Wow! The Boss Sounds A Lot Like Most Anarchists

New group launches anti-union drive
By KIM CHAPMAN
BLOOMBERG NEWS

A new anti-union group backed by U.S. businesses began a multimillion-dollar campaign Monday attacking the organized-labor movement as corrupt and outdated.

The Center for Union Facts took out full-page ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and put a 15-foot dinosaur outside the Washington headquarters of the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation.

"The way unions are presently structured is often anachronistic," said lobbyist Rick Berman, who started the group. "They don't want to recognize that the world has moved on. Management isn't treating employees like they were in the 1930s or '40s."

Berman said he's raised about $2.5 million from companies, trade organizations and individuals, whom he declined to identify.

Berman has run similar types of campaigns to defend his lobbying clients in the food, tobacco, beverage and restaurant industries. Those campaigns included criticism of studies linking diet to obesity and drunken-driving laws that he sees as ineffective.

The campaign Berman unveiled Monday is an attempt to educate union members and the general public about the ineffectiveness of unions as well as what he claims is a large amount of "criminal activity" among labor leaders, Berman said.

The creation of the center comes as labor groups have scored recent victories in getting companies to pay higher wages and provide more health care benefits. In Maryland last month, labor groups won passage of a law that will require Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other big companies to pay for workers' health care.

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