http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm"Owned by the trial lawyers' lobby:
Nader always received lots of funding from trials lawyers, and in return has supported their interests throughout his career. For all his talk of democracy, Nader's vision is of an elite of lawyers -- led of course by himself -- defending the little guy, much more than true "citizen power". He confided to Charles McCarry his dream of having 4,000 to 5,000 "professionals" around the country to battle business nationwide.
Busted a union among his workers:
Ralph talks big about democracy and even unions. But when his own workers at one of his magazines, Multinational Monitor, got fed up with cruel working conditions and started agitating for a union of their own, Nader busted the union with all of the hardball techniques used by corporate owners across America. Workers at Public Citizen, another Nader group, also tried to form a union because of 60 to 80 hour work weeks, salaries that ranged from $13,000 down, and other difficult working conditions and were blocked by Nader, who remains unapologetic to this day.
Nader says "I don't think there is a role for unions in small nonprofit 'cause' organizations any more than ... within a monastery or within a union."
When ringleader Tim Shorrock filed the union recognition papers, Nader immediately transferred ownership in the Multinational Monitor to close friends.. When Shorrock showed up for work the next day, he had been fired, the locks were changed, and management called the police to charge him with theft (of his own work papers.) That charge was thrown out of court, but management fired the two supportive editors and sued the three of them for $1.2 million, agreeing to drop the intimidation suit only when they dropped their NLRB complaint. All of these action are straight from the hardball anti-union playbook, and Nader makes no apology."