In response to these baseless attacks, American Rights at Work Executive Director Mary Beth Maxwell issued the following statement...

»  Continue reading...

Have you ever wondered who Elaine Chao is? As the longest-serving member of George W. Bush’s cabinet, you’d expect a certain level of analysis of her activities as Secretary of Labor. But unlike her cohorts in the Bush administration, Elaine has escaped much-needed public scrutiny of her record.

Elaine Chao’s egregious policies include rollbacks of critical mine safety protections, hostility toward workers and their unions, and collaboration with corporate interests, most notably through her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell.

Find out more at ShameOnElaine.org.

Today the Las Vegas Sun looks behind conservatives' curtains and exposes the true intent of corporate-funded attacks on worker organizing drives.  Corporate-backed adman Richard Berman is known for attacking Mothers Against Drunk Driving and for claiming that second-hand smoke does not cause cancer, but his latest targets are teachers' unions.  Though he purports to fight for workers through his Center for Union Facts front group, Rick Berman betrayed his true intent:

What's not in doubt is that when Berman goes after the teachers, it will be brutal.

At the Sparks conference, he approvingly quoted mobster Al Capone: "You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word."

Political and labor observers are watching closely because as Berman acknowledged in his Sparks speech, his attack on teachers unions is really a small front in a much bigger battle over the future of the labor movement and its role in American politics. It's not clear Berman cares at all about education policy. His real target is the broader labor movement.

Just in time for Halloween, Stephen Colbert treats PR trickster Rick Berman to a smack down for his ludicrous campaigns against Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and other public interest groups. Last night on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, Stephen forced Berman to admit that consumers aren't asking him to defend their freedoms. It's corporations like the alcohol companies that are begging him to protect their profits.

Colbert: What do you do for the Center for Consumer Freedom?

Berman: I defend consumers' rights.

Colbert: So do consumers come to you and say, "Defend my rights"?

Berman: No, I figure out what's wrong with people's rights, and I -

Colbert: But who comes to you and says, "Here, here, defend our rights"?

Berman: I get up in the morning and I see crazy stuff and I say, "We gotta do something about that."

Colbert: Who's paying you?

Berman: Ah . . . lot's of people.

Colbert: Who?

Berman: Ah, actually consumers; actually businesses, and then of course -

Colbert: Businesses whose consumers are being denied the freedom to use their product?

When not wearing his Center for Consumer Freedom hat, Berman leads another front group, the Center for Union Facts, which mounts smear campaigns against unions in a similar fashion to his crusade against MADD. Last night's interview confirms that with Berman, it's all about money at the expense of safer roads, public health, and decent jobs.  Colbert appropriately makes us laugh at Berman instead of taking his rhetoric seriously. Check out the full interview.

Learn more on why you can't trust Rick Berman at the Anti-Union Network.

On Sunday, July 22, CBS's 60 Minutes reran an interview with notorious lobbyist, anti-union spokesperson, and Center for Union Facts founder Rick Berman. Berman is just one part of the highly coordinated, yet virtually unknown anti-union network responsible for the enormous obstacles workers face when trying to form unions.

» Click here to download a fact sheet refuting Rick Berman's lies to 60 Minutes' Morley Safer.