<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBy STEVEN GREENHOUSE<\/p>\n
Published: June 5, 2007<\/p>\n
The presidents of two large labor unions have written to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to complain that Mark Penn, her pollster and chief strategist, is chief executive of a public relations firm that is helping a company fight a unionization drive.<\/p>\n
In the letter sent Friday, which a labor official released yesterday, James P. Hoffa, president of the Teamsters, and Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, wrote that they did not want to see Mrs. Clinton or the Democratic Party embarrassed by the anti-union activities of Mr. Penn\u2019s firm, Burson-Marsteller, one of the nation\u2019s leading public relations companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Hillary is pro-worker and pro-union, she will certainly take steps to rein in Mr. Penn,\u201d Mr. Hoffa said in an interview. \u201cHe cannot serve two masters, working for a pro-union candidate and working for anti-union companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the letter, Mr. Hoffa and Mr. Raynor said, \u201cIt is with distress that we write you today,\u201d adding that they valued Mrs. Clinton\u2019s positions on many worker-related issues.<\/p>\n
They said the public relations firm\u2019s \u201cactivities in the effort to undermine workers\u2019 right to organize at Cintas, a campaign our unions are involved in, is particularly disheartening.\u201d Four years ago, the two unions began a major drive to unionize 17,000 workers at the Cintas Corporation, the nation\u2019s largest uniform rental company. Cintas, helped by Burson-Marsteller, has responded with a vigorous \u2014 and thus far successful \u2014 effort to resist unionization.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hoffa and Mr. Raynor, whose union represents apparel, hotel and restaurant workers, noted that they had learned of Burson-Marsteller\u2019s anti-union activities in an article last week in The Nation magazine. Their action comes as Mrs. Clinton prepares to speak at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. forum on Saturday in Detroit.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Penn is VERY bad news, even if not for the union busting. He is a serious proponent of Dems running as Republicans (DLC politics). It’s nice to see that this is getting mainstream coverage now.; I’ve been hearing this on the Blogosphere for months. A Top Clinton Aide Draws Criticism From Unions – New …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[978,977,1022],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-presidential-campaign","category-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}