When Rick Berman launched Unionfacts.com in February 2006, Wal-Mart denied any link to him.

Wal-Mart …isn't backing the new group and never heard of the organization before Monday, said Sarah Clark, spokeswoman for the Bentonville, Ark.-based company. [Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2006]

While Wal-Mart denied knowledge, Berman certainly did Wal-Mart’s bidding.

The week before even launching his Unionfacts.com website, Berman attacked executives from Giant for supported Maryland’s Fair Share Healthcare bill, saying, “Some of the unionized grocers have made a deal with the devil by supporting labor unions against Wal-Mart.” [Richard Berman, “States bring health-care fight to big business,” DSN Retailing Today, February 6, 2006]

Four days after launching Unionfacts.com, Berman upped his rhetoric in support of Wal-Mart. By titling his press release “First they came for Wal-Mart,” he echoed the famous Holocaust survivor Reverend Martin Neimoller.[ PR Newswire US, February 17, 2006]

Just a few weeks later, Berman noted in a broadside against several unions that "one local that spent $9,000 at Wal-Mart." [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 April 2006]

Wal-Mart spokespeople should have at least heard of Rick Berman, their boss had worked along side him for the tobacco industry

Berman was the architect of a shift in Big Tobacco’s campaign: “His proposed solution would broaden the focus of the ‘smoking issue,’ and expand into the bigger picture of over-regulation.” —Summary of Berman’s approach taken from an internal Philip Morris memo from Barbara Trach to Ellen Merlo. Berman solicited $600,000 from Philip Morris U.S.A. to start Guest Choice Network (now the Center for Consumer Freedom). [http://www.prwatch.org/]

The tobacco company, Philip Morris, gave Richard Berman’s group $600,000 in 1995 and another $300,000 the following year. [http://www.prwatch.org/documents/berman/pm600k.pdf]

Robert McAdam, Wal-Mart’s vice president for Government Relations, oversees Wal-Mart’s corporate communications and was a vice president of special projects for the Tobacco Institute.

McAdam was still lobbying for the Tobacco Institute in 1998 well after Berman’s organization received over $2 million in funding from tobacco giant, Phillip Morris. [New York Times, November 2, 2005 and http://tobaccodocuments.org/nysa_ti_m2/TI12650086.html, http://www.consumerdeception.com/append4.html]

McAdam’s tenure at the Tobacco Institute overlapped from at least 1995-1998 with Berman’s major donations from Philip Morris and work in support of tobacco. [http://tobaccodocuments.org]

Additionally, Philip Morris executives helped direct Berman's work from 1997-1998 in their capacity as members of the Advisory Panel of Berman's Guest Choice Network (now called the Center for Consumer Freedom). [GCN documents at sourcewatch.org and consumerdeception.com]

Wal-Mart’s Chief Lobbyist had previously worked alongside Berman for years

Wal-Mart in 2005 hired as its new government affairs chief Lee Culpepper. [The New Republic, 7/25/05]

Culpepper and Berman, from 2000-2005, were often quoted in many of the same articles on issues such as opposing a raise in the minimum wage and reforming immigration. They appear to have developed mutual respect.

“I’ve worked with Rick for years, and indeed he is a lightning rod. People have strong feelings about him, but he helps the industry.” —Lee Culpepper said when he was chief lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association [http://www.consumerdeception.com]

At the restaurant industry leaders’ conference in 2001, Rick Berman “expressed admiration for the National Restaurant Association's chief lobbyist, Lee Culpepper.” [Weekly Restaurant Connections, April 30, 2001]

Now Wal-Mart is changing its tune on Unionfacts:

“I’ve worked with Rick for years, and indeed he is a lightning rod. People have strong feelings about him, but he helps the industry.”
—Lee Culpepper of the National Restaurant Association Wal-Mart said it has a relationship in which it exchanges union information with Berman, the group's head. [Detroit Free Press, May 24, 2006]

Unionfacts and its murky funding:

Rick Berman will not release the names of the companies underwriting his efforts, but Wal-Mart has provided significant backing to one group that voted major funding for anti-union efforts, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Unionfacts.com is a project of the Chamber of Commerce, according to an anonymous source which claims that, in a meeting of the State Chambers of Commerce National Conference held on Sanibel Island in Florida on January 26, 2006 the State Chambers announced they were spending $8 million a year ($2 million a quarter) to launch this anti-union campaign.[AFL-CIO, “Get the Facts on Union Facts”]

According to the Washington Post, Wal-Mart contributed at least $1 million to the Chamber of Commerce in 2005. [Washington Post, 3/27/05]

Other Work by Richard Berman

“[There is a] lack of evidence that second-hand smoke causes cancer.” —Rick Berman http://www.consumerfreedom.com/oped_detail.cfm?oped=123

Berman’s “Guest Choice Network” (according to the Center for Media and Democracy): Described Mothers Against Drunk Driving as a group of "professional fund-raisers" who try to "scare us away from even responsible drinking."

Characterized former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s proposal to confiscate the vehicles of people convicted for drunk driving as a "car-theft ring."

"We always have a knife in our teeth," Berman said. Since activists "drive consumer behavior on meat, alcohol, fat, sugar, tobacco and caffeine," his strategy is "to shoot the messenger.... We've got to attack their credibility as spokespersons." [Chain Leader, 1999 as in Sourcewatch.org]

In the early 1990s, Berman made a $93,000 donation to Kennesaw State College for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s class on the condition that Gingrich teach ideas supported by the right-wing Employment Policies Institute. House Ethics Committee reports revealed that Berman’s contribution was solicited by GOPAC, Gingrich’s PAC. (Sourcewatch.org)

Claiming that minimum wage jobs help poor people and increasing the minimum wage hurts them: In 2000, Berman said, “A new Michigan State study says unskilled people are actually pushed into poverty for, all of the usual reasons when the minimum wage goes up. So we're not going to solve that problem by raising the minimum wage faster." [Nation’s Restaurant News, September 18, 2000]