ON THE AVENUE I'M TAKIN' YOU TO, SHAKEDOWN STREET (via Liberty Scue):

Labor's Desperate Measures (Dennis C. Vacco, 6/29/2006, The American Spectator

The Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York, otherwise known as ROC-NY, has come to represent a curious new strategic model for labor organizers -- one that all small and medium-sized business owners would do well to heed.

With financial and organizational support from Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 100, ROC-NY was initially formed to help find employment for the surviving employees of Windows on the World, destroyed when the World Trade Center was attacked. To date, the group continues to emphasize its role as a September 11-based organization when soliciting donations. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

ROC-NY is a nonprofit organization sanctioned by traditional labor while clearly operating on the fringes of traditional labor laws. It has set out to aggressively attempt to remake the labor landscape by using the protections afforded to a nonprofit organization, publicly funded law firms, and old fashioned intimidation to shake down its targets. ROC-NY was formed with help from HERE Local 100 to increase union enrollment in the restaurant industry in New York where, surprisingly, only 1% of the 150,000 workers are unionized. In 2002, HERE 100 turned to two of its key organizers, Fekkak Mandouh and Saru Jayaraman, to run ROC-NY. With funding and salaries provided by HERE 100 to the two organizers, ROC-NY essentially became a subsidiary of the union.

BUT ROC-NY'S APPARENT union organizing efforts would represent a huge legal problem for a nonprofit entity. As a nonprofit corporation, ROC-NY is entitled to special tax treatment (i.e., it pays no taxes) and enjoys the benefits of tax-deductible contributions.

Simply put, ROC-NY is abusing the favorable tax treatment it receives and what's worse, it is using donations that are tax deductible to the contributor to then go out and attack businesses throughout New York.