Group Starts Anti-Union Campaign

[Omaha Steve]

.
I got this from the breaking news section.

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: February 14, 2006

A new business-backed group is mounting a highly visible attack against organized labor, just as unions are trying to pick themselves up after suffering a schism and years of decline.

The group, the Center for Union Facts, ran full-page advertisements in national newspapers yesterday and started a Web site, UnionFacts.com, asserting that many unions are corrupt and have hurt airlines, steel makers and automakers.

"Obviously I'm putting out information that's not very flattering," said Richard Berman, a longtime lobbyist for the restaurant and beverage industry who is executive director of the Center for Union Facts. "The average person today, including the average union member, doesn't have any idea how unions operate and what the realities are. Everybody knows what unions are good at, but not what they're bad at."


Full story at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/business/14labor.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[readmoreoften]

1. Excellent. In the NY Times, no less.

Probably on the same day that the NYU teaching assistant strike makes the NYT. I had a scab (30s, graduate degree) ask me why I would support unions, since they are run by the mafia. He also said striking was a bunch of hippie shit and we were stuck in the 60s. So I guess we're the hippie mobsters you've all been worried about. Let's not forget Liberal Jews. And Thugs. Can't forget to call us thugs. Jewish thug hippies in the mob.

I'm so close to giving up. I am stunned by the ignorance of supposedly intelligent people every day of my life.

What fools Americans are becoming. No one knows their own interests anymore.

[demosincebirth]

2. One of the subjects that shounld be taught in High School. is

the History of Labor in the U.S. 90% of the studends who graduate do not know the impact that Organized Labor has had in their lives and in the lives of everyone around them. They think that benifits their parents receive are given to them out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.

[GrantDem]

3. The Facts about UnionFacts.com

Get the Truth about Unionfacts.com
For more information call the AFL-CIO at 202-637-5018

• Unionfacts.com is a project of the Chamber of Commerce, according to an anonymous source which claims that, in a meeting of the State Chambers of Commerce National Conference held on Sanibel Island in Florida on January 26, the State Chambers announced they were spending $8 million a year ($2 million a quarter) to launch this anti-union campaign.

• It’s clear that corporations are pooling resources to fight back against workers’ efforts to roll back corporate power. It’s no accident that the Chamber and its members are launching a major initiative as the AFL-CIO and its unions are launching Fair Share health care in 30 states, helping record numbers of workers win unions outside the flawed NLRB process (like at Cingular), and taking on giant corporations, like WalMart.

• Unionfacts.com is a project of The Center for Union Facts which is run by Richard Berman of Berman and Company. Here are examples of the types of campaigns they run:
o Attacking MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) on behalf of the alcohol industry. (consumerdeception.com)
o Representing the tobacco lobby against the CDC (Centers for Disease Control.) (consumerdeception.com)
o Berman has been accused of falsely attributing to the EPA a minimization of the risk of ALAR, a pesticide used on apples that is especially harmful to children and which has since been banned, when, in fact, the information he used was from the company he represented that made ALAR. (Sourcewatch.org)

• In the early 1990s, Berman made a $93,000 donation to Kennesaw State College for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s class on the condition that Gingrich teach ideas supported by the right-wing Employment Policies Institute. House Ethics Committee reports revealed that Berman’s contribution was solicited by GOPAC, Gingrich’s PAC. (Sourcewatch.org)

• Other organizations reportedly attacked by Berman and his organizations include: Action on Smoking and Health; American Medical Association; Center for Food Safety; EarthSave International; Environmental Working Group; Friends of the Earth; Harvard School of Public Health; National Association of High School Principals; and the Surgeon General. (consumerdeception.com)

• Berman has a long history with the Chamber of Commerce; in the 1970s, he was their labor law director.

 Berman’s “Guest Choice Network” (according to the Center for Media and Democracy):
o Described Mothers Against Drunk Driving as a group of "professional fund-raisers" who try to "scare us away from even responsible drinking."
o Characterized former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s proposal to confiscate the vehicles of people convicted for drunk driving as a "car-theft ring."
o Criticized the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for its warnings about salmonella-related food poisoning "For nearly three decades, has been whipping up fear over food while remaining virtually unchallenged by the press or the scientific community. By generating more heat than light, helps create fear . . . over . . . food products."
“ lack of evidence that second-hand smoke causes cancer.”
—Rick Berman http://www.consumerfreedom.com/oped_detail.cfm?oped=123


The Washington Post did an expose on Berman and his organization:

The Escalating Obesity Wars
Nonprofit's Tactics, Funding Sources Spark Controversy
By Caroline E. Mayer and Amy Joyce
Washington Post
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/26/AR2005042601259.html