Labor's ad blitz to blast execs
Sunday, April 23, 2006 12:15 AM PDT
By Associated Press
Printable version
E-mail this articleWASHINGTON -- A coalition of breakaway unions is launching a national campaign that highlights the gulf between pay and benefits for executives and middle-class workers with television ads and a drive to organize millions in service industries.
The campaign set to begin Sunday is the first major initiative of the Change to Win labor federation.
"This is a permanent campaign to connect the aspirations of working people in multiple industries," Greg Tarpinian, executive director of the federation, said Saturday.
The federation is spending more than $500,000 airing an ad that will point to huge salaries for chief executives. It will run on network news shows on Sunday and on cable news channels during the week, Tarpinian said.
MSNBC and Comedy Central declined to run the ad because of a policy against running "issue ads," he said.
The 30-second ad, called "Make Work Pay," shows shrinking images of workers as a narrator talks about the gulf between the rich and poor.
"They don't have golden parachutes or stock options," the narrator says. "They are tens of millions of hardworking Americans. But while their companies' profits get fatter and fatter ... and their CEOs get richer and richer ... workers get left farther and farther behind."
The ad says average chief executive pay, already in the multimillion-dollar range, rose sharply in the last year.
The seven Change to Win unions are integrating their organizing efforts. Leaders from one union are supporting organizing efforts for another and taking a prominent role in such efforts.
Stern joined a fast of janitorial workers from the University of Miami on Friday, showing his support for a hunger strike that has gone on for more than two weeks.
"This is the first, second and third reason Change to Win was formed," Tarpinian said, "to redirect the labor movement's focus on organizing."
The Change to Win federation is made up of seven unions representing 6 million workers. The carpenters' union, the laborers' union, the service employees, the Teamsters, United Farm Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, and UNITE Here formed the new federation. The laborers' union has not quit the AFL-CIO.
Five of the unions broke away from the AFL-CIO since last summer, saying the giant labor federation had lost its focus on organizing in favor of electoral politics.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says organizing and political efforts are equally important.
The New York Times first reported about the television ads on Saturday.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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