Constitutional Law

Anti-Union Groups Launch Campaigns Against 'Employee Free Choice Act'

Yesterday, TPM reported on a business lobbying group set to launch an advertising campaign aimed at scuttling passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Part of the effort to defeat a bill intended to make it easier for workers to form unions includes airing television ads attempting to tie the measure to the investigation of corruption charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. TPM reported that the television ads, purchased by a group called Americans for Free Choice, will target states, such as Arkansas, Nebraska, Indiana and Colorado.

TPM’s Greg Sargent reports today on another figure “who will be the number one foe of the big unions as they try to pass their number one legislative priority next year: He’s a D.C. cartoon villain business lobbyist who fights efforts to restrict drunk driving, mandate healthier foods, and, of course, to hike the minimum wage.” Sargent reports that Rick Berman, head of a group dubbed “Center for Union Facts,” is notorious in Washington, D.C. for fighting unions. The TPM article includes information on Berman from a USA Today profile. The USA Today article noted that Berman has spent plenty of money on “in-your-face advertising.” His ads, often over-the-top in their attacks on unions and efforts to promote healthy foods, have appeared in national newspapers, on buses and in subway systems.

The New York Times noted in a 2006 article about his group that “Berman has faced criticism in recent years for arguing on behalf of his clients that drinking lots of soda does not contribute to diabetes and that Americans have been ‘force-fed a steady diet of obesity myths by the ‘food police,’ trial lawyers, and even our own government.’”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on December 31, 1969 (boomark / email).