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
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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
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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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