Biased Anti-Union Reporting

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/sep/24/biased_anti_union_reporting

By Nathan Newman | bio

Every year, big corporations spend insane amounts of money on parties and unless someone gets indicted, as with Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, the press makes no big deal of it. But a union throws a holiday party to reward major volunteers and the NY Daily News runs a story with the title, Union for poor lives high.

So what kind of spendthrift union bash are we talking about?

Well, health care union local SEIU 1199 spent a little under $500,000 for a party for 4000 union members activists from across the northeast-based local-- which works out to about $120 per member, an amount that included travel and accomodations for those coming in from out-of-town. Which is hardly an extravagant amount for a public event, yet nowhere in the story does the reporter bother to even mention that typical large catered parties and events in New York usually spend far, far more per person for this kind of party.

But I guess the kind of folks attending this party -- home care workers, hospital orderlies and such -- don't deserve any party at all. How dare the union spend money on a band? Kazoos would have been far more appropirate apparently.

And as a union official mentions in the story, every person attending had to earn attendance at the party by attending at least 20 union activities during the year. So that $500,000 party helped motivate more than 80,000 separate volunteer activities by the 4000 members attending the party-- a pretty damn smart investment aside from just being a good way to build camraderies among union activist leaders scattered across the local's territory.

Part of the hook for the story was a rightwing corporate-funded group, the Center for Union Facts, used new data collected by the Bush Department of Labor that highlights all expenses by unions.

So why didn't the reporter just compare that data to similar party expenses by big corporations? Oh right, corporations don't have to publish similar information. Corporations only have to publish general information about their spending, usually massaged by major auditing firms, and that only applies to publicly-traded companies. Many businesses are essentially black boxes with the public getting no information on how they spend their money.

FULL story at link above.

[Gman]

1. Here's the problem:

You can do a helluva lot with $500K. That could do a lot of organizing, or education or just keep it in the treasury for a strike fund or just a rainy day (I'm old school). Therefore the problem is that the membership thinks just like this AND its a perfect setup for a rag like the Post to pick up and run with.

It ain't my national so I have nothing to say about it except it gives fuel to the fire. What they should have done is have a one day meeting on influencing legislation then each local pick up the costs, voucher it back to the international and its paid for out of as legislative work which covers a real broad area. When you've got to put expenses on your LM report (which are public record) everyone in the world gets to know your business.

[Kolesar]

2. I think antiunion propaganda went amok &knocked out GM,Ford, &Chrysler

I think a lot of the bad mouthing of US brands stems from a long period of very deliberate anti-union propaganda. I heard some of that s--t on an AM radio station I tuned in to when I was driving in another county. Some dork was on there with a nasty screed about how union employees don't work hard. It was supposedly a first person account, but it might as well have been a republican official faking an "everyman" Ohio-Appalachian accent.

I am trying to work this theme up into a letter to Rick Wagoner, the head of GM. I have to get the "dork" and the "s--t" out of the text first.

[senseandsensibility]

3. The corporate media HATES unions

I have been noticing anti-union reporting for years, and some "liberal" newspapers are the worst.