WASHINGTON — As she presses for a coveted endorsement from organized labor, presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is facing a backlash over the business ties of a top campaign aide who has angered the labor movement.
Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are to speak today at an AFL-CIO candidate forum in Chicago. An endorsement promises brigades of union workers to knock on doors, drive people to the polls, and staff phone banks targeting potential voters.
Labor activists demand that Clinton give the aide, Mark J. Penn, a choice: sever connections to the public relations firm that he heads or leave the campaign.
Apart from working as a strategist and pollster for Clinton, Penn is worldwide president and chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, which has more than 100 offices in 59 countries. The firm's clients include Cintas Corp. of Cincinnati, which manufactures and launders corporate uniforms. With Burson-Marsteller's assistance, Cintas has staved off a push to unionize its workforce, and the public relations firm's website at one point boasted of its work in parrying union pressure.
"Companies cannot be caught unprepared by organized labor's coordinated campaigns," the section read, "whether they are in conjunction with organizing or contract negotiating.... That is why we have developed a comprehensive communications approach for clients when they face any type of labor situation."
Penn has said that his own public relations work does not involve anti-union activity, but union leaders said they were troubled that a Democratic candidate who cast herself as a labor ally had chosen him as a campaign partner.
"Learning that Mark Penn was CEO of a company that in fact conducts some of its business busting unions was very, very problematic to the AFL-CIO, as well as to many other unions, and we made that clear" to the Clinton campaign, said Karen Ackerman, AFL-CIO political director. "This is an issue that continues."
Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa said in a statement: "We have expressed our concerns to Sen. Clinton about Mark Penn and his firm's work for anti-union companies. We value Sen. Clinton's commitment to strengthen America's middle class. But as long as Mark Penn continues to profit from his company's involvement with anti-union companies, this issue will not go away."
