Did you know that a high percentage of powerful business executives represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or its more local affiliates actually support an increased minimum wage, paid sick days for employees, extended maternity and paternity leave, and other progressive policies that benefit workers and families?
If you didn’t, there’s a reason for that.
Newly leaked materials—including results from internal polling of members and a webinar explaining how the results should be spun publicly—reveal just how far the business lobby group goes in order to hide that fact that many of the people and businesses it claims to represent don’t actually agree with the regressive policies the Chamber pushes on local, state, and national governments.
“It think it is outrageous how the public and the press have been misled that businesses oppose these policies, by chamber lobbyists trotting out some business leader aligned with their anti-worker agenda even though most people—including most of their business members—support these policies, like increasing the minimum wage and paid sick leave.” —Lisa Graves, Center for Media and Democracy
Obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and released publicly on Monday, the results of the poll—conducted by LuntzGlobal, the prominent firm run by Republican pollster Frank Luntz—were accompanied by a revealing online presentation which explained to state Chamber of Commerce lobbyists how to “manipulate the public debate over those policies rather than implement the views of the business executives who were polled.”