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Union “Facts” Campaign Spreads
Distorted Anti-Labor Spin

February 15, 2006

The man who wrote the book on smearing public interest groups like Mothers against Drunk Driving and the Centers for Disease Control is at it again, this time turning his smear tactics on the AFL-CIO in public attacks -- an $8 million campaign likely funded by our traditional antagonists

Richard Berman of Berman and Associates is the same hired gun who has worked for corporate interests by attacking the motives and background of those who level legitimate criticism against companies.  He launched his public anti-union marketing campaign with full-page advertisements this week in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, which coincided with a protest outside the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington D.C. on Feb. 13. 

The labor group American Rights at Work said the campaign’s front organization is the Center for Union Facts, whose Web site, unionfacts.net, lays out their research – composed unfair labor practice charges, criminal charges, decertification proceedings and documentation of “crime and corruption.”  The Web site paints all unions and union leaders with the broad brush of corruption and crime, charging them with misspending member dues and “harming the very people they promise to protect.”  It’s a simplistic and wildly unfair characterization of the labor movement as a whole.

“It’s sad that this group can find no other worthwhile pursuit than to insult and smear hard-working American workers, who have enough deal with in rising health care costs, stagnant wages and declining benefits,”  said IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill.  “We can’t match his big-money backers with expensive newspaper advertisements but we can prove him wrong by doing what we do every day: working hard for our employers and for a better life for ourselves and our families.”

AFL-CIO research reveals as founder of the Employment Policies Institute Foundation, which has argued against raising the minimum wage, and a labor lawyer with the Chamber of Commerce in the 1970s, Berman has a long history of hatred against workers who seek to tap into the American dream.  While Berman purports to be interested in transparency, he refuses to reveal his sources of funding for his latest attack project.