Cintas

<div>=</div><div>Dirty laundry High-profile uniform company Cintas slammed for labor, billing, and environmental problems.<h4 style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Rachel Brahinsky</h4>CINTAS CORP. would like to be known as a successful company that came from small-town roots and made it big. During 74 years in business it has expanded from a Cincinnati rag-cleaning operation to the nation's largest uniform manufacturer and industrial laundry, serving Exxon, Chevron, Ford, and UPS, along with massive government agencies like the U.S. Postal Service.In the past few years, though, an effort by workers and union organizers to shed light on some of Cintas's less flattering behavior has tarnished the company's image. Cintas spokesperson Wade Gates says the campaign, primarily by service workers union UNITE HERE, is being waged out of spite because Cintas refuses to sign a national contract.But even a quick perusal of Cintas's record reveals serious problems that are hard to ignore – including efforts to undermine local living-wage laws and a systematic habit of billing customers for a mysterious "environmental charge" that may be bogus.Why should you care? Cintas has eight facilities in the Bay Area and Sacramento and serves an estimated 300 to 400 businesses in San Francisco alone – from small garages, taquerias, and markets to behemoth companies like Hertz and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. It also has a uniform and cleaning contract with the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, which serves the San Francisco veterans hospital.Less than two years ago Cintas agreed to a $14 million settlement in a lawsuit over the allegedly fraudulent charges, and although the company admitted no wrongdoing, the Postal Inspector General began an independent investigation into the allegations. In January the Justice Department stepped into the fray, investigating possible Cintas overcharges on contracts with other federal agencies, including the Pentagon. While Cintas's contract with the V.A., signed last year, initially included the environmental charge, it was later removed.It's impossible to say how many other local contracts include such charges, but Gates told the Bay Guardian it's standard for the company, although since the settlement they more often call the fee a "service" charge, he said. According to Gates the fee is also common throughout the industry and pays for things like "fluctuating fuel costs and changes in requirements at local entities."Even with all the scrutiny, there are questions about how vigorously the feds will go after Cintas, mainly because of its connections in Washington, D.C. Cintas board chair and founder Richard T. Farmer gives prodigiously to Republican candidates and was the country's third-largest political donor between 1999 and 2003, according toMother Jones. Last year he was a Bush Ranger, one of the elite crew who pledged to raise at least $200,000 for George W. Bush's reelection.According to Campaignmoneywatch.org, Bush has repaid Farmer's kindnesses. For example, after Farmer hosted a $1.7 million fundraiser for Bush in 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rules to "weaken federal safeguards for employees who handle toxin-soaked 'shop' towels." Cintas workers routinely collect and clean such towels for auto body shops and other businesses.That's not Cintas's only environmental foible. In January the company agreed to a large settlement in Louisiana after being sued for allegedly dumping untreated wastewater – contaminated with oil, grease, and carbon-based chemicals – into the Baton Rouge sewage system, which discharges into the Mississippi River. Last year the Sierra Club accused another Cintas plant in Tampa, Fla., of similar activities.Locally, other Cintas business practices have come into question. The company has sought to derail the living-wage ordinance in Hayward by saying that a municipality doesn't have the right to impose wage restrictions on an out-of-town company.Cintas has generally been aggressive in its self-defense. Last year it sued a shareholder after he denounced what he called sweatshop conditions in its Haitian factories. The defamation suit was later dropped, and the company now says it plans to release annual reports about labor conditions at its overseas factories. Cintas also sued UNITE HERE, accusing the union of violating a federal license plate privacy act in its zeal to organize Pennsylvania Cintas workers.Meanwhile, the company seems to be doing something right for the people at the top: it was just named one of the nation's "most admired companies" by Fortune Magazine for the fifth consecutive year. Fortune used various measures to make its selection, including long-term investment value and employee talent. It did not look into labor and pricing practices or environmental concerns.E-mail <a href="mailto:rachel@sfbg.com">Rachel Brahinsky</a></div><div>=</div><div><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">secretive funding organization called Donors Trust spent the last decade funneling vast sums of money to an array of think tanks and activist groups, all dedicated to undermining the science of climate change and heading off the progress of climate policy. That’s according to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">reporting</a> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/donors-trust-funding-climate-denial-networks" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">last week</a> by The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg and <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/planet3/PDFs/Donor's%20Trust%20-%20Laundering%20Climate%20Denial%20Funding.pdf" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">a recent analysis</a> by Greenpeace.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Working <a href="http://www.donorscapitalfund.org/home.html?x=6" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">in concert</a> with its sister organization, Donors Capital Fund, Donors Trust <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/donors-trust-funding-climate-denial-networks" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">provided</a> critical funding to some of the leading lights in the climate denial campaign: From 2002 to 2010, Americans for Prosperity received $11 million from Donors Trust, the Heartland Institute received $13.5 million, and the American Enterprise Institute received more than $17 million.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">In 2010 alone, Donors Trust dedicated $30 million — 46 percent of all its grants to conservative causes — to climate denial groups, 12 of which owe from 30 to 70 percent of their 2010 funding to the organization. Indeed, some may not have even existed absent the largess; the Donors Fund boosted the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow from a $600,000 operation to $3 million over the years, to cite just one example.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">According to Goldenberg, the total contributions of Donors Trust from 2002 to 2010 <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">dwarfs the amounts</a> given by Exxon Mobil or even the Koch Foundation:<blockquote style="margin: 10px 50px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); quotes: none; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 22.5px;">By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 think tanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.</blockquote><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Graphic-climate-denial-fu-001.png" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1611451" title="Graphic-climate-denial-fu-001" src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Graphic-climate-denial-fu-001.png" alt="" width="460" height="400" style="margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; clear: both; display: block;" /></a><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Throw in Greenpeace’s numbers for 2011, and the total contributions <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/planet3/PDFs/Donor's%20Trust%20-%20Laundering%20Climate%20Denial%20Funding.pdf" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">rise</a> to $146 million.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Donors Trust is a form of organization called donor-advised funds, which are apparently not uncommon in America. According to Goldenberg, donor-advised funds offer wealthy donors a good deal of advantages: “They are convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are lawful.” They also allow contributors <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/14/12181/donors-use-charity-push-free-market-policies-states" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">an unusual level of control</a> over where their money ends up going, an advantage that helps combat the tendency for foundation money to “drift left,” as Whitney Ball, the president and CEO of Donors Trust, put it. Finally, in the case of Donors Trust at least, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">there is complete anonymity</a> for contributors:<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;"><blockquote style="margin: 10px 50px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); quotes: none; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 22.5px;">“The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It’s also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing,” said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.“These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them,” Davies said.</blockquote><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Ball <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">told The Guardian</a> that while the organization’s wealthy donors run the gamut of conservative ideologies, from libertarian to social conservative, Donors Trust has allowed them to find common ground in opposing action on climate change and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. “We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,” she told The Guardian in an interview. The money “won’t be going to liberals.”<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Recently, Donors Trust <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/15/media-campaign-windfarms-conservatives" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">has been dedicating</a> more of its resources to the relatively young Franklin Centre for Government and Public Integrity, marking a strategic shift away from activism centered in Washington, D.C., and towards efforts to scrap climate policy at the individual state level.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;"><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/19/the_atm_for_climate_denial_secretive" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Here’s</a> Goldenberg discussing her reporting with Democracy Now! and <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/14/12181/donors-use-charity-push-free-market-policies-states" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">here’s</a> an in-depth look at the Donors Trust money trail by the Center for Public Integrity, including more details on its state-level operations and a pretty slick interactive <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/14/12151/following-donors-trust-money-trail" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">infographic</a>.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">cindi Andrews reports:<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The CEO of Mason-based Cintas, a top Republican donor, sent an email to employees obliquely sharing his concerns about a second Obama term.One Florida executive flatly told his 7,000 workers that there would be layoffs if his taxes increase as a result of the election, and another asked his employees to give money to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.The line between business and politics seems to be blurring as the too-close-to-call presidential election approaches, to the dismay of some employees. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which removed limits on corporate campaign contributions, has allowed business leaders to go further in urging their employees to vote a particular way, and Romney himself has encouraged business leaders to do so.But the boss is treading in tricky territory when he or she talks politics with employees, some warn.Advocates say it’s helpful for employees to know the potential impact of an election on their company. But management and political experts say partisan emails from the boss are both bad business and questionable politics – more likely to create a workplace distraction than to change anyone’s vote.“All it does is invite dissension,” said Ralph Katerberg, a management professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Business.Scott Farmer, leader of the uniform and document management company Cintas, detailed his concerns about Obama’s health care law and the possibility of more taxes and regulation in an email to employees Oct. 19.“The over-regulation that business is facing today from the various administrative agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Security Exchange Commission (SEC), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and others is suffocating many companies,” Farmer wrote. “This uncertainty felt by many of our customers about their ability to run and grow their businesses prevents them from adding jobs which hurts our ability to grow and add jobs.”Farmer, who has given $52,500 to Romney and the Romney Victory committee this year, never told employees how to vote.The email was made public when a friend of an employee posted the text of it on her blog, calling it “employee intimidation.” Cintas spokeswoman Heather Maley confirmed Farmer sent the email but said employees – referred to at Cintas as “partners” – haven’t objected to it.“He gets asked all the time by employee partners, ‘What’s Cintas’ position on the current election?’ ” Maley said. “We’ve had overwhelming positive response (from employees) stating that they were appreciative of the transparency of the information.”That may be what they’re telling management. But one employee told The Enquirer she wasn’t happy about the email – she just didn’t feel free to complain internally.“I am completely OK with a company having a political view,” said the Cintas employee, who wished to remain anonymous. “However, I don’t feel like it should be presented to their employees by email. To me that (could be) interpreted as swaying your employees to vote the way of the company’s political beliefs. I have my own mind, and I will vote the way I choose.David Siegel, CEO of Westgate Resorts, sent an email to his employees warning that their jobs are at risk in the election. The company is based in Orlando, Fla. – another key battleground state in the 2012 election.“The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration,” he said in the e-mail, according to CNNMoney. “If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company.”Naples, Fla.-based ASG Software Solutions CEO Arthur Allen not only asked employees to vote for Romney – he even asked them to donate to “up to the maximum of $2,500.00 per person. Please help ASG and yourself by contributing to the Romney/Ryan campaign,” he wrote, according to the Huffington Post.The Enquirer was unable to find examples of bosses suggesting support for Obama.Katerberg said a political email from the boss sends the message that it’s OK to use company time and resources for such communications. It also risks alienating those with different political views.“Within an organization, you work hard to keep people as part of a team, working on the same page, and the moment you (advocate a political position) – you know not everybody is going to agree with you, and they start to think, ‘Maybe we’re not on the same page,’ ” he said.Wijdan Jreisat, an employment attorney with Katz Teller Brant & Hild, said she cautions clients against communications that may be construed as showing ill will toward a particular category of people. Political emails can easily stray into protected areas such as religion and heritage during discussions about family values and immigration law, she said.“From a strictly legal standpoint they have a right to express their views,” Jreisat said. “That doesn’t make it a best practice.”Further, experts on political behavior say it’s questionable whether the email will produce the desired result.There’s a raft of research showing that unions are effective in marshaling support for their endorsed candidates, according to Patrick Flavin, a Baylor University professor who studies political behavior. The boss-employee relationship is very different, and the research doesn’t exist on that type of communications, he said.Employees who are undecided might be open to information that’s not presented in an arm-twisting way, Flavin said, but those who disagree with the boss or feel pressured might feel more motivated to vote in the opposite way.Doug Moormann, the former head of government affairs at the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, said there’s a benefit to employers sharing the potential business impact of elections, just as they would give employees market updates about their industry.“If a company has history of openly communicating with employees about the status of the business and the business environment, the message may be well-received,” said Moormann, now vice president of Development Strategies Group, an economic development consulting firm.Romney, in a taped conference call with the National Federation for Independent Business earlier this year, asked business leaders to share their political views with their staffs: “I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.”</div></div></div><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 22.5px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">=</div><div><table width="760" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><tbody><tr><td width="760" valign="top"><table width="1" height="8" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td><spacer type="block" width="1" height="8" /></td></tr></tbody></table><table width="760" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td width="515" valign="top">THE BUSH MONEY MACHINE : An Industry Gets Its Way 
Fundraiser Denies Link Between Money, Access 
EPA Rule on Hazardous Waste Favored Ohio Businessman Who Is a Big GOP DonorBy James V. Grimaldi and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 17, 2004; Page A01<nitf>Second of two articles</nitf><nitf>MASON, Ohio -- Richard T. Farmer is one of America's richest men and a Bush Pioneer by virtue of having raised at least $100,000 for the 2000 campaign. Over the past 15 years, he and his wife have given $3.1 million to Bush campaigns, the Republican Party and Republican candidates.</nitf></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><nitf>Farmer's family controls Cintas Corp., a $2.7 billion company that rents and launders uniforms and industrial shop towels. For years, Farmer's industry has been at odds with the Environmental Protection Agency over increased regulation of shop towels, particularly a Clinton administration proposal that, though not fatal, "would have cost us a lot of money," Farmer said.</nitf><nitf>In a recent interview at company headquarters here, Farmer said his campaign donations were made with no strings attached. He said he supports Republicans because they believe in "less government, more individual freedom, more individual responsibility."</nitf><nitf>"If you think I'm giving money to get access to [President Bush], you're crazy," Farmer said. "I'm just trying to get the right guy elected. That's all I care about."</nitf><nitf>The Clinton proposal would have required that woven shop towels contaminated with chemical solvents be wrung dry for them to be treated as laundry, not hazardous waste. Last November, the EPA changed its position, adopting a more lenient proposal for the woven towels. Farmer and his industry were overjoyed, because the change promised to save them millions and preserve their advantage over the competition -- paper towels. "It would have been a big problem," Farmer said.</nitf><nitf>After a series of telephone calls, e-mails, letters and meetings with representatives of the laundry industry, the EPA had provided industrial-laundry lobbyists with an advance copy of a portion of the proposed rule, which the lobbyists edited and the agency adopted.</nitf><nitf>That same opportunity was not given to the rule's opponents -- environmental groups, a labor union, hazardous-waste landfill operators and paper towel manufacturers who argue their product should be treated as environmentally equal to laundered towels. The opponents say industrial laundries send tens of thousands of tons of hazardous chemicals to municipal sewage treatment plants and landfills where toxics can get into groundwater, streams and rivers. Labor unions contend that the towels expose workers to cancer-causing fumes.</nitf><nitf>Cintas said in a statement that the rewritten rule will prevent pollution because "reusable shop towels are friendlier to the environment" than disposable paper towels.</nitf><nitf>The proposed shop towel rule is but one example of a policy change by the Bush administration that favors a company controlled by a Bush Pioneer or Ranger, who as a group have helped the president bank a record $200 million for the 2004 election campaign. The shop towel case reflects the subtle interactions between corporations and an administration determined to roll back what it considers to be regulatory overkill. For many big donors, getting "the right guy elected," as Farmer puts it, is an end in itself.</nitf><nitf>EPA Assistant Administrator Marianne Lamont Horinko said Farmer's campaign contributions had nothing to do with the agency's decision. Although Cintas was represented by the industrial-laundry lobbyists in discussions with the EPA, Farmer said he himself did not directly contact the administration about the proposed rule. He did say that, at the behest of the laundry industry, he called members of the Ohio congressional delegation, who wrote to then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.</nitf><nitf>In a summary of the rule, the EPA said it would improve "clarity and consistency" of regulation, "provide regulatory relief, and save affected facilities over $30 million." Whitman -- who resigned from the EPA last year and has since become a Bush Ranger -- declined to be interviewed. But she said through a spokesman that contacts such as those from the Ohio congressional delegation "are helpful because they highlight an interest and a constituent's interest" and "that just feeds into the deliberative process."</nitf><nitf>Fred Meyer, the former chairman of the Texas Republican Party who in 1998 helped set up the Pioneers for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, said there is a good reason money will always flow to political campaigns. "There are too many things that are important to too many people," Meyer said. "The existence of businesses and billions of dollars are affected."</nitf><nitf>Democrats have their own history of rewarding large donors. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed major contributor Joseph P. Kennedy to be ambassador to Britain. Lyndon B. Johnson funneled contracts to Texas firms.</nitf><nitf>Direct quid pro quos -- specific benefits in exchange for cash -- are illegal. There is nothing illegal, however, about the adoption of broad legislation or regulations benefiting sectors of the business community -- such as laundries disposing of wastewater containing toxic chemicals -- that happen be a source of major fundraisers and donors.</nitf><nitf>For example, securities and investment banking firms have benefited enormously from reduced capital gains and dividend taxes initiated by the Bush White House. Six produced 17 Pioneers and Rangers this year, and employees in those firms have raised $2.53 million. Altogether, finance industry employees have raised $19.68 million for the 2004 election campaign, according to an analysis produced for The Washington Post by Dwight L. Morris & Associates.</nitf><nitf>Twenty-four Rangers and Pioneers are either drug industry executives or lobbyists whose companies stand to get more business from the administration's Medicare drug benefit bill passed last year.</nitf><nitf>Twenty-five energy company executives, along with 15 energy industry lobbyists, are either Pioneers or Rangers. Many have been deeply involved in developing the administration's energy policy. Seven of those Pioneers served on the Bush energy transition team. The administration's energy bill, which remains stalled by a largely Democratic filibuster in the Senate, would provide billions of dollars in benefits to the energy industry.</nitf><nitf>Industry: $400 Million Cost 

The proposed shop towel rule shows how the process can play out to the advantage of a Pioneer.</nitf><nitf>For more than two decades, the EPA has grappled with how to regulate the cloth towels used to wipe up chemicals in printing plants, factories and industrial shops. Each year, 3 billion of them sop up more than 100,000 tons of hazardous solvents such as benzene, xylene, toluene and methyl ethyl ketone.</nitf><nitf>"Why should these materials be regulated as a hazardous waste?" the EPA said in a document given to the laundry industry in 2000. "Because they have the potential to cause fires, or to be the source of fugitive air emissions, and ground water contamination."</nitf><nitf>In 1997, the Clinton administration proposed a clean-water rule requiring industrial laundries to pretreat their wastewater to remove chemical solvents. The Uniform & Textile Service Association (UTSA) and Textile Rental Services Association of America (TRSA) mounted a $1.2 million lobbying campaign against the proposed rule, arguing that toxic pollutants are removed at the laundries or by municipal wastewater treatment plants. The trade groups said the proposal would have cost them more than $400 million.</nitf><nitf>In 1999, the Clinton EPA withdrew the rule. The next year, with Clinton still in the White House, the EPA floated a new draft rule that proposed to exempt shop towels from hazardous-waste requirements only if factories squeezed the towels "dry" -- defined as containing no more than five grams of solvents -- before placing them in sealed containers and sending them to laundries.</nitf><nitf>Calling this "an extremist view in the EPA," the laundry industry forcefully opposed the new proposal as overregulation.</nitf><nitf>But environmental activists, labor groups and paper towel makers said the laundries and local treatment plants frequently exceed their mandated pollution limits. Sixty-five Cintas laundries in 15 states and Canada have exceeded pollution limits on more than 1,100 occasions in the past several years, according to public records gathered by the Sierra Club and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE).</nitf><nitf>For the EPA and the laundry industry, things changed when Bush took office in 2001. The industry pushed hard to derail the Clinton proposed rule in favor of a more lenient one that gives shop towels a hazardous-waste exemption without the need to wring them dry or store them in special containers.</nitf><nitf>Laundry trade groups appealed directly to EPA Administrator Whitman in February 2001: "The draft regulation in its current form . . . increases the regulatory burden."</nitf><nitf>In May, Whitman sent a conciliatory response: "Partnerships with our stakeholders will be an important part of how we will do business at EPA."</nitf><nitf>To aid in the effort, the industry urged contributions to its Textile Rental Services Association's Political Action Committee. "Will PAC donations open doors, get appointments and allow your message to be delivered? Absolutely," Textile Rental magazine said in its March 2002 edition.</nitf><nitf>Exemption Sought at EPA 

In Richard Farmer, the industry had one of the biggest political givers in the country.</nitf><nitf style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">For President George H.W. Bush, Farmer, now 69 , was a member of "Team 100," donors who gave more than $100,000 to Republican Party-building committees. When George W. Bush ran for office in 2000, Farmer's "golfing buddy," Cincinnati financier Mercer Reynolds III, recruited Farmer to be a Pioneer, Farmer said. This year, he earned the more exalted Ranger status by raising a minimum of $200,000 in individual contributions.</nitf><nitf>Farmer said that his big gifts are not connected to political favors.</nitf><nitf>In the case of shop towel regulation, Farmer said Cintas itself was unconcerned. "We huddled up and [decided] no matter what happens here, it will have no impact on Cintas," he said.</nitf><nitf>Later in the interview, when specifically asked about the Clinton-era proposal, he said it would have hurt Cintas by making it difficult for the company to provide the full range of services its customers demand. Shop towels are now about 5 percent of Cintas's business, but they remain an important service to customers who also rent uniforms.</nitf><nitf>Farmer said he never contacted the administration about the new rule. He said he did complain about the rule to Ohio Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich and Rep. Rob Portman, a fellow Bush Pioneer and chairman of Bush's campaign in Ohio this year.</nitf><nitf>Farmer said he made the calls in 2002 on behalf of the two laundry trade groups. Cintas is the biggest company in the industry, but Farmer said that complaints from hundreds of small laundries probably had more impact than his calls. "It would have put small guys out of business," he said.</nitf><nitf>Portman said in a recent interview that he was first contacted by one of the trade groups, which he knew represented Cintas, "one of those big companies in our district." He said he considered it a constituent issue. "I do remember talking to Dick about it at least once," he said.</nitf><nitf>About the same time in 2002 that Farmer was making his calls and the trade groups were contacting members of Congress, he made a major contribution. On March 19, 2002, Farmer gave $250,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.</nitf><nitf>On March 25, Portman and Voinovich co-wrote a letter to Whitman asking her to support a more encompassing waste exemption for shop towels -- this one fromsolid waste regulation. Gaining a solid-waste exemption would remove a further layer of regulation because some states apply additional taxes, fees and special handling requirements to solid waste.</nitf><nitf>Whitman spokesman Joe Martyak said such a letter from lawmakers "helps to precipitate a meeting to find out what's the glitch. You help to unglitch it, to move it along."</nitf><nitf>At this point , EPA attorneys were balking at the solid-waste exemption, Portman and Voinovich said in their letter.</nitf><nitf>A month later , Whitman wrote Portman and Voinovich that the EPA was considering the solid-waste exemption and assured that it would "incorporate suggested changes where appropriate."</nitf><nitf>Three weeks later, EPA officials signed off on the exemption, according to the trade group's timeline.</nitf><nitf>Jim O'Leary, the EPA official who wrote the original language that was rewritten, said there was no political interference from Whitman's office. "That's nonsense," O'Leary said. "We called it the way we saw it. No one interfered."</nitf><nitf>A Rule That Isn't 'Onerous' 

On Aug. 2, EPA's Kathy Blanton, who replaced O'Leary, e-mailed to industry attorney William M. Guerry Jr. the "language we have put together to address the laundries' concerns," according to a copy of the e-mail obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.</nitf><nitf>Guerry wrote back on Aug. 15 with proposed changes, documents show. Among them was deletion of a phrase in the preamble stating that shop towels "remain regulated." Instead, the lobbyist wanted the words "regulatory status . . . remains unchanged."</nitf><nitf>Guerry, in an interview, said the change was important to make sure that states did not misread the rule as a significant change in policy. Otherwise there would have been "chaos" and a "train wreck," he said. EPA officials shared the language with him, he said, because "they recognized that we had the expertise they needed."</nitf><nitf>Blanton said she sent Guerry just part of the regulatory language. "I can see how, from the outside, that it would look like colluding or something. [But] these were the people who were going to be most affected by the rule and they were the ones with the expertise." She said at this point the EPA had already had sufficient input from the paper towel people and others affected by the rule.</nitf><nitf>Opponents, including the union, environmentalists and paper towel makers, say they were not given an advance look at the language. Ralph Solarski, a Kimberly-Clark Corp. executive who chairs a task force of paper towel makers, said his group would have been glad to have one.</nitf><nitf>"Kathy Blanton and Bob Dellinger at EPA were asked on multiple occasions for advance copies and we were consistently denied," Solarski wrote in an e-mail to The Post.</nitf><nitf>EPA officials attended two industry meetings to discuss the proposed rule, one in Baltimore on Aug. 20 and one in Old Town Alexandria on Sept. 12. On Aug. 30, Farmer donated $250,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.</nitf><nitf>EPA's Office of Solid Waste Director Dellinger spoke at the Alexandria meeting. His comments later appeared in the trade group's magazine: "EPA doesn't want to make this onerous."</nitf><nitf>Instead of screw-on, sealed containers for transporting contaminated woven towels from factories to laundries, which were proposed in 2000, Dellinger said, a piece of plywood over a barrel would meet the new EPA proposed standard.</nitf><nitf>Also, the EPA opted not to require the towels to be wrung out. "The point of that is not to make it harder to do than what you would do through your normal course of business," Dellinger said.</nitf><nitf>However, he told the group, the paper towel industry would have to wring out its towels to make sure they had no more than five grams of solvent on them before being dumped.</nitf><nitf>The new proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on Nov. 20, 2003.</nitf><nitf>Paper industry officials say that the EPA is ignoring its own studies showing that laundries create 30 percent more waste than paper towels in the form of sludge -- lint, debris, toxics and other substances extracted from laundry wastewater -- sent to municipal landfills.</nitf><nitf>"This is a case study," Solarski said, "for how an industry has used the regulatory process to gain a market advantage."</nitf><nitf>Post database editor Sarah Cohen and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.</nitf></div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div><h1 id="article-title-1" itemprop="headline" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-size: 1.8em; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(64, 56, 56); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Taking on Corporate Bullies”: Cintas, Laundry Workers, and Organizing in the 1930s and Twenty-First Century</h1><div class="contributors intlv" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 12.800000190734863px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(64, 56, 56); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ol class="contributor-list" id="contrib-group-1" style="margin: 15px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none;"><li class="last" id="contrib-1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: 1.7; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline; display: block;"><span class="name" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-align: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="name-search" href="http://lsj.sagepub.com/search?author1=Jenny+Carson&sortspec=date&submit=Submit" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-align: inherit; vertical-align: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); white-space: nowrap;">Jenny Carson</a><ol class="affiliation-list" style="margin: 1em 24.899999618530273px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-weight: normal; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-align: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none;"><li class="aff" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: 1.7; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline; display: block;"><a id="aff-1" name="aff-1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-align: inherit; vertical-align: 0px; color: rgb(126, 2, 3);" /><address style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-style: normal; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-align: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline;">Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, <span class="contrib-email" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-align: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="mailto:j2carson@ryerson.ca" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-style: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-align: inherit; vertical-align: 0px; color: rgb(48, 84, 132);">j2carson@ryerson.ca</a></address></li></ol></li></ol></div><div class="section abstract" id="abstract-1" itemprop="description" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline-style: none; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 12.800000190734863px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; clear: both; color: rgb(64, 56, 56); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); outline-style: none; font-style: inherit; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">Abstract</h2>Based on interviews with workers and organizers, union and company records, legal documents, and media sources, this article compares laundry unionism in the 1930s and early 2000s at Cintas, North America’s largest industrial launderer and uniform rental provider. Employing resource mobilization theory, social movement unionism, and collective identity theory, the article argues that laundry workers were able to organize in the 1930s because of the simultaneous presence of union resources and internal activist solidarities at the shop floor level. While UNITE HERE (now Workers United) has run an innovative comprehensive campaign to organize Cintas, the absence of solidarity on the shop floor has impeded organization.</div></div>