(A good read suggesting that Berman wouldn't be brought on to wage Millions of $$$$$'s Campaign if they weren't suddenly worried about a resurgence in unions)
Does Richard Berman Know Something That We Don’t?By Frank Joyce | bio
In case you missed Nathan’s post a couple of weeks ago, or recent stories in Business Week, the New York Times and elsewhere—there’ s a new union terminator in town. His name is Richard Berman. Business Week says he’s kind of like a Michael Moore for businessmen.
There are some superficial parallels. The way Berman announced his multi-million dollar anti union web site, www.unionfacts.c om, was kind of clever. He inflated a 15 foot dinosaur in front of the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington. The UnionFacts news release called them the “colossal fossil.” He followed that up with a newspaper ad in Los Angeles that pictured UniteHere President Bruce Raynor alongside Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung, to associate Raynor with opposition elections as a means of establishing a union. (The irony here, of course, is that it’s employers who routinely use their North Korean like economic life and death coercive power over workers to rig workplace elections in their favor.)
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Berman’s method for defending the status quo however is not the fire hose or the ax handle. The blunt instruments of his trade are the World Wide Web, the press release, the Op Ed and paid media ads. As Nathan and others have pointed out, his collection of 3.8 million negative “facts” about unions and their leaders is riddled with inaccuracies, distortions and outright howlers.
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There’s something happening here and it’s not just about Wal Mart. My theory is that what Berman’s telling these guys is that workers and citizens are getting restless. His story must be that they are getting so restless that the attack better be kicked up a notch lest unions start to look good to workers in spite of all their flaws and weaknesses. I think Berman is absolutely right about the restless part. People are getting closer and closer to a critical mass of irritation, disillusionment and more importantly hope.
Much more of this somewhat hopeful article..................
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/27521