Center for Union Facts
The Center for Union Facts is an American interest group that is critical of labor unions. It is one of several advocacy and public relations groups founded by Richard Berman, whose Washington, D.C.–based public affairs firm, Berman and Company, specializes in research, communications and advertising. The Washington Post describes CUF as "part of a constellation of nonprofit groups Berman created to carry out corporate messages."
CUF has commissioned studies about workers and unionization and has been a key supporter of legislation aimed at curbing the influence of unions, such as the Employee Rights Act, while also lobbying against union-backed legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act. It has placed advertisements around the US that have been critical of unions. Its representatives have appeared on major broadcast and cable channels to discuss labor issues, and have written commentaries in leading newspapers and on news and opinion websites.
In recent years, CUF has made a major point of the decline in union membership and the waning enthusiasm of union members for organized representation. CUF has been especially critical of teachers' unions, which in response have mounted campaigns to counter CUF's messaging.
Advertisements
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".Another TV advertisement shows actors posing as large, burly "union leaders" muscling their way into a worker's home and "intimidating" him into joining the union. 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".
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.
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 SEIU. The ad also noted the SEIU's donations to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and its ties to ACORN.
Database
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.Websites
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.”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.
Laborpains.org
In addition, CUF publishes a blog at laborpains.org that discusses news developments involving unions around the U.S. and labor-related legislation. In January 2015, for example, the blog covered the indictment of ten people affiliated with Ironworkers Local Union 401 in connection with “RICO crimes” including the “burning of a Quaker meetinghouse being built by a non-union contractor,” the arrest of a union official on charges of physically assaulting New York police officers, an unacknowledged change in policy by the Center for Media and Democracy in regard to accepting union donations, and the “radical path” taken by the Detroit teachers' union.Other websites
CUF has created a number of websites that describe particular unions in negative terms including:- teachersunionexposed.com
- seiuexposed.com
- subwayscam.com
- workercenters.com
Media
Unions' political activism
An NBC News story about the high level of union involvement in the 2012 election campaign cited Justin Wilson of the CUF, who said that in a time when the labor movement is shrinking, “the unions are working overtime to try to maintain a degree of relevancy inside the Democratic Party.” Although as a rule “political power folks try to downplay their role in an election,” the unions, this time around,“decided that they wanted to telegraph to the administration that they spend much more than the administration probably knew.”
Action on legislation
Employee Free Choice Act
The Center for Union Facts was active in fighting the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would let workers decide on unionization by signing cards, without their employers' knowledge, instead of by casting secret ballots.Employee Rights Act
CUF pledged in December 2011 to spend $10 million promoting the so-called Employee Rights Act sponsored by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch and South Carolina Congressman Tim Scott. The ERA’s provisions, wrote In These Times, “are an anti-union wish list, including restricting 'non-representation' spending by unions, banning any union recognition process other than an NLRB election, and requiring members to vote every three years on whether to eliminate their union.”In an op-ed that appeared in The Washington Times in August 2012, Berman championed the Employee Rights Act, which, he noted, “extends guarantees to union members in the private sector to decide whether their dues money is spent for political purposes, otherwise known as 'paycheck protection.'” He also noted that union leaders had “partially boycott the Democratic National Convention,” angered over the decision to hold it in North Carolina, “a right-to-work state that is proudly the least unionized in the country.”
Scott Walker recall effort
CUF played a role in supporting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker against the unsuccessful 2012 effort to recall him over the issue of public-employee unions. A CUF spokesperson said in early March that it was spending “just over a million dollars” on running TV ads in Wisconsin, and “may do more in the coming weeks.” After the controversy over Walker, Berman exposed an internal Wisconsin Education Association Council document instructing teachers in the “do's” and “don't's” of winning public sympathy.Teachers' unions
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.”
In August 2010, the CUF ran an ad in the Washington, D.C., area about the Washington Teachers' Union. “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.
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.”