Irony Alert - the RPV Needs Business 101

Actually, they may simply need one of those "Basic Business for Dummies" books that are ubiquitous in Borders and Barnes and Noble. I'll explain in a minute.

First, though, it seems the Virginia Republicans want you to know they have a sophisticated sense of humor and they appreciate irony. According to this press release, from August 5,

RICHMOND - Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Pat Mullins today noted the obvious irony inherent in Creigh Deeds' fundraising event with President Barack Obama tomorrow, given that Deeds notoriously picketed the very hotel franchise hosting the event. Obama is scheduled to appear with Deeds Thursday evening at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner less than seven months after Deeds joined hotel union workers picketing the Hilton in Crystal City in Arlington.

"This is rich," said Chairman Mullins. "Creigh probably doesn't know if he should grab a sign and start marching up and down the sidewalk or go on inside and start grabbing fat checks from donors. What a quandary."

Unfortunately, the only quandary is why Republicans don’t know the difference between a corporate owned hotel and a franchise, owned and operated by a separate company. Perhaps if Republicans, like Mullins and Bob McDonnell, spent more time in college taking business classes than writing theses on how to turn the Republican Party into a theocratic organization, they would understand what a franchise is.

I’ll go into more detail in a minute, but first here’s an email I received from an official of Unite HERE, Local 25:

Ok. I think the main thing is that the republicans were too lazy or uninterested to find out that the Hilton Cc is a franchise owned by csx while the Mclean is owned by Hilton which actually does have a good record with us.

So, the Hilton that Obama and Deeds appeared at has a good labor record with Unite HERE, but the one in Crystal City does not. And they are actually owned by two different corporations.

The difference is the McLean Hilton is owned outright by the Hilton Corporation, which has very different corporate policies than the owner of the Crystal City Hilton, which is a franchise of a Kentucky company called Columbia Sussex Corporation.

Columbia Sussex holds a lot of franchises of big name, well known hotels and it doesn’t limit itself to Hiltons, though it owns a few of those throughout the country. It also owns the Sheraton Inner Harbor in Baltimore. In fact, it owns Holiday Inns, Courtyard Marriotts, and Crowne Plazas all over the country. And everywhere it goes, it foments union problems by trying to break pre-existing union contracts that were in place before they bought their hotel franchises.

Whatever you think of unions, it’s simple Business 101 to know the difference between a franchise and a company that is owned and operated by a parent corporation. So, even though both the McLean Hilton and the Crystal City Hilton share the same name, they are not owned and operated by the same central company. Columbia Sussex pays for the name, as they do for their Sheratons and Holiday Inns, etc. Here’s the complete list, from their own website, of all the different franchises they hold besides the Crystal City Hilton.

As the Unite HERE official, who contacted me, points out, the Republicans were too lazy to check their facts.

Intellectual laziness from a party that stresses respect for hard work, failure to understand the basic definition of a franchise from a party that claims to champion and understand business, dishonesty from a party that says it upholds traditional values – now that’s irony!

Happy Labor Day!

The Faces Behind EFCA

Below are the faces and voices of the real flesh and blood people behind the Employee Free Choice Act. These are your neighbors, friends, and relatives. They go to your churches and synagogues. They are the people who serve your needs in stores. Here they tell their stories, far better than I could, about why they need a union.

They speak about low wages, the inability to afford health care, and the intimidation they face when they attempt to join a union. Companies certainly have a right to tell workers their side of the story and to persuade them not to join a union. But what Wal Mart does goes far beyond that. Wal Mart engages in illegal intimidation of its employees. It is not the only large corporation that does so, but it is probably among the worst offenders.

I will let these employees speak for themselves because they are articulate, compelling, and inspiring in their quest for simple human dignity and a better life for themselves and their families.



The Employee Free Choice Act is not in danger in the House of Representatives, where it will probably pass easily. But it's going to be an uphill battle in the Senate, where any piece of progressive legislation - actually where any Democratic legislation - requires a 2/3 majority to succeed. We need to get 60 votes to prevent cloture in order to pass EFCA. Business and trade groups, as well as conservatives, are bringing tremendous pressure on Virginia's two sentors, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, to vote against it. Last year, Jim Webb was a co-sponsor of EFCA. This year, we are not sure how he will vote on it. If you support the rights and dignity of workers, please call Senators Webb and Warner to let them know you support EFCA and you will support them if they vote in favor of it.

You can reach Mark Warner here and Jim Webb here. For your convenience, below are their Washington, DC addresses and phone numbers.

Mark Warner
459A Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2023
Fax: 202-224-6295

Jim Webb
Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-4024
Fax: 202-228-6363

Please drop them a line to let them know you support this important legislation

Employee Free Choice Act

Want to find out more?

Nebraska Meats Sickens Virginia Boy Scouts; Tainted Meat Kills Minnesota Churchgoer

Nebraska Meats, the processor whose E coli tainted beef sickened Boy Scouts in Goshen, VA a few weeks ago, apparently has a history of health and safety violations, according to this article in today's Washington Post. Sadly, their ground beef was sold through a supplier, Coleman Foods, which processed their product at Nebraska Meats, without informing Whole Foods. That supermarket chain is now investigating why Coleman Foods never told them where they processed the meat. Meanwhile, Whole Foods, a grocery chain that enjoys customer trust and maintains high standards, has had to issue a recall and will now have the difficult job of rebuilding their customers’ faith in their quality.

Nebraska Foods, by contrast, has a long history of health and safety violations, which should earn them customer enmity. And those same consumers, also voters, need to ask why the USDA has fallen on the job of protecting them?

It turns out, it didn’t happen without a fight from the USDA.

Nebraska Beef has a contentious history with the USDA. Over the past six years, federal meat inspectors have repeatedly written it up for sanitation violations, and the company has fought back in court.

From September 2002 to February 2003, USDA shut down the plant three times for problems such as feces on carcasses, water dripping off pipes onto meat, paint peeling onto equipment and plugged-up meat wash sinks, according to agency records.
After the third suspension, Nebraska Beef took USDA to court, arguing that another shutdown would put the company out of business. A judge agreed and temporarily blocked the department. The USDA and the company then settled out of court and inspections resumed. However, when federal meat inspectors found more violations, Nebraska Beef sued the department and the inspectors individually, accusing them of bias. The suit was later dismissed.

In 2004 and early 2005, Nebraska Beef ran afoul of new regulations aimed at keeping animal parts that may be infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, out of the meat supply. Meat processors are required to remove certain high-risk parts, such as brains and spinal cords. Between July 2004 and February 2005, federal meat inspectors wrote up Nebraska Beef at least five times for not removing spinal cords and heads, according to USDA records obtained by Food and Water Watch, a Washington advocacy group.

The company corrected the problems.

In August 2006, federal meat inspectors threatened to suspend operations at the packing house for not following requirements for controlling E. coli. The company corrected the problem a week later, USDA records show.

But that same year, Minnesota health officials blamed the same company for sickening 17 people, who ate meatballs at a church potluck. One woman died of food poisoning and several of the victims sued Nebraska Beef, including the dead woman’s family. What was Nebraska Beef’s response? Incredibly, they counter sued the victims, alleging the volunteer chefs cooked the meatballs improperly. The suit was later dropped as consumer advocates questioned the company and why the USDA has been so ineffective at shutting it down.

Given the history of violations, some consumer advocates question why the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service has not come down harder on the company.

"It seems that FSIS is walking on eggshells when dealing with Nebraska Beef," said Food and Water Watch lobbyist Tony Corbo. "Instead, the agency keeps on coming up with Band-Aid approaches . . . while consumers keep on getting sick from eating products put into commerce by this company."

"Companies are provided the opportunity to take corrective action," USDA's Reiser said.

It took an accumulation of embarrassments, though, to get this delinquent company to sing a different tune. In addition to blatant disregard for their customers’ health, they also could care less about employee safety and are high on the list of union busters.

Labor unions have also criticized Nebraska Beef over its labor practices. Since 1998, the company has had 47 workplace safety violations and paid more than $100,000 in fines, Occupational Safety and Health Administration records show. Lamson said most were not serious.

In 2002, a National Labor Relations Board official voided a 2001 vote against unionizing Nebraska Beef employees. The NLRB official found that management interrogated workers about their union sympathies and threatened to fire, terminate benefits for or reassign employees who voted to unionize.

Maybe in addition to cleaning up safety violations to protect consumers, we also need the Employee Free Choice Act. It turns out, despite the claims to the contrary by conservatives, that workers need more protection from employer intimidation than they do from imaginary union thugs, who exist mostly in the minds of right wingers for whom private industry can do no wrong.

Nebraska Meats is a terrible example of a company that threatens its employees and plays fast and loose with everybody’s safety and health. And the state government in Nebraska has given them tax breaks to do so.

By then, Hughes was already part of a group of Nebraska Beef investors. The state gave the company additional financial support in the form of $7.5 million in tax credits under its Quality Jobs Act. Then-Gov. Ben Nelson (D), now a U.S. senator, sat on the three-member jobs board that approved the tax credits. Nelson's former law firm, Lamson, Dugan and Murray, represents Nebraska Beef.

While state leaders welcomed Nebraska Beef and the jobs that came with it, residents who lived near the plant did not, and for more than a decade, they battled the company over manure strewn in the street and workers walking off the kill floor and into the local grocery store covered in cow splatter, said South Omaha resident Janet Bonet.

So, in addition to all their other sins, they’re bad neighbors too. But bad neighbors with friends, like Blue Dog Democrat Ben Nelson, in high places. And they are serial polluters and health and safety violators too.

The force behind Nebraska Beef is Nebraska businessman William Hughes. Hughes was a top executive at the now-defunct Beef America. In 1997, the USDA yanked its inspectors from BeefAmerica's Norfolk, Neb., plant because of repeated sanitation violations, including contamination of meat with fecal matter. The company had to recall more than 600,000 pounds of beef after the USDA traced E. coli O157:H7-tainted meat from a Virginia retailer to the Omaha packer. It filed for bankruptcy the following year.

So, William Hughes, buddy of Ben Nelson, has poisoned Virginians before. I guess all politics isn’t just local. Not in a global economy.

As I’ve written before, most companies genuinely try to provide quality products. They need help in regaining the public’s trust. But there are a few out there that are genuinely criminal. Those are the ones that should be eliminated. I can’t think of a better outcome for the health and safety of the public than for Nebraska Meats to either shape up or, indeed, fold up.

Kick Down the Doors at 4:30 Am - Or Smithfield and ICE Say Zig Heil!

This is a developing story ....

Exactly one week before a major protest was planned for the Smithfield Annual Shareholders' Meeting, which moved to Williamsburg from its traditional Richmond location, reports are surfacing that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has somehow gotten the addresses of supposed undocumented workers for the company. At 4:30 this morning, they kicked in doors and used dogs to round up as many as 30 people in an effort to intimidate workers trying to organize a plant.

This comes in the wake of a major union organizing campaign at one of Smithfield's North Carolina facilities. Smithfield, which operates both unionized and non union facilities has been bitterly fighting the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) organizing efforts for years.

This is not the first time that Smithfield has used ICE to intimidate workers. As shown here and here, Smithfield has a history of using the federal immigration authorities to intimidate workers fighting for basic rights and human dignity. But, as is pointed out in these articles, Smithfield likes to avoid having the raids occur at their facilities. So this time they managed to get ICE to knock in the middle of the night. Yes, just like the Gestapo and the Bolsheviks in a sadder age and in another continent.

Or, for many who remember a different era, even here in the U.S., it looks like Smithfield got the the descendants of the Southern Klan to kick down the doors last night!