In These Times magazine’s Mike Elk released a blockbuster story yesterday. He has found that Georgia Pacific — a Koch-owned corporation — sent mailers to its 45,000 employees urging them to vote for Mitt Romney and other Republicans. The mailers also include op-eds written by the Koch brothers praising the prospect of electing more Republican lawmakers.
In this climate of political intimidation, many employees are afraid of losing their jobs if it is found out that they don’t back Republicans:
In September, a number of unionized employees at Georgia Pacificai??i??s Toledo, Ore. plant posed for a photo in front of their union hall with Democratic state Senate candidate Arnie Roblan. When the Koch Industries voter information packet arrived in the workersai??i?? mailboxes a few weeks later, they saw that Roblan was not on the list of Koch-endorsed candidates in Oregon.
It was then, says Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW) Vice President Greg Pallesen, that he started receiving some of the strangest phone calls from workers heai??i??s fielded in his 30-plus years of union involvement. The unionized workers in the photo were worried that they might be fired from their jobs if the image got out on the Internet, because in the backdrop of the photo, the Georgia Pacific plant could be seen.
Elk appeared on Up With Chris Hayes this morning to discuss the story. Watch it:
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