Center for Union Facts

CUF was launched in February 2006 via full-page advertisements in major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. In May 2006, the organization aired its first television advertisement. The 30-second spot, running on Fox News Channel and local markets, featured "actors posing as workers" saying "what they 'love' about unions", like paying dues, union leaders' "fat-cat lifestyles" and discrimination against minorities. The advertising campaign cost US$3 million, raised "from companies, foundations and individuals that Mr. Berman won't identify".[2]

Another TV advertisement (aired on CNN and other stations) shows actors posing as large, burly "union leaders" muscling their way into a worker's home and "intimidating" him into joining the union.[3] the labor and economics professor Harley Shaiken said the effort "to create an antiunion atmosphere" more generally, as opposed to business-funded advertising against a particular union organizing drive or strike, "is a new wrinkle". An AFL-CIO spokesperson called the advertisement's accusations "unfounded and outrageous".[2]

In August 2006, the CUF ran a series of advertisements in Montana, Oregon, Michigan and Nevada attacking public employee unions. It appears that this may have been connected with ballot initiatives in those states proposing public spending caps.[4]

The CUF ran an ad in 2008 noting that the Service Employees International Union had been the largest contributor to the 2006 gubernatorial campaign of corrupt Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who, after his election, had signed the state's first-ever contract with the SIEU. The ad also noted the SEIU's donations to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and its ties to ACORN.[5]

The CUF describes itself as having “compiled the single most comprehensive database of information about labor unions in the United States. The database contains more than 100 million facts, ranging from basic union finances and leader salaries, to political operations, to strikes and unfair labor practices, and much more. The data comes from various local, state, and federal government agencies that track labor union operations.” Among the material available at the website is information about various unions' finances, political and lobbying activity, and criminal history.[6]

A page on the CUF website explains how to decertify a union, a process that workers can opt for if they “no longer want a union to represent them — whether it's because the union is undemocratic, corrupt, violent, or just plain inept.”[7]

The website also provides information about the assets, number of employees, and number of members of several dozen U.S. unions, including the Teamsters, AFL-CIO, Writers Guild West, and United Auto Workers.[6]

Representatives of the CUF have discussed issues on Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, and other cable news networks.[5][9][10]

The CUF runs a website called AFTFacts.com, which seeks to expose and counter teachers' unions' efforts to block reform and to prevent the firing of bad teachers. The website also features statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In 2008, the CUF held a nationwide contest for the Ten Worst Union-Protected Teachers in America. Americans aged 13 and older were invited to nominate candidates. Over 600 nominations were received, and ten winners chosen, each of whom “was offered $10,000 to quit the profession forever.” None took CUF up on its offer, and so the winners' names were not revealed, although CUF did publish details about them: one had been jailed for waving a gun at a fast-food waitress, another was a sexual molester, a third “had sex with two of her male teen students.” The goal of the contest “was to illustrate how difficult unions have made it to get rid of bad teachers.”[17]

In August 2010, the CUF ran an ad in the Washington, D.C., area about the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU). “D.C.'s teachers union has failed our kids, played politics and now is threatening to file a lawsuit to block recent progress,” said the ad's voice-over. Sarah Longwell of the CUF said the ad campaign had been launched in response to recent threats by the WTU to sue to prevent the firing of bad teachers. “As soon as we saw that they were threatening to file a lawsuit, we thought a response was necessary,” Longwell said.[18]

The Washington Post ran an article on September 24, 2014, headlined “Center for Union Facts says Randi Weingarten is ruining nation’s schools.” The article, by Lyndsey Layton, cited a mailing by CUF in which Berman spoke of the “terrible impact” that Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, had had “on America’s educational system.” The mailing called Weingarten “a vicious individual” who was “on a crusade to stymie school reform and protect the jobs of incompetent teachers — the bad apples that drain so much of our tax resources and sabotage the efforts of parents and caring teachers.”[19]

The Washington Times published an article in 2012 about Berman and CUF, noting Berman's desire to “have a regular vote” to determine whether union members, 90 percent of whom never had a chance to vote for or against organizing, actually want to be union members. CUF supported the Employee Rights Act, which “would require workers to reauthorize their unions every three years. With a vote, they could move forward with the union, disband it or form a new one.” Berman argued: “If a congressman has to stand for re-election every two years and the president every four years, why should the unions be basically given lifetime status in that workforce?” His larger goal, said the times, was to change “the cultural mindset toward the labor movement in America.”[20]

A Detroit News editorial published on January 30, 2015, attributed the widespread decline in U.S. union membership in large part to “the quality of union services” and cited the CUF's view that unions are “used to monopoly status and now they have to deal with competition.” The editorial also expressed agreement with CUF's argument that “right to work doesn't mean unions have to throw up their hands in despair,” as demonstrated by “effective unions in right-to-work states like Texas and Virginia,” which “have retooled to focus more on member concerns and less on ideological and political battles.”[23]

In a February 2015 op-ed, Berman dismissed the notion that labor unions were undergoing a renaissance, stating that they were, rather, experiencing “a temporary boost thanks to a Labor Board that’s operating as the legal wing of the AFL-CIO,” even as worker interest in unionization was at a historic low. “Though unions refuse to acknowledge it,” he wrote, “the reality is that employees are rejecting them because they’re still peddling the same industrial warfare rhetoric to a workforce for whom it’s no longer relevant. It’s as if Kodak was still trying to sell 35mm cameras in an age of smart phones — they might have been popular and even necessary at one point, but the world has moved on.” He also cited “the sizable (and growing) political disconnect between many current union members and their leaderships: While roughly 40 percent of union members vote Republican, up to 99 percent of union dues used to support ideological organizations are given to Democrat-aligned left-wing groups.”[24]

The Chicago Tribune ran a story on the Ten Worst Teachers campaign, in which it quoted Berman as saying he wanted to “jump-start a conversation” about the fact that many children “can't read or do math and are well behind in science” and that many teachers “say their colleagues are not competent to teach kids,” the teachers' unions responded by calling him “a paid attack dog who won't disclose the sources of funding for his work.” Chuck Porcari of the American Federation of Teachers said: “[Berman] tries to make a splash, then disappears into the ether until someone writes him a check....Teachers and the public deserve to know who's bankrolling this effort. Who's paying to attack teachers?”[25] Similarly, AFT president Randi Weingarten, in response to CUF's above-cited criticism of her in 2014, said Berman “won’t disclose who is funding his efforts.”[19]

After the CUF ran an ad during the 2012 Super Bowl in which it was stated that "Only ten percent of people in unions today actually voted to join the union," Glenn Kessler, author of the “Fact Checker” column in The Washington Post, called this a “nonsense fact," given that most employees of unionized companies joined those firms after the firms were unionized and have never had a chance to vote on that status.[26] Mark Hemingway of the conservative Weekly Standard rejected this view, noting Kessler's acknowledgment that CUF's charge “may be technically correct."[27]

• Center for Organizational Research and Education

• UnionFacts.com website
• Center for Union Facts at SourceWatch
• Organizational Profile – National Center for Charitable Statistics (Urban Institute)

Articles

• "Anti-union group launches media campaign", United Press International, February 13, 2006
• Amy Joyce, "Full-Page Ads Launch Anti-Union Drive - Lobbyist Aims to Show Labor Groups to be 'Duplicitous'", The Washington Post, February 14, 2006.
• Steven Greenhouse, "Group Starts Anti-Union Campaign", The New York Times, February 14, 2006.
• Kim Chapman, "New group launches anti-union drive", Seattle Post Intelligencer, February 14, 2006.
• Kris Maher, "Taking on the AFL-CIO", The Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2006.
• Kortney Stringer, "Antiunion ad campaign in Detroit's face today", Detroit Free Press, May 24, 2006.
• "New evidence shows Wal-Mart working closely with right wing attack group", WakeupWalmart.com, May 26, 2006.
• Marcus Kabel, "Wal-Mart denies funding anti-union ads", Businessweek, May 26, 2006.