Union Thugs Go After UFC, Marines

From Fox News: A union veterans committee's battle royale with the Ultimate Fighting Championship may have more to do with union organizing than its claim that the brutal sport reflects badly on the U.S. Marine Corps, which has spent roughly $4.5 million sponsoring the bloody bouts.
Veterans who are members of UNITE HERE, a union representing roughly 250,000 hotel, food service, gaming and manufacturing workers, have mounted a campaign to urge Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos to drop sponsorship of UFC fights, which they claim promote violence and bigotry. But Jim DuPont, a former Marine and the chairman of UNITE HERE's Veterans Committee, acknowledged that the effort would not have happened had it not been for the ongoing union dispute between UNITE HERE and Las Vegas’ non-union Stations Casinos, which are owned by Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who also head the UFC.....
For more than a decade, UNITE HERE has unsuccessfully tried to unionize 12,000 employees at Station Casinos. DuPont, who served in the Marines from 1971 to 1975, acknowledged the nexus between the union fight and a petition seeking the dissolution of the relationship between Marines and the UFC’s “mercenaries,” but claimed the larger issue is the “disservice to servicemen” due to that link....

UFC officials, meanwhile, cited “ulterior motives” by UNITE HERE/Culinary Union Local 226 regarding the petition in a statement to FoxNews.com. “Recently, the management of UNITE HERE/Culinary Union Local 226 launched an aggressive campaign against the UFC and the Marines under the guise of concern about the UFC's conduct,” the statement read. “However, the leaders of UNITE HERE/Culinary Union Local 226 have their own agenda that has nothing to do with the issues they have raised.”
According to the UFC’s statement, the union is targeting business partners in the hope Station Casinos would “cave to the pressure” and force its employees to join.
“This whole issue with the Marines is really not the issue at all,” UFC Executive Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence Epstein told FoxNews.com. “It’s all about the culinary union here in Las Vegas trying to organize workers at the Station Casino properties.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/22/veterans-group-wants-ufc-marine-sponsorship-knocked-out/#ixzz24JrcM89B

This union group is just a bunch of thugs who resort to anything they can think of to get Station Casinos unionized.  They have attacked community leaders while they sitting down to a quiet meal in a local downtown restaurant, they picket outside the casinos all the time and sometimes get themselves arrested by the local cops and have tried to extort different companies who do business with Station Casinos from doing business with them and more.

Now, the union is using Marines and sullying their reputations by making them into union thugs and that is shameful.  But the union doesn't care because they have no shame.  

Simply put, the vast majority of employees don't want the culinary union thugs in their casinos and representing them and could blame them?  How would you like to have a bunch of thugs telling you what to do?

So, once again, the union thugs picked on the wrong person in the UFC and even if the Marines back out, there are many more sponsors waiting to get in and take their place.  The UFC is a billion dollar business and is way more popular than boxing right now.

So, thanks, union thugs for playing, but you are in the little leagues while the Marines and UFC are the major league.