(Note: The newpaper’s original title of this article is misleading as well as the name of the bill, since this act would require workers to lose their privacy when voting for or against unionization)
August 17, 2008
Seacoast Online
Groups lodge anti-union campaign
Employee Free Choice Act the subject of ads
It is virtually impossible to watch television in Maine and nearly as difficult in New Hampshire without seeing the ads: Images of American flags and Founding Fathers are followed by grainy photos of an angry Tom Allen and a smug Jeanne Shaheen, both Democratic Senate candidates and clearly intended as the bad guys, as the voiceover asks: “Shouldn’t your vote still be private?”
To further compound the situation, Mainers get another dose of similar ads. There have been two aired so far, both featuring Vincent Curatola, who played mob guy Johnny Sack on “The Sopranos.” The first has him peering over the shoulders of a man who entered a voting booth. The second, more recent, shows cutouts of Sen. Susan Collins and Allen, her opponent, with more cryptic comments by Curatola about workers’ rights to privacy.
The ads leave some viewers scratching their heads and asking, “What’s going on here?” The answer is two multimillion dollar, multi-state efforts by separate anti-union organizations that are trying to woo the viewer to their side on what they see as a critical issue.
And according to them, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
At issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, a so-called “card check” bill, which would allow employees at a work place to unionize as soon as a majority signs cards expressing support to join a union. This would be an amendment of the National Labor Relations Act. Currently, under that act, the federal government conducts private ballot elections once a union gets 30 percent of a potential bargaining unit to agree to join a union.
The bill, said Tim Miller of the Employee Freedom Action Committee (the group behind the grainy photo ads), is an effort “to effectively get rid of privacy. Union bosses can stand over workers’ shoulders and use coercion. It’s bad enough that workers will lose their right to privacy, but it will tilt the whole political spectrum to the left when it comes to labor politics.”
Not so, says Ed Gorham, president of the Maine AFL-CIO. “It’s left up to the employer whether or not an election is held. They hold all the power. They can intimidate workers to force them from forming a bargaining unit. … It’s time to bring back the middle class.”
The bill has already passed the House and is currently in the Senate. The folks behind the ad campaign fear that if Sen. Barack Obama, an Employee Free Choice Act sponsor, is elected president and power shifts to the Democrats in the Senate, the bill will become law.
To try to prevent that from happening, Miller’s group and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (responsible for the Curatola ads) are working in what they see as key states where anti-Employee Free Choice Act senators are vulnerable.
Employee Freedom Action Committee
The Employee Freedom Action Committee (employeefreedom.org) is the “political arm” of the Center for Union Facts, said Miller, the group’s communications director.
The Center for Union Facts was founded by Richard Berman, a Washington lobbyist. According to a 2006 USA Today profile, Berman is not only responsible for fighting the anti-union battle, he has also taken on Mothers Against Drunk Driving, groups working to take trans fats out of foods and those fighting to increase the minimum wage.
Miller makes no bones about the “spare no expense” effort his group is undertaking. In addition to Maine and New Hampshire, anti-Employee Free Choice Act campaigns are under way in Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota.
Although he would not provide a specific dollar amount for Maine and New Hampshire, the committee is spending $30 million on the campaign, which includes “everything from television, radio and print ads to a YouTube page, Web advertising and a substantial grassroots organizing effort.
“It’s the most important issue in the election to us,” he said.
All so-called “third-party” ads such as these that mention candidates by name have to end by federal law 60 days before the election, or Sept. 5, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to run ads that address the issue.”
Coalition for a Democratic Workplace
Similar words spill from the lips of Brian Worth, spokesman for Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (myprivateballot.com), composed of virtually hundreds of businesses, chambers of commerce and trade associations.
The organization is focusing its efforts on only Maine and Minnesota. Although he too declined to provide specific figures, he said the campaign was in the “multimillion dollar” range in both states.
Worth said his organization chose the two states purposefully, as liberal to moderate and independent-minded.
“No one’s going to call Susan Collins a conservative,” he said.
Asked about the slightly sinister, mafioso tone of the ad, he said, “I’ve heard that from other folks. He was intended to be intimidating, but the whole card check things is intimidating. The question is, how do you educate someone in 30 seconds on an issue? You can bring a voter to water, but you can’t make them go further if they don’t want to.”
Union perspective
Ed Gorham shakes his head at these ads, saying that he did complain to several televisions stations about them, “and they told me I would be welcomed to buy an ad,” he said with a chuckle.
Gorham said in fact it’s been the unions that have been downtrodden for years, thanks to employers “who tie things up to try to prevent us from coming in.” He said unlike the ads and the anti-union groups suggest, unions are not taking away the right of workers to ask for a federal election. The majority card check is “just another option.”
He said the Employee Free Choice Act is “the best opportunity” middle-class Americans have “to bargain with their employers for better wages and benefits.”
Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO Maine “doesn’t have the resources to buy the kind of ad time” of the anti-union groups and said at this point “it remains to be seen” whether the national AFL-CIO will kick in money.
He said his group is contacting labor households asking their support of the Employee Free Choice Act, and has undertaken a letter to the editor campaign, “but that’s about it.”
If the bill passes the Senate and is signed into law, he said there’s “no question” he’d be organizing.
The candidates
Shaheen campaign communications director Kate Bedingfield called the ads “misleading and confusing,” and said Shaheen believes “employees should get to decide themselves” how best to form a union, either through election or card check.
Bedingfield took a jab at Shaheen’s opponent, incumbent Sen. John Sununu, saying the groups comprise “yet another one” of Sununu’s “out-of-state allies spending money in New Hampshire trying to distort Jeanne Shaheen’s position.”
Carol Andrews, communications director for the Allen campaign, said people should take a look at Richard Berman’s background and decide for themselves. The other one, she said, “attempts to link Tom Allen and Maine’s 67,000 union members to organized crime. This is wrong and has no place in this campaign.”
Interestingly, Collins agrees.
“Susan Collins feels third-party ads in general should have no place in Maine politics,” said her communications director Kevin Kelley.
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More info: Employee Freedom