Hub radio stations to air anti-union ads

22 Feb 2006 // An anti-union group says it will start airing ads this week on three Boston radio stations as part of a media blitz against the US labor movement and its push to change the way most workers are organized.

''Union members are tired of the corruption and huge salary packages for union chiefs . . . and sick of being forced to pay union dues that end up in the pockets of politicians they don't agree with," according to the ads, which the Center for Union Facts says will begin airing as early as today on three Boston radio stations.

The campaign started earlier this month with full-page newspaper ads in the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. The organization also launched an Internet website, UnionFacts.com, and erected a large dinosaur outside the headquarters of the AFL-CIO.

Richard Berman, 62, director of the Center for Union Facts in Washington, D.C., said he launched the site himself, and then sought financial support from firms for the media effort. Berman declined to identify his backers. He said the media campaign will cost about $5 million.

Berman said he was inspired to speak out against unions after he noticed that labor had stepped up its promotion of card-check recognition as a way of organizing new members. The strategy allows unions to circumvent the time-consuming process of a National Labor Relations Board election. In a card-check campaign, the union seeks a pledge of neutrality from the employer and a promise to recognize a bargaining unit after more than 50 percent of a workforce signs union cards.

''They want to force people to join unions," Berman said in a telephone interview. ''They are going to corporations and intimidating them into being neutral."

Berman, who also runs a communications firm, Berman & Co., has worked as a lobbyist for the restaurant and beverage industries.

He is a founder of the American Beverage Institute and he founded the Employment Policies Institute, which fought against increases in the federal minimum wage. Another nonprofit founded by Berman, the Center for Consumer Freedom, battled smoking bans at restaurants.

Last week, in an op-ed article that appeared in the Washington Times, Berman criticized card checks.

''Unions say they organize three to four times as many workers through 'card-check' campaigns as through secret-ballot elections," Berman wrote. ''Union representatives cajole, harass, and intimidate workers to sign cards. As soon as half of them sign a card, all of them start paying the union to keep their jobs."

The center's radio ads come after UNITE HERE, the 90,000- member hotel workers union, launched an organizing and contract campaign in Boston on Saturday to increase the wages and benefits of hotel workers.

Bruce Raynor, general president of UNITE HERE, said the anti-union campaign ''is an indication that corporations are worried" that card-check campaigns could increase union strength.

''I think the ads are a recognition of the fact that we are making headway," said Raynor.