In today’s Times (1/9/09), reporter Steven Greenhouse has a piece headlined “Bill Easing Unionizing Is Under Heavy Attack” about the array ofcorporate opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (a bill that would expandunions’ power to conduct “card check” organizing drives).
But the piece seems to be more of an illustration of the lopsided media debate over the issue. Here’s who Greenhouse quoted from the “anti” side:
-Sen. John Ensign, Republican of Nevada
-Mark McKinnon, a media adviser to the presidential campaigns of John McCain and George W. Bush, is a spokesman for the Workforce Fairness Institute
-John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers
-Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar
Those four are balanced by:
-Tom Woodruff, director of strategic organizing for Change to Win
This is similar to the way the Washington Post covered the issuea month ago. The premise of Greenhouse’s piece is that anti-card check forces are gearing up to spend millions of dollars to defeat the bill. They probably don’t need to spend much of that money on media outreach, though.
