AFL-CIO: Anti-EFCA ad with Sopranos star a smokescreen

By Jessica Alaimo, PolitickerME.com Reporter

In a new ad, a mob boss from the Sopranos makes a guest appearance with cardboard cutouts of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Bangor) and U.S. Rep. Tom Allen (D-Portland), who is challenging Collins.

The ad is part of a campaign opposing candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation intended to make it easier for workers to organize by eliminating the requirement of the private ballot.

Collins opposes the bill. Allen is a co-sponsor, along with Rep. Mike Michaud (D-East Millinocket).

Vincent Curatola, who plays mobster Johnny Sack on the popular HBO show, has starred in several ads by The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace. Another group, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, also has an ad criticizing Allen for his support of the bill.

Other labor issues including measures on payment discrimination are expected to come into the spotlight as well, The Hill reported yesterday, but so far the EFCA is the most prominent.

Members of the AFL-CIO, a pro-union group, will spend $200 million in the 2008 elections across the country, the Hill reported.

Ed Gorham, president of the AFL-CIO in Maine, said his group supports the EFCA, and candidates who support the bill, including Allen and Congressional candidates Chellie Pingree, who is running for the First District, and Michaud.

Gorham said that when it is easier for workers to organize, it makes for a better workplace.

“We’re not doing a whole lot in terms of buying ads,” Gorham said, “But we’re engaging our own members, doing leafleting in the work site, and our members are giving them background on the issue.”

He said AFL-CIO members are also asking workers to sign postcards in support of the act which will be delivered to the officeholders after the election.

The private ballot argument is a smokescreen and a misrepresentation of facts, he said.

“For our opponents, it has nothing to do with the secret ballot,” Gorham said. “They don’t want workers doing better. They don’t want anything to do with unions.”

The Allen campaign has denounced these ads, and urged the Collins campaign to denounce them as well. Earlier this week, Carol Andrews, communications director for the Allen campaign, called the ads a “nasty, negative attack on behalf of Senator Collins.”

The campaign has also posted this fact-check on their Web site of a previous radio ad by Employee Freedom.

Andrews added: "These radio and television ads portray Maine's 67,000 union members and Congressman Allen as having connections to organized crime and intimidating workers. They have no place in this campaign. Senator Collins knows this is wrong, and we once again ask her to denounce this ad campaign designed to harm Maine's working people and Tom Allen. We realize that Senator Collins cannot talk to this group working on her behalf personally, but she can publicly call on them to stop this destructive campaign.”

Jessica Alaimo is a PolitickerME.com Reporter and can be reached via email at noreply@politicker.com.

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