Shedding Light on Union Busters

From its venomous television ads and web presence to its infamous Executive Director, Richard “Rick” Berman (the same PR guru who once waged an aggressive campaign to discredit Mothers Against Drunk Driving), the Center for Union Facts is one of the most anti-union organizations of our time. Even its name is a ploy to lend false credibility to a “Center” whose sole purpose is union-busting. But it doesn’t operate alone. As part of a growing, highly choreographed network of organizations with a huge financial stake in dismantling workers’ rights, including the National Right to Work Committee and U. S. Chamber of Commerce, these groups employ the ‘big lie’ technique to trash unions and union members in the media, in print, and on the Internet.

One of the most effective tools in reducing the impact of bad corporate citizens, however, is transparency. That’s the idea behind a new website, www.AntiUnionNetwork.org (AUN), which was launched by American Rights at Work, a national workers’ rights organization, in September. By exposing this anti-union network’s true purpose, its inter-connections, and financial backers to the harsh light of public scrutiny, its credibility is instantly challenged.

AUN is a “one-stop” resource where the general public, union members, and print and media journalists can get credible information about workers’ rights issues, and stay informed about the activities and operations of these anti-union groups.

BAC Secretary-Treasurer James Boland welcomes the AUN site as a way to help counter the “growing anti-union movement in this country that’s been fueled by six years of unchecked corporate favoritism” by a Republican President and Congress. One of the most egregious examples of the Bush Administration’s explicit sanctioning of union-busters was the confirmed relationship between Berman’s group and the U.S. Department of Labor (see Issue 3, 2006 Journal for related article, “Department of Labor’s Support of Anti-Union Group Exposed”). 

Those free-wheeling days appear to be numbered. “Although we can’t let our guard down,” Boland predicts the newly elected Congress “will not only exercise stronger support for workers’ rights, but through stricter ethics rules and enforcement, provide less cover for bad corporate citizens to operate under the radar.”