Ads attack unions
representing public employees

SUSAN GALLAGHER, Associated Press

Posted on Mon, Aug. 21, 2006 - Centre Daily.Com - Central Pennsylvania

HELENA, Mont. - A new anti-union advertising campaign in Montana takes aim at the pay and benefits of public employees.

The Center for Union Facts based in Washington, D.C., has arranged advertising in four states, including Michigan, to criticize unions representing people on public payrolls, Executive Director Richard Berman said.

"'Service' Like This Doesn't Come Cheap," stated a full-page advertisement that appeared in Monday's Billings Gazette and portrayed a Division of Motor Vehicles employee as hostile. Union leaders have "greased the system so that state employee salary packages have increased to where 'public servants' make more than the taxpayers," the ad said.

The executive director of the Montana Public Employees Association, the union that includes state DMV employees, called the advertising "appalling." It misrepresents employees and the collective bargaining system, Quinton Nyman said.

Average annual pay for full-time work in state government is $38,500, and the benefit package, which includes a retirement plan, time off and health insurance, averages $15,500, the Montana Department of Administration said.

Berman said advertising is planned this week in the Missoulian newspaper, and television and radio time has been bought in several Montana markets.

The Center for Union Facts was established seven months ago and receives funding from individuals, businesses and foundations, said Berman, refusing to be more specific.

There are indications the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a source of funding, said Eric Feaver of the MEA-MFT union, which represents 17,000 teachers and other public employees. A media officer for the chamber said he would follow up on a request for information Monday, but did not call back.

Berman said his organization wants to "make taxpayers aware of the bills that they're being stuck with because of the waste created by these public-sector unions."

Feaver, MEA-MFT's president, said the advertising offers a "nasty characterization of people who work" and distorts how unions function.

"We have managed to secure and preserve benefits that to some dangerous degree are falling away from private-sector employees," Feaver said. Erosion of benefits for retirement and health care in the private sector "is something we must correct," he said.

Union Facts plans a "state-by-state push" against public employee unions, with the focus on state and local employment, Berman said. The organization will decide future action after gauging the effects of advertising in Montana, Michigan, Oregon and Nevada, advertising likely to cost about $1 million altogether, he said.

Berman said the advertising is a way of encouraging people to learn more about problems such as cash shortfalls in meeting the long-term obligations of public-employee pension plans.

"If the citizenry of the state decide they're happy with financial shortfalls, I have no problem with it," Berman said. "But people ought to know about it first."

Feaver suggested the advertising is tied at least partly to two of Montana's November ballot measures, one to increase the state minimum wage and the other to cap state spending by amending the Montana Constitution. The wage measure has union support and the spending cap union opposition.

Discrediting unions is a way of trying to defeat the wage measure and pass the other one, Feaver said.

Berman denied any connection to ballot measures but said that "in Montana there is some appreciation of the fact that public spending needs to be gotten under control. We thought it was a good place to go."

Feaver noted that in all four states there are efforts to pass caps on spending.

Like Montana, Oregon and Nevada have measures on the November ballot. In Michigan, state election officials have not yet certified the petitions necessary to put on the ballot a constitutional amendment to restrict spending.

Berman said Montana, Oregon, Nevada and Michigan were chosen for the advertising "because you have to start somewhere," and for other reasons that include the cost of ads.

Montana is a relatively inexpensive ad market and helps balance a more expensive one, such as Michigan, he said.