Management Witness Doesn’t Say She’s Highly Paid Anti-Union Consultant

by James Parks, Feb 8, 2007

We reported that employers and union-busting consultants are pulling out all the stops to prevent passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800). During today’s House subcommittee hearing on the legislation, a witness for those groups showed how desperate they are to stop the bill.

At the hearing by the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, Jen Jason, a former organizer for UNITE HERE union, trashed unions and their members, while claiming to be a proponent of social justice.

What Jason didn’t say is that she is a high-priced, anti-union consultant until a subcommittee member asked her about it.

Jason left UNITE HERE in the middle of an organizing campaign to go over to the other side as a management consultant—for which her firm was paid $225,000 for the first year.

The website for her firm—Six Questions Consulting—proclaims: “We help management implement long-term union avoidance programs.” Jason didn’t tell the subcommittee that her first client was Cintas—the commercial laundry giant whose employees she had been trying to organize as a UNITE HERE employee a few months earlier.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), a member of the subcommittee, cut to the heart of the matter after Jason told her under questioning how much her firm was paid. McCarthy told Jason:

It seems like you have a conflict of interest on a number of issues.

If you’re not familiar with Cintas, you need to know that Jason is working for the most profitable uniform and laundry company in North America with profits of more than $300 million last year, but whose workers are barely making a living.

In 2003, Cintas workers at plants across North America joined together to demand decent wages, affordable insurance and safe working conditions. According to the UNITE HERE website:

• Most Cintas production workers report earning wages between $7 and $9 per hour, forcing many employees to struggle to support their families on below-poverty paychecks.
• Cintas drivers across the country are suing the company for $100 million, alleging they were denied overtime pay for many years.

So much for supporting social justice.

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