Clinton's Anti-Union Allies

Robert Johnson's nasty comments about Barack Obama earlier this week caused a huge stir in the media. Johnson issued a less-than-convincing clarification and then apologized to Obama on Thursday.

Yet few of the stories on Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and a top surrogate for Clinton in South Carolina, noted his controversial standing in the African-American political community. Johnson has been one of President Bush's top black allies, lobbying for the repeal of the estate tax and the privatization of Social Security, as Jonathan Chait of The New Republic reported in a 2001 profile of Johnson.

Johnson also has a history of opposing unions that makes Clinton's allies in labor quite uncomfortable. Back in 1993, workers at BET voted to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Writer's Guild. According to an article in the Washington Afro-American, a historically black newspaper, AFL-CIO organizer Ed Feigen alleged that "during and after the election, BET violated the workers rights by offering them raises and promising benefits if they didn't join the union in."

"Employees were also threatened with job loss if they did vote the union in. A total of 13 employees were laid off after the election, hours were cut back, and two lead organizers with the Writer's Guild were fired, according to reports issued by the AFL-CIO. Mr Feigen told the AFRO that Mr. Johnson had stated to his workers that their actions were an act of disloyalty and that BET would never have a union."

One BET employee, Kimberlyn Dickens, said management had a "plantation attitude." Another BET employee, Samone Lemieux, said Johnson "promised us increased benefits and improved working conditions if we stopped our union organizing activity. However, after the election Mr. Johnson threatened us with discharge because of our union activity. He told us he had taken a $15,000 investment and turned it into a $400 million company, and that he was not about to start giving his money away."

There's little evidence that Johnson's opinion of unions has changed since then. Keith Boykin, host of the BET show My Two Cents, writes on his blog:

In May 2000, BET made the AFL-CIO's list of notorious anti-union companies, and the year before, 120 comedians, including Richard Pryor, bought full-page newspaper advertisements to complain that Johnson refused to offer union wages to performers on its "Comic View" show. Three years before that, Johnson was reprimanded by the National Labor Relations Board for BET's interference with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' organizing efforts, a case that BET later appealed and won. But in February 2000, Johnson told USA Today, "We don't need a union. They're only money-making machines."

Johnson is not the only controversial figure within labor circles to play a high-profile role in Clinton's campaign. I reported last May that the PR firm of Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, maintains an active union-busting division.

The actions of Johnson and business of Penn tell a different story than Clinton's advocacy for labor. Clinton may not share these views, but as she courts union workers in Nevada and elsewhere, it's fair to ask why she deploys anti-labor individuals on behalf of her ostensibly pro-labor campaign.

Cross posted at The Nation

Comments

[suntzu]

A couple of other things of interest about Johnson.

(1)his private equity firm is partly funded by Poppy Bush's Carlyle Group. So there is a triangular association between the Clintons, Johnson, and the Carlyle group, though I have no idea whether or not that is just coincidence.

(2) his divorced wife Sheila is an Obama supporter. Uh-oh.

And, I would have to believe that he was pressured into apologizing to Obama, probably by the Clintons. They were getting too much heat over the remarks.

[Feettotheflame]

Hillary is a union buster. If she gets elected we'll all be temp workers with minimal health insurance begging for food outside the Albertsons.

[GhostOfSchlesinger]

HAS ANYONE BOTHERED LISTENING TO THE QUOTE:

Obama said, "President Reagan did more to change the trajectory of America than Nixon or Bill Clinton."

Why would he say that? Because it's true. Bill Clinton inherited the Reagan legacy (smaller government, an end to the welfare state [welfare to work]) and a strong law and order philosophical component. He was a master of triangulation, but such was a manifestation of tactical rather than strategic brilliance. Reagan shifted the entire political culture. We can disagree with his stances (and strongly), but to deny his impact would be to miss Obama's point entirely.

Interestingly, all the flak re this remark creates a sickening feeling in me. For, I know this means that we've gotta throw over any Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt references, too. And such an approach to history is . . . well . . . more than a little Stalinist.

Senator Obama is brilliant. That means he probably doesn't view the world through the filter of a two-party system that must and should represent an endless series of tragic gridlock moments. His positions are often nuanced - more intelligent folks being guilty of being able to look beyond personal will to the potential that can only arise via collaboration with the loyal opposition.

[GhostOfSchlesinger]

And there's the fact that Barack Obama represents everything that a Bush-Clinton crony like Johnson hates - or at least everything that stands between him and his ongoing role as the institutional arbiter of African-American culture. Let's face it, Johnson is the inheritor of a long tradition of devouring and processing African-American culture unto meaninglessness. Echoes of Pat Boone singing the blues or UB40 pounding a nail into Bob Marley's coffin. Only Johnson's entity is a little more sinister, as it pushes a version of African-America far from BET's idealistic foundations - over half of the current fare being a mix of exploitative music videos and comedy. Knowing that Johnson worked closely with George W. Bush to raid Social Security in order to fat an already fatted Wall Street calf while breaking the backs of unions seems to draw some undeniable and frightening parallels. I would urge folks to look very closely and listen to the language coming forth from the Democratic Party's institutional machine. Tightly scripted, dripping with logical fallacies, striving to score points with a total disregard for the truth - essentially, anything to win. Robert Johnson fits well into such a culture. Yet, it is in undeniable that all these events, woven together as portrait of the Clinton team, put one in mind of Hamlet, "The play's the thing in which to catch the king." Or is Bill, perhaps, the Lady in the Scottish play?

[sonofloud]

The unions are a pale imitation of what they once were. Reagan began their death and they are just about out of breath.

[myskylark]

I wiah you would be as diligent in examining Senator Obama's connections, past and present. One example, he was happy to use a homophobic country music singer in front of socially conservative black audiences. Another example, he joined an all-black congregation where the minister's message was anti-white, anti-Jewis­h,anti-Ame­rican, and this was the message for years. But it served Obama's political ambitions, and so he stayed on.

[jrusovich]

"Hillary Clinton: no friend to working people."
Hillary and Bill are multi-millionaires many times over. They love their wealth and the power it provides. Tax increases are meaningless to them because they have so much that nothing shy of total confiscation would affect their lifestyles. Thus, how can you expect them to get it? They don't know you, nor do they want to know you. You are meaningless. These people love the power, and the fact that anyone on the political or cultural stage supports them only means that they're in on the take.

[Wulfstan]

Capitalism relies upon cheap labor to accumulate wealth and unions are a thret to that by demanding higher wages. Politics is all about capital vs labor, since all wealth is created by exploiting other peoples' labor directly or indirectly.

This is the workers paradox; work harder, produce more, but get fired in the end because they produced too much. But the bust comes when the workers cannot afford to be consumers of the goods they produce. Like now.

[MPeter]

Johnson profits by pimping young Black women as booty shakers and young men as thuggish, gangster singers with no respect for law and order or respect for society. That is how he built his empire, plus of course busting Unions. He promotes and sells the most vile and disrespectful magazines and videos on his network, killing dreams and destroying hope. It is no surprise he would feel threatened by Obama who stands for intelligence, hard work, mutual respect and learning from one another.

[altohone]

Bill used the unions to get elected and then ignored their concerns when ramming NAFTA through Congress, so that fact that some unions are supporting Hillary, a DLC candidate, at all is suprising.

Wether it's Johnson or Bill's selective support in Nevada, union members should be wary how the establishment wrangled the support of their leadership. The self-labelled progressive Hillary is in bed with the very interests who have actively worked for the decline in union power.

[NABNYC]

The Clintons are not friends of labor or of working people. It's so strange that so many people have got that wrong. Exactly what did Bill Clinton do when he was in office to help working people? He supported new trade programs which have caused 3.0 million jobs to leave this country. Even when they were back in Arkansas, Bill and Hillary were buddies with the union-busting WalMart and Perdue chickens.

Bill Clinton was a very charming man. Years ago. No longer. Hillary doesn't even have that. They're both smart. They are basically Republicans in most of their views.

Look at Hillary's platform. What does she propose doing? Granting amnesty to the 12.0 million or so illegal immigrants whose presence in this country drives down everyone's wages. Eliminate social security to be replaced by worker-funded private savings accounts handled by her good friends on wall street for 20% off the top. Healthcare: she will order everyone to buy their own insurance. Whoopee.

She loves war. She wants more war. She is the big winner in donations from the drug companies, doctors, insurance companies, wall street.

I think her biggest offer to labor is that she will make sure people have the right to organize to join unions. Thanks, Hillary, but actually the law gave them that right about 60 some years ago.

What she should support is a prohibition of outsourcing, a $15/hour minimum wage, extension of unemployment to 24 months, government-paid healthcare for everyone, tax every piece of income above $250,000 at 90%, raise capital gains taxes to match income taxes. Just for starters.

Hillary Clinton: no friend to working people.

[Countess]

Hillary Clinton is so republican and the democrats are supporting her. What a joke!