Labor Group Launching New Ad On Employee Free Choice — Targeting Journalists!
Okay, this is pretty funny. I’ve just obtained an advance copy of a new TV ad that a labor group is launching to promote the Employee Free Choice Act, labor’s top priority — a spot that pushes back against the arguments being made by anti-EFCA forces.
But here’s the rub: A key target audience of the ad is Beltway journalists. The ad — to be launched by David Bonoir’s American Rights At Work — is set to run inside the Beltway this Sunday on networks and cable during the political chat shows.
The new ad partly represents an effort to get reporters, opinion-makers and members of Congress to stop mis-representing a key aspect of Employee Free Choice: The question of whether it would eliminate the so-called “secret ballot,” by which workers vote on whether to join a union.
Opponents of EFCA have tried to argue that the measure would eliminate the secret ballot option completely, as a way of painting the measure as undemocratic.
But proponents point out that the Employee Free Choice Act wouldn’t do that at all. Rather, it gives employees a choice between joining a union simply by having a majority sign up for one; or by holding a secret election.
The ad is designed to broadcast that message to an influential audience of media and political insiders, as well as members of the public who might have heard only the other side.
“Greedy CEO’s want to prevent workers from joining unions to level the playing field,” the ad intones. “Their new scheme to keep wages low? Spreading lies about the Employee Free Choice Act. The truth is, the absolutely protects workers’ right to choose a secret ballot election. But the choice would be the workers’. Not their bosses.”
The ad represents an implicit acknowledgment that the forces arrayed against Employee Free Choice have badly outspent labor and bombarded reporters and opinion-makers with their version of what the act would do.
“Journalists, the public and Congress have been spoonfed a multi-million dollar campaign to make them believe this, and unfortunately most of the press has regurgitated it verbatim, without looking at the facts,” claims one official close to the project. “We’re not blaming journalists. That’s all reporters have heard, and it’s time they heard the truth.”
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Its not funny at all. Its a very good idea.
It’s about freaking time. And the line “the choice would be the workers. Not the bosses” is excellent.
it seems like an effective ad, ct.
We’re not blaming the media. That’s all reporters have heard.
That’s a pretty subtle way of saying they’re stupid, lazy or biased. I hope they show it around the country. And I hope other liberal groups borrow it liberally.
Good idea. Of course if journalists were doing their jobs, would’t they have all read the bill before commenting on it? Wouldn’t they form their own opinion and report on what it does and doesn’t do, rather than repeat Republican talking points?
I feel like I’m in an alternate universe these days when I watch TV, because Republicans are all over the TV misrepresenting the bill, and there’s not a Democrat in sight explaining what the stimulus bill does do. All we hear is one side. Another victory for the “liberal media”
“We’re not blaming journalists. That’s all reporters have heard, and it’s time they heard the truth.”
uh, now if i have the wherewithall to google EFCA, it’s certainly not beyond the abilities of the national political magpies to do the same…unless, of course, your job depends upon you propelling the corporate propaganda…
linda, I think they’re being polite…
The Corporate Media and the ‘journalist’s that they ‘own’ is no different than a person playing and hand held organ with a monkey attached to it by a cord, and the monkey is then dancing to the tune of the organ player. Welcome to the world of the ‘corporate monkey’s’ pretending to be ‘journalists’. Thus, we find the likes of David ’swollen lips’ Gregory dancing on the stage with Karl Rove.
When I was taking classes in journalism in the late 1960’s at University of Iowa fact checking material was emphasized as part of providing truth not someone’s self serving propaganda. As anyone, who like me, has ever tried to start a union at work knows, the secret ballot election that management claims would be taken by this act was like elections in a Bananna Republic Dictatorship. After management bribed people to vote no,threatened to lay us all off or refuse to negotiate if the union won we had a secret ballot with hand picked observers standing there as a reminder of how people were supposed to vote. How democratic.
Here we go, lots of sheep going after “big business” again. If you do away with big business, where exactly do you think you’re going to get your high paying union jobs. Wise UP!!