Labor & Employment Law

Dirty Tea Party Secrets Revealed

By Mike Hall

Looks like a California tea party activist took to heart AC/DC?s song  ?Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap? to take a swipe Ohio public employees. Thanks to the good folks at the progressive blog Plunderbund for publicizing the trickery.

Earlier this week, AFSCME set up a call-in action for its Ohio members to contact state senators and urge them to oppose legislation (S.B. 5) that would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers from teachers to bus drivers, sanitation workers and firefighters. (Click here for more information on S.B. 5 and here for more on other attacks on public employees.)

California tea party activist Mike ?Mish? Shedlock, who blogs under the name of Mish at Keep America at Work, a virulent anti-union blog,  posted a blog (click here for a screen grab of the post) giving readers step-by-step instructions in how to use the AFSCME action alert site to call Ohio lawmakers urge them to support the bill.

But AFSCME noticed that the site was getting out-of-state calls and pulled the plug. Writes Brian Hester, who blogs under the name ModernEsquire at Plunderbund:

They were quickly able to determine that these folks were using AFSCME?s system to call members of the state Senate to lobby in favor of SB 5?the bill to eliminate collective bargaining for state employees–and traced it back to Shedlock?s post.

Shedlock, of course, wrote his post in a way to have plausible deniability, but there was absolutely no reason for him to include the link to AFSCME?s e-Action Network except to invite out-of-state tea party activist such as himself to use it to call state senators posing as ?concerned Ohioans.?

Maybe AFSCME can bill Shedlock for the extra calls so the dirty deed might not be so dirt cheap.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 11, 2011 (boomark / email).