nurses such a black eye that it infuriates me. The difficulty is that once these bloodsuckers get in it’s hard to get them out. Wicked hard, and the NLRB doesn’t make it any easier. Perhaps now with this video the CNA will stop coming in under the radar and it will get the scrutiny it needs.
Another instance of learning as much from comments as from the blogpost. I love reading comment threads. I hope people use the info Grace and Kim have given us.
This is nothing new. I work for a union in California, and have seen union activists do worse than what Griffing did. Michael Krivosh, Jim Hard and Michael Baretz are three people I know personally. Note my use of the terms allegedly and reportedly below …
While working for SEIU 1000 as a supervisor, Krivosh allegedly engaged in a parking lot fist fight with a subordinate; he was subsequently fired, but not willingly. I find it extremely funny that SEIU is now suing Krivosh (Google NUHW and Krivosh).
The SEIU 1000 Chief of Staff at the time, Michael Baretz — a man who never speaks when he can shout and never talks when he can swear — is the man who tried to keep Krivosh from being fired.
Jim Hard, then President of SEIU 1000, reportedly had a Sacramento court mandate anger-management classes after he spent years berating union staff. He is now quite agreeable in public.
Point is, it’s all about power for these guys. And don’t get in their way unless you’re ready. Because they are angry, entitled thugs who will use any means necessary to achieve “justice”. Vigilante justice, that is.
So why didn’t the cop take a few minutes to review the video, break out the cuffs and take those “nurses” off to jail? It’s not like cops are unioni…..
Oh, wait…..
i really hope those that were involved will sue this guy. seriously, people on the right are way too nice, and always back down for some reason. the left would never do this, and while i acknowledge that the left is always better funded, i am sure many a conservative would be thrilled to contribute to the legal fund. seriously, people on the right need to start sueing these radical leftists when they physically assault you. there will be more assaults coming, but we all must remain composed in the face of these bullies!
I’m tempted to go to an event with an old junky camera, just so he’d hit it and shove me, so I could KICK HIS A$$!!!! What a pos!!!! FIRE HIM NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are a lot of these union reps who have a misguided idea as to their importance. I’d say this guy will soon be collecting unemployment bene’s!!! Hope they don’t run out! Time for him to go. I’d like to put my size 14 up his a__.
As a man nurse….I wish that i was there…especially that tall goon with the smartass smile would be missing teeth..NURSES…..do you see what is happening here…do you ladies think these people won’t slap you around if needed….MALE NURSES….show some balls and protect your co-workers….Paramedics…EMT’S..support your RN’s buddies..get rid of these communist goons..
Man, I would love to be assaulted by a lefty prick like Herr Griffing. At the very least, I would break his arm in retaliation. If he pissed me off, I would break more stuff, like maybe his neck, just to ensure he’d never be able to assault anyone else again.
Damn commies!
chicopanther
What a disgusting waste of life and breath. Unions are like a tick sucking the lifeblood out of the economy and the money from their members’ pockets. Kim and Grace — hang in there! And thank you for sharing your insights into the CNA culture. Anyone who’s ever taken a trip to the hospital can appreciate the extremly hard work that nurses do. You deserve a better spokesgroup than the CNA and its network of high-paid thugs, goons, and harpies.