Union-buster joins Wisconsin recall fight

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/07/union_buster_joins_wisconsin_recall_fight/


Rick Berman (Credit: CBS screen shot/Salon)

The Wisconsin recall ad wars have a new player: the Center for Union Facts, the well-heeled union-bashing outfit founded by food and beverage super-lobbyist Rick Berman. A CUF source says the self-described “union watchdog” is spending “just over a million dollars” in Wisconsin, and “may do more in the coming weeks.”

Unlike the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity’s pro-Walker campaign, the CUF’s ad buy makes no mention of Wisconsin or the union-busting “budget repair” that Gov. Scott Walker forced through last year. Rather, it consists entirely of ads that CUF has already been running around the country. You may have seen one on cable during GOP debates, or during the Super Bowl. But make no mistake, the ads are about keeping Walker in office.

As I’ve reported, CUF’s current campaign pushes the Employee Rights Act, a bill introduced in Congress by Republicans Orrin Hatch and Tim Scott that would ratchet our already conservative labor law much further to the right. Though the ERA has no chance of passing this year, it offers a hook for CUF to push a string of misleading anti-union claims: that workers are trapped in unions without a chance to vote them out; that unions can spend members’ dues on politics without regard to their objections; that workers join unions because organizers threaten them. In one of the ads airing in Wisconsin, “labor bosses” are symbolized by a student who grabs a card from a classmate and says, in a stereotypical “Italian gangster” voice, “You sure about this?”

The more Wisconsinites buy that view of unions, the more likely Walker is to turn back the efforts of the labor-backed coalition called We Are Wisconsin to recall him from office.