Ambushing Private Equity (must read on shaming billionaires and companies)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/17/AR2008041704239.html

As SEIU Harries New Absentee Owners, Buyout Firms Dispute the Union's Agenda

By Thomas Heath
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 18, 2008; Page D01

Forget the marches and strikes that once defined the union movement. Big labor is relying more on guile and theatrics than blunt force to attack the ascendancy of a new form of corporate ownership: private equity.

And tactics often get personal. Union allies staged a satire outside buyout king Henry Kravis's lavish Long Island home, asking passersby to sign a petition giving him a break on his property taxes. Weeks later, protesters in business suits sneaked into a private-equity conference at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, where Carlyle Group co-founder David M. Rubenstein was giving a speech. They sought to shame him with a banner that read: "Why does he pay taxes at a lower rate than the hotel's doorman?"

Then on Halloween, union members wearing Rubenstein masks paraded in front of Carlyle's offices, handing out Sugar Daddy suckers.

The unorthodox protests are part of a campaign by the Service Employees International Union and its allies to position themselves as a check on what they regard as a new economic order, one dominated by the big private buyout firms.

Those firms have swept up hundreds of companies in recent years. As the economy softens, union leaders say they increasingly worry that private-equity firms will try to salvage their investments by pressuring management to cut jobs or benefits. And those dealmakers are in New York or Washington, away from where most of the employees actually work.

"We are up against the Masters of the Universe here, so we've got to be smart about what we do," said Dan Cantor, executive director of a public interest group called the Working Families Party.

FULL story and photos at link.

[Joanne98]

1. Excellent. K&R

[shireen]

2. "Why does he pay taxes at a lower rate than the hotel's doorman?" nt