Anti-union group bashes
public workers in ads

By CHARLES S. JOHNSON - IR State Bureau - 8/22/2006
HELENA -

A national anti-union group has launched media advertisements in Montana charging that "union chiefs have greased the system" so public employee union members get higher salaries and better benefits than taxpayers.

The advertising blitz has angered public employee union leaders and members.

Eric Feaver, president of MEA-MFT, the union of school and government employees, said he's received "a lot of calls from some very outraged members." Quinton Nyman, executive director of the Montana Public Employees Association called the newspaper ad "pretty insulting."

The Center for Union Facts is spending a total of $1 million in Montana, Michigan, Oregon and Nevada combined, said Sarah Longwell, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C., group.

Full-page ads ran in recent editions of the Billings Gazette and Missoulian, while she said "high-saturation" television and radio ads began airing last week.

The newspaper ad shows a hostile-looking woman in a government office, with the headline: " 'Service' Like This Doesn't Come Cheap."

One TV ad, showing the same woman, suggests that public employees are lazy clock-watchers who waste away the day chatting to each other about their generous vacation and sick-time benefits, while a frustrated line of people waits to license vehicles.

Longwell refused to disclose who funds the Center for Union Facts, except to say its money comes from all over, including from disgruntled unionists. It has declined to reveal its donors being formed in February.

"There are people who become very upset by some of the edgy positions we take and want to see retribution," she said.

Feaver provided research from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington saying that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is among the center's major donors. Longwell said she doesn't know if that's true, and a chamber spokesman did not return a phone call.

"This is simply a first wave of a national campaign," Longwell said. "Obviously, public sector unions are a big issue in Montana so we're simply trying to educate Montana taxpayers about where their money is going and what it's being spent on."

Union leaders believe the ads are inaccurate.

"State employees have worked very hard to maintain their salary and benefits and they certainly have earned every penny of their compensation packages," the MEA-MFT's Feaver said.

Said Nyman: "I work with public employees every day, and they work hard."

Yellowstone County Treasurer Max Lenington, whose office registers vehicle, said most of the people on his staff make $9 an hour, or less than $19,000 a year, while some make $11 an hour or nearly $23,000 annually. He said he was "absolutely" offended by the ad.

In separate interviews, Feaver and Nyman said they believe the real purpose behind the advertising is part of a national campaign to promote a Montana ballot measure to cap certain state spending and to kill an initiative to raise the state's minimum wage.

Longwell denied any connection to the ballot issues.

Feaver accused the Center for Union Facts of being a "front group" for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, saying the chamber and its state affiliates have committed $8 million annually to fund it. Montana Chamber of Commerce President Webb Brown said the state group belongs to the U.S. chamber but has no ties to the Center for Union Facts.

Richard Berman, an attorney and a former national chamber attorney, heads the Center for Union Facts. Research from Feaver said Berman has coordinated advertising efforts for "a half-dozen corporate front groups" through his own Washington business and made millions of dollars.

Berman and his groups have opposed minimum wage legislation, universal health care, smoking bans, tighter drunk-driving laws, public reports on the dangers of obesity and limits on the sale of junk food in schools, Feaver said.

The Center for Union Facts, whose Web site is www.unionfacts.com.

Links on the Web site tell what officers and employees of various Montana unions are paid.

It says Montana has 30,707 union members or 11 percent of the state workforce in 2005. The Web site said 28.6 percent of the nearly 55,500 government employees in Montana are union members, while government workers here draw an average salary of $33,884 a year.

The Web site charged that public employees unions "finagled a $70 million increase in pay and benefits" from the Legislature.

The 2005 Legislature passed pay raises of 3.5 percent or $1,005 the first year and 4 percent or $1,188 the second year. It followed an 18-month pay freeze for state employees, who then received a 25-cent-per-hour raise the final six months of the previous two years.