Ad sponsor: Coloradans for Employee Freedom and the Employee Freedom Action Committee
Type: Print
Published: Several state newspapers, including The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News
This print ad pictures a Latina laundry worker named Rosa over the quote, “The union intimidated me.” Underneath is a picture of Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall and text that criticizes Udall’s support for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Claim: “Mark Udall supports a bill that would make it much easier for unions to harass, deceive and intimidate employees — not to mention effectively eliminate their right to a private ballot vote on joining a union.”
Fact: The Employee Free Choice Act allows workers to form a union by getting 51 percent of a company’s workforce to sign a union card and without requiring a secret ballot, as is mostly the case now. Although secret-ballot elections would still be allowed, the bill would effectively eliminate them because it is substantially easier to unionize through the signature cards. Whether that makes it easier to harass or deceive workers is a point of hot contention. Companies say it does. Unions say that under the current system, the intimidation usually goes the other way — against workers who try to create a union. Udall supports the EFCA.
Claim: “The union intimidated me.”
Fact: Tim Miller, a spokesman for the Employee Freedom Action Committee, said the group isn’t willing to make Rosa or any of several other workers pictured in a separate Web ad available to the press because of privacy issues. It’s impossible to verify whether Rosa is a real person or an actor, or whether she was actually ever intimidated by a union.
Claims are: The ad’s main claim is impossible to verify.
Michael Riley, The Denver Post
