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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (July 6, 2006)
Anti-union group has close ties to U.S. Department of Labor WASHINGTON, D.C. — Officials at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) are scrambling to explain their relation- ship and contacts with Richard Berman, an alcohol and tobacco industry lobby- ist and front man for the anti-union Center for Union Facts. Information uncovered by a Free- dom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, D.C., (CREW) reveal a lengthy chain of correspon- dence between Berman and DOL offi- cials, including aides to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. Documents obtained by CREW de- tail what they describe as a “close and supportive” relationship between the two entities, including correspondence showing a meeting was set up between Berman and DOL staff. The Washing- ton, D.C.-based watchdog group filed the FOIA lawsuit after reports surfaced about department officials promoting Berman’s Web site in e-mails to DOL employees. The Center for Union Facts is re- sponsible for newspaper and TV ads us- ing actors posing as union members to blame union leaders for factory clos- ings, bankruptcies and jobs being sent overseas by companies in search of cheap labor. A national AFL-CIO fact-sheet says the Center for Union Facts is a project of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with funding from Wal-Mart and other large corporations. “It’s clear that corporations are pool- ing resources to fight back against workers’ efforts to roll back corporate power,” the fact sheet says, noting also that the chamber revealed in January Q } 2006 that it would spend $8 million a year to launch the anti-union campaign. Berman also is behind the Employ- ment Policies Institute, which Source- Watch, a Project of the Center for Me- dia & Democracy, describes as “a think-tank financed by business” that runs Web sites opposed to increasing the minimum wage and living wages. SourceWatch says the living wage Web site: “…attempts to portray the idea of a living wage for workers as some kind of insidious conspiracy. ‘Liv- ing wage activists want nothing less than a national living wage,’it warns (as though there is something wrong with paying employees enough that they can afford to eat and pay rent).” CREW sent a Freedom of Informa- tion Act request after the Washington Post reported the Labor Department’s Office of Public Affairs publicized The Center for Union Facts and its Web site to employees of the department as “dedicated to providing information on labor unions and their expenditures.” Because the Labor Department re- fused to comply with the FOIA request by CREW, the group in April sued the department, compelling it to provide the records. The documents include an e- mail indicating Labor Department pub- lic liaison aide Lynn Gibson (formerly with the Heritage Foundation) set up a meeting between Berman and depart- ment staff. In another, Gibson tells a Berman staffer she will send e-mails re- lated to his organization to her “net- work.” The documents include an e-mail to Gibson from a Union Facts staffer transmitting one of the Center’s attacks on the AFL-CIO (subject: “Thought Quest Investment Management, Inc. Serving Multi-Employer Trusts for Twenty Years Cam Johnson Adrian Hamilton Doug Goebel Greg Sherwood Monte Johnson Bill Zenk One SW Columbia St., Suite 1100 Portland, OR 97258 503-221-0158 www.QuestInvestment.com PAGE 12 Iron Worker Whitey Thames still going strong at 75 “Joining Iron Workers Local 29 was the best thing I’ve ever done,” says Wilburn ‘Whitey’ Thames, who at 75- and-a-half-years old, is probably the most senior ironworker in the U.S. still working at the trade. Last week he was part of the bolt-up gang at Kaiser Permanente’s Sunnyside Medical Center expansion project in Clackamas. Thames, of Troutdale, Oregon, is a father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He was introduced to the trade at the ripe young age of 20 (in 1951) by his late father-in-law, Fred Clark, who also was a member of Local 29. Thames has retired twice — the first time when he was 58. “But it gets in your blood (working with iron),” he said. Through- out his career he has traveled the world, helping to build oil refineries in Saudi Arabia, drilling platforms off the coast of Scotland — even rocket launchers at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. He was part of the crew that con- structed the tower in the late ‘60s that launched the first man to the moon. “I tell all the young people now that if you want to travel, join a construction union,” he said. Locally, he says he has worked on more than 30 bridges in the Pacific Northwest, including the Fremont Bridge and Interstate Bridge. Over the course of the past 55 years Thames has worked the iron as a bolter, connector and driving rivets. Thames only works part-time now, picking and choosing jobs of interest. “I’ll quit when I can’t put in a full’s day work anymore,” he said. “You ask anyone here. I do my job, whatever needs to be done.” you might get a kick out of this: feel free to pass it along”), anti-union blogs and newsletters routinely received by Labor Department staff, as well as an e- mail with a Berman article attacking unions that was sent from a top Labor Department official to other high-level department political appointees. Claiming privilege, the Labor De- partment “has withheld e-mail corre- spondence, including correspondence from Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, that directly refer to Berman and his organ- izations,” CREW reported. Chao is married to anti-union Re- publican U.S. Senator Mitch Mc- Connell of Kentucky. (Editor’s Note: The Machinists Union and Tula Connell of the national AFL-CIO contributed to this report.) 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