August 12, 2009

UPS, FedEx and Others Delivering Deception

How sad it is to find out that, in the latest scuffle between FedEx and UPS, both are delivering bad news.

Remember growing up when we thought life was a case of the good guys fighting the evil ones? How disillusioning it is to learn that, in the world of lobbying, it’s all-too-often the sleazy versus the slobs.

UPS is unionized. FedEx is not, and uses borderline deceptive tactics to bend the rules and stay that way.

UPS is seeking legislation that would level the playing field and force FedEx to stop playing its anti-labor games. Fair enough.

What's outright foul is the tactic that UPS and its Teamster Union might be using.

According to the Washington Post’s story titled UPS Employees Say They Were Forced to Lobby Against FedEx, many UPS workers are effectively being forced to send phony mail to Senate and House members in support of the bill. The report charges they are taken into a room, provided envelopes, stamps and pre-written letters, and intimidated into signing.

FedEx is screaming bloody murder, of course, and is running its own heavy PR and influence game insisting that unionization could lead to strikes. Duh!

UPS denies any sort of employee coercion, of course, because if true, it could be a violation of labor laws.

"If true" is such an important phrase, because in the political world things so often are not. That is hardly a revelation, but every day we are bombarded by disclosure of new examples of how someone is perverting the process and distorting the written word.

Of course, most of them are never disclosed. They are hidden in the slime. But here are a couple of examples that have accidentally been forced to the surface of this swamp:

One of Washington's biggest "grass roots lobbying groups" has been forced to admit it forged at least a dozen letters to members of Congress. That explains the quotes around "grass roots lobbying groups". The term for such companies is "Astroturf", and they sprout everywhere. But normally, they don't resort to forgery. 

This time, letters purported to express the feelings of community groups opposing greenhouse gas legislation, on behalf of the group's client, the utility-backed "American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.” 

Of course, the lobbyist group has disavowed the action, and fired a "temporary employee", translate scapegoat.

That one might not be as egregious as the medical papers that court documents show were ghost-written and paid for by a pharmaceutical company. A medical communications firm paid by Wyeth, the drug company colossus, is accused of writing articles that appeared in various professional journals between 1998 and 2005 . . . seven years. They claimed to represent researchers' findings that de-emphasized the dangers of post-menopausal hormones as a potential cause of invasive breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and dementia. It is not clear whether Wyeth had a direct role. Also not clear is how many people died as a result of the subterfuge.

These are all relatively small examples of the devious tactics used by those who care only about the money they make and what they can get away with to make it.

Rule number one, of course, is "don't get caught," and even if you are, don't sweat it because everyone is so used to the deceptions, this one will be forgotten as attention moves to the next one.

It even seems to work on a much grander scale. The economic collapse was caused by the same kind of wheeling and dealing on the edge of the law and over the line of decency. In spite of the massive financial collapse, those who caught it are continuing to play their same games, paying the same exorbitant salaries to themselves as they use influence-peddling and campaign contributions to make sure they stymie passage of any meaningful regulation.

And yes, when necessary, they will concoct a phony letter-writing effort, with the concocted documents sometimes delivered to their senator and congressmen by none other than FedEx or UPS.

See how everything comes together? How sad it is that's exactly how, all too often, things do come together in our system.