Labor & Employment Law

Corporate Front Group Accuses N.Y./N.J. Firefighters of ?Mediocrity?

By Tula Connell

Recent well-publicized efforts to smear public employees haven?t just come out of nowhere. They?re part of a well-orchestrated campaign brewed up by the reactionary likes of the Heritage Foundation in advance of this year?s midterm election. Marching in lockstep, anti-worker groups like the hypocritically named National Right to Work Committee have pushed hard to spread this party line.  

But you?d think that if an organization planned to malign a group of public employees, the last ones they would pick on would be firefighters. Especially firefighters in New York and New Jersey who risked and, in some cases, lost their lives saving victims of the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11.

Not so.

A recent post at a website run by front man Richard Berman attacks New York and New Jersey firefighters, accusing them of “mediocrity.” (Corporations hide behind Berman, paying him millions of dollars to do their dirty work, from attacking workers to urging pregnant women to eat mercury-laden fish.)

Let?s see any one of those cowards risk their lives to rush into a burning building.

Max Stier, president of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, takes on the neocon-created calumny of the pampered public employee.

?much of what the federal government does actually works quite well, from the payment of Social Security benefits to 53 million Americans and the supervising of the safe takeoff and landings of thousands of airplanes to the work of the nation’s intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials who protect our security.

Behind these efforts are dedicated, hardworking Americans. They may be anonymous and the foil for some politicians and commentators, but they regularly make a difference?a positive difference?in the lives of Americans. They are working on issues that directly affect all of us, from shoring up the economy and the financial system to providing better health care, protecting the environment, and keeping our food and drug supplies safe.

Stier goes on to cite individual public employees whose actions make a mockery of the campaign against public employees. Those like Teri Glass and her colleagues at Fort Detrick in Maryland who have worked tirelessly to develop a state-of-the-art medical evacuation system that has since helped medics quickly and safely transport wounded soldiers such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan to battlefield hospitals.

So what has Heritage or Berman?s backers done lately to help our troops?

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 22, 2010 (boomark / email).