Labor Department: Blog This

by Tula Connell, Mar 13, 2006

U.S. employers never liked the nation’s Department of Labor. And they liked it a lot less when it reached cabinet-level status in 1913, which indicated to Big Business that workers for the first time had a voice in government.

And after all, that was the point. Employers had all the money and means to dictate at the workplace. Shouldn’t workers have an advocate as well?

Not under the Bush administration—it’s sometimes called a “second Commerce Department” for going out of its way to give employers whatever they want, such as robbing some 6 million workers of the right to overtime pay in 2004 as part of the biggest rollback of overtime pay rights since passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938.

In its latest action, the Labor Department’s Public Affairs office is encouraging people to visit an anti-worker website that offers an amalgam of distortions, including union staff wages.
 
The website is the creature of Richard Berman, whose previous PR campaigns included slamming Mothers Against Drunk Driving in a vicious project on behalf of the alcohol industry and convincing pregnant women to eat more white albacore tuna despite warnings of high mercury content. Berman also is founder of the Employment Policies Institute Foundation, which opposes raising the minimum wage (What? $5.15 an hour isn’t enough for you?).
 
According to today’s The Washington Post, Lynn Gibson, an aide in the public liaison office, sent an e-mail in which she encouraged people to visit Berman’s site:

“The next [noteworthy item] is a new website, if you were not already aware of it,” she says. “The website is dedicated to providing information on labor unions and their expenditures. UnionFacts.com launched on Monday, February 13th, and some news links are listed below.

“Here’s a suggestion: Next time Gibson sends an e-mail, how about including a link to the AFL-CIO Now blog?
 

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