Cast Your Vote for Grinch of the Year

by James Parks, Dec 4, 2008

And the nominees are—no, it’s not the Grammies. It’s Jobs with Justice’s (JwJ’s) Grinch of the Year contest, which for the past nine years has “honored” the CEO, corporation or politician whose greed and meanness demonstrate a heart that is at least “two sizes too small.”

This year’s nominees fit that description well. First, there’s the notorious anti-worker lobbyist Richard Berman, a hired gun for the alcohol, tobacco and the fast-food industry. Berman has mounted campaigns to relax drunken driving laws, downplay the public health impact of obesity and indoor tanning and prevent an increase in the minimum wage.

But he’s reserved his greatest venom for attacks on unions and working people. Berman most recently has spent his time—and millions in corporate cash—on a deceptive and outright false ad campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. During the recent elections, his PR blitzes smeared candidates who supported the bill in a multimillion-dollar campaign paid for by corporate special interests who want to deny their employees a fair wage, health care benefits and safety on the job. According to the Union Busting Network at the non-profit American Rights at Work, Berman runs several campaigns out of his offices in Washington, D.C., with corporate backers paying huge fees to his lobbying firm.

Berman also recently was nominated for a Falsie award, given by the Center for Media and Democracy/PR Watch, for polluting the information environment.

The other nominee for the Grinch award is Wall Street executives. While Big Business successfully lobbied for deregulation of the financial industry, making record profits as a result, millions of Americans lost good jobs and the nation’s economy is in the worst shape it’s been since the Depression. Now that the bottom has fallen out of the market, Wall Street is sending the bill to working people—the very ones who have been forced out of their homes, out of their jobs, out of their health care and out of their pensions by Wall Street’s greed.

You can cast your vote for either of these deserving nominees here.

Whoever wins the Grinch award will join an infamous group. Last year’s Grinch of the Year was Smithfield Foods Inc. Chairman Joseph Luter III. JwJ says Luter got the title because the company’s slaughterhouse—the largest pork-killing floor in the world—is one of the most dangerous worksites in the United States, and workers routinely are injured, harassed, intimidated and threatened by Smithfield management.

In 2006, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. wore the Grinch crown after it forced 15,000 United Steelworkers (USW) members out on strike at 16 plants across North America, despite concessions given by retirees in 2003 to ensure that Goodyear remained in business.

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