Ad Tries to Fool Kentuckians

from: http://kyaflcio.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63&Itemid=1

Union-bashing disguised as concern for workers

Kentucky's workers and voters should recognize that the recent rash of anti-union TV and radio ads are nothing more than propaganda intended to divert the attention of the electorate from the critical issues of the day: health care, good jobs, education, trade, retirement security, energy security and the war.

Voters should reject the cynical premise of this ad campaign along with those responsible for its dissemination.

The ads' principle claim is that the proposed Employee Free Choice Act would take away a worker's right to choose union representation by the traditional or ”secret ballot“ election procedure. Not true. Under this legislation, there still would be an option to have the National Labor Relations Board administer ”secret ballot“ elections at the workplace.

Under the current system, employers are the ones who make the decision whether to call for an NLRB election — which they often do because it gives them months to run an aggressive anti-union campaign.

The Employee Free Choice Act would put this decision in the hands of workers. If 30 percent of them choose to have an NLRB election they can; if they prefer majority sign-up, they will have that option as well.

Majority sign-up is not a new approach. For years, employers such as AT&T, Cingular Wireless, Harley-Davidson and Kaiser Permenente have allowed that majority sign-up, finding that it results in less hostility and polarization in the workplace than the failed NLRB process.

The ad campaign attempts to deceive the voters into thinking that Employee Free Choice is on schedule to be voted on in Congress. The bill was passed 241 to 185 in the House on March 1, 2007. The U.S. Senate passed it 51-48 on June 26, 2007.

But thanks to arcane Senate rules, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and company were able to obstruct passage in spite of the majority vote. If there is some sense of urgency associated with these ads it is that McConnell, the obstructionist in chief, is in trouble this November.

Those responsible for these ads, the Center For Union Facts (more appropriately the Center for Union Mis-Information and Propaganda) and its allied organization, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, are the creation of Richard Berman, who has a reputation for mounting vigorous media misinformation campaigns on behalf of wealthy, unnamed clients.

Accordingly, Berman ”never discloses his financial backers, allowing large, mainstream companies to fund him without having to associate their brand names with his sharp-elbowed approach,“ according to the Nov. 3, 2007, Las Vegas Sun.

It is an insult to the hard-working men and women of Kentucky that someone like Berman would try to convince them that he, his organization and its rich contributors are on the side of workers.

The Kentucky backers of this propaganda include state Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Rockville, who sponsored the 2006 ”right-to-work-for-less“ bill.

What a joke. Wealthy businessmen, CEOs and anti-union politicians — who have opposed unionization at their workplaces in the most vigorous manner and support anti-union, anti-worker legislation — want us to believe that they care about workers' rights to join a union.

A clear example of why the Employee Free Choice Act is so needed is the 15-year struggle by the nurses at Louisville's Norton Audubon Hospital to have a union election free from harassment, intimidation, surveillance and other illegal management tactics.

As The Courier-Journal reported on July 24, ”the National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint charging Norton Audubon Hospital with coercing nurses to vote against a union. The complaint alleges that hospital managers told nurses that they could lose wages if a union came in and that they kept pro-union nurses from distributing literature.“

It is long past time that workers reject this wholesale undermining of their right to collective bargaining to improve their living and working conditions and support candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act.

Don't be fooled by the ads of these phony front groups. Their goal is to help re-elect McConnell so he can continue blocking legislation critically important to the workers of Kentucky and the nation.