Grocery Union Bosses Flagrantly Misrepresent the Truth in Keystone State Ad Blitz

Commonwealth Foundation - Nation Laughs at Pennsylvania

Grocery union bosses determined to retain their privilege to extract forced union dues from thousands of employees at government-controlled liquor and beer stores in Pennsylvania have been running TV and radio ads that falsely imply that, thanks to its monopoly on retail sales of alcoholic beverages consumed off-premises, the Keystone State has extraordinarily low rates of drunk-driving and other alcohol-related fatalities. When confronted with the actual facts, a la Saturday Night Live’s Tommy Flanagan, Philadelphia-area union chief Wendell Young moves on to a new topic. Image: Saturday Night Live (NBC)

Aficionados  of “pathological liar” Tommy Flanagan, as portrayed in multiple Saturday Night Live sketches of the 1980’s by then-cast member Jon Lovitz, may remember his attempt to pick up model Jerry Hall.  Not recognizing her, Flanagan boasts that he saved Mick Jagger’s life in Vietnam.  When Hall informs Flanagan that Jagger (her then-husband) was never in Vietnam, he explains, “That’s how I saved his life — I talked him out of going!”

With regard to creative mendacity, if not entertainment value, Wendell Young, chief of the Philadelphia-area Local 1776 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, is a worthy successor of Tommy Flanagan.

TV and radio ads bankrolled by the UFCW union hierarchy (primarily with workers’ forced-dues money) ran across the state of Pennsylvania last month.  They were designed to defeat an effort by GOP Gov. Tom Corbett and his allies in the Keystone State Legislature to end the state’s monopoly on retail sales of alcoholic beverages consumed off-premises.   The reason why grocery union bosses care about this issue is obvious:  UFCW Local 1776 currently wields monopoly-bargaining power over roughly 2000 employees at state-controlled stores in eastern and central Pennsylvania, and UFCW Local 23 currently has the same so-called  “exclusive representation” privileges over 1500 employees in the western part of the state.  And in non-Right to Work states like Pennsylvania, workers subject to monopoly bargaining are, with rare exceptions, also forced to pay union dues, or be fired.

Despite the fact that both chambers of the Legislature have now voted for legislation at least partially privatizing liquor sales for consumption off-premises, it now appears unlikely any specific reform will be approved by the House and Senate and sent to Corbett’s desk.  Perpetuation of the state’s liquor sale monopoly, assuming that’s the outcome, will be a big victory for the union elite.

Nevertheless, UFCW bosses and their cohorts may pay a steep price in the long run for the brazen misrepresentation of the facts to which they have resorted in the fight.  The Big Labor-sponsored TV and radio ads recently blanketing the state asserted, flat out:  “Thanks to the current laws and the effectiveness of the wine and spirits store employees, Pennsylvania has the lowest death rate associated with alcohol consumption in the nation.”

In reality, as the analysis by the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Foundation linked above notes, this is true only of “one obscure statistic” related to alcohol fatalities, and not remotely true with regard to any of the key statistics that are of at least possible relevance in the debate:

Pennsylvania ranks higher than the national average in alcohol-related traffic fatalities per capita, higher than the national average in accidents related to DUIs according to MADD and middle of the pack in total DUI rates and a whole host of other measures.

When confronted with the fact that DUIs in Pennsylvania, the single type of alcohol-related fatality vigilant liquor store employees might be capable of preventing, are higher than the national average, Local 1776 chieftain Young retorted that, in his view, it doesn’t really matter if UFCW union ads are accurate:  “[T]he point is to get people’s attention.”

Exasperated Right to Work supporters often suspect that, from union officials’ perspective, the truth isn’t important when Big Labor’s privilege to extract forced dues and fees from employees is at stake.  There’s plenty of evidence indicating this suspicion is well-founded.  But it’s only occasionally that a union bigwig like Wendell Young comes along and unabashedly confirms that he see’s nothing wrong with misleading the public in order to protect his special privileges.