Grass roots right wing style. In the PR game they call it “Astroturfing.” It means creating a movement or organization that looks like it’s “grassroots” but really isn’t.
One of the more noxious sprouts of Astroturf we’ve encountered this campaign season is an outfit called the Employee Freedom Action Committee. The Washington, DC-based group is registered as a non-profit, which means it doesn’t have to disclose where its money comes from. But it operates out of the offices of lobbyist Richard Berman, a notorious Astroturfer who has operated front groups supporting the restaurant, liquor and tobacco industries and opposing (among other things) consumer protection, animal rights, increases in the minimum wage – and, almost needless to say, labor unions.
In a 2007 “60 Minutes” segment, correspondent Morley Safer described how Berman “has come up with a clever system of non-profit ‘educational’ entities. Companies can make charitable donations to these groups, which … are neutral sounding but ‘educating’ with a particular point of view, all perfectly legal.”
Right now, EFAC is flooding the Oregon airwaves with an ad attacking Democratic US Senate candidate Jeff Merkley. “Some union bosses and their politician friends want to effectively do away with privacy when it comes to voting on joining a union,” the narrator says. The screen shows a picture of Merkley looking sinister, then a scene of a big, scary-looking guy – a “union boss,” presumably – looming over a poor little old lady.
It’s crude, but maybe effective.
The same ad, suitably edited, is being shown all over the country to attack candidates – both incumbents and challengers – who support the federal Employee Free Choice Act. This legislation made it through the House in 2007 but was killed by a Republican filibuster threat in the Senate.
Rick Berman and his corporate benefactors have their panties in a twist over EFCA because it would require companies to recognize a union if more than 50% of their employees sign cards in favor of unionization. (Under present law, the employer can insist on holding an election.)
Opponents of this “card check” provision say it would allow unions to intimidate workers. Supporters say it’s needed to keep management from intimidating workers. “Sadly, many employers resort to spying, threats, intimidation, harassment and other illegal activity in their campaigns to oppose unions,” US Rep. George Miller (D-CA) said in introducing the bill last year. “The penalty for illegal activity, including firing workers for engaging in protected activity, is so weak that it does little to deter law breakers.”
It’s not hard to understand why corporations don’t want this law passed – and why they’re willing to give Berman big money to stop the Democrats from getting a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and passing it.
No matter where you come down on the card-check issue, the Employee Freedom Action Committee’s campaign is a particularly repugnant example of how corporate “soft money” is used to deceive voters and distort the political process. So we’re delivering THE BOOT to Mr. Berman and EFAC, right in their big fat Astroturf.
This article appears in Aug 21-27, 2008.
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The concept of a Union goon squad looking over your shoulder while you vote, is repugnant to any ethical person. A persons continued employment should be based on performance, not seniority. There is no need, no viable use, for unions at this time. This is not 1890. Unions are leeches that suck the blood of the common worker for their own criminal ends. Show me a union that is not corrupt…that has not been bad for the country, bad for our economy…The United Auto Workers comes to mind…responsible for the demise and imminent death of American auto manufacturing…Anybody remember Jimmy Hoffa and the f’ing Teamsters? Unions are organized crime…For Christ’s sake, wise up, it’s 2008!
Well said…
One thing I can’t understand in this debate is why workers would be any more subject to intimidation by “union thugs” under the new law than they already are. The union already has to collect cards before it can hold an election, and it knows who signed them. What the new law does is reduce the opportunity for employers to block unionization by intimidating (or firing) known pro-union employees before the certification vote takes place. There are laws against that, of course, but the right-wing, anti-worker Bush administration refuses to enforce them.
HBM: If you could figure out how to turn bullshit into diamonds, you’d be the richest man on earth. As a lifelong blue collar worker I think unions suck. Being anti-union is NOT being anti-worker, it is actually being pro-worker. Your assumption that workers embrace unionism is not based on any observable reality. The reasons union membership numbers are declining is because workers, like me, are rejecting them. Many workers understand that burdening employers with costly layers of extra bullshit…costs jobs. Workers in 2008 are a hell of a lot more informed than your outdated mindset. Wise up…
HBM: I would venture a bet that you, and probably no staff member of The Source editorial board, has ever been, or ever will be, a union member…
Belza: I belonged to the Newspaper Guild when I worked at Newsday and at the San Jose Mercury News. Don’t know about anybody else at the Source.
And don’t think you can draw me into a dialogue so you can vent your spleen on me. I answered the question and that’s the end of it.
Obviously, CT has an axe to grind. Unions have been correctly charged with corruption and practices that actually inhibit worker freedom, I get it. My opinion, though, is that we should work to fix them, rather than questioning their right to exist. Without them, it WOULD look an awful lot like 1890.
” HBM: If you could figure out how to turn bullshit into diamonds, you’d be the richest man on earth.”
WOW!! I am impressed Amen brother. HBM what’s that smell? Oh ya Bullshit!
Scooter: To hear CT and others tell it you’d think Americans woke up one fine day in 1900 or so and said to themselves: “Hey, we’re living in a capitalist paradise here — let’s start unions and pass a lot of ‘socialist’ laws and screw it up!” There was a REASON why workers in this country decided they had to organize and there was a REASON why the progressive movement found a following.
Unless someone has been the victim of an unwarranted picket line that halted work on a project at a critical time; unless someone has been denied the right to work unless they joined a union; unless someone has been involved in an attempted unionization of the workforce of their company with no concern for the economic impact, I can see why the Pollyannish attitude about unions would prevail in their mindset.
Yes! A hundred years ago conditions were such that the creation of unions and their ultimate success at collective bargaining were an absolute necessity for economic justice. But business management got the message–and for the last seventy years, unions have been riding the coattails of the robber baron era. So successful were the unions that organized crime targeted them–along with drugs, gambling and prostitution–as areas of interest and involvement. Congressional hearings in the 1950’s exposed crime’s involvement and control. It cannot be denied. It continues even today in spite of the efforts to clean up unions. Google union corruption and see what you get.
The decline of unions since the 1950’s led them to seek even stronger political protection and to unionize government and white collar jobs. Did that unionization lead to more effective and efficient government? Hardly. Did it lead to less corruption and criminal activity? Get serious! Did it lead to expanded union membership and a massive unionization movement? No.
There are laws that govern union elections in place. If you haven’t been involved with the NLRB during a unionization attempt, count your lucky stars! The process is skewed towards the unions–and if their attempt does not succeed, unions never fail to appeal, file false claims and charges, and defame the individuals and companies opposing them. Unions are adept at intimidation–of members, non-members, and anyone they have issues with. Further ‘protection’ of their rights and ‘simplification’ of the process is completely unnecessary. Adding more layers of law and process on top of laws and processes that already exist in an effort to solve their inability to connect with the average worker is a load of crap. Do a better job–don’t ask the government to do it for you. This is 2007, not 1907.