Fact Check: NC GOP makes claims about union backing for 'Moral Monday'
North Carolina Republican Party leaders used a news conference outside a voting rights trial in Winston-Salem Monday morning to point to documents they say show national union groups are bankrolling the "Moral Monday" groups.
Posted — Updated"Out-of-state unions are really behind Moral Mondays," Republican Party Chairman Hasan Harnett told reporters.
"They want to make it easier to cheat in our elections," he said. "They are being paid by unions to fight voter ID in North Carolina."
It's worth noting that the provision of the 2103 law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls is no longer at issue in the federal case after changes this summer to the voting law. Instead, the court is hearing challenges to items such as changes in the way early voting is conducted and the elimination of pre-registration by 16- and 17-year-olds who will soon be eligible to vote.
Asked how the federal trial that started Monday connected to potential voter fraud, Republican Party spokesman Ricky Diaz said, "The answer is it's the unions funding Moral Mondays." He added, "It doesn't take a professor to read between the lines there."
As with any set of political claims, there is a certain amount of hyperbole involved in the GOP's claims. For example, it was clear that Harnett was using the word "union" as a pejorative adjective, while there are a good number of people who are proud of their connections to organized labor and would not find a connection between candidates they support and union groups at all problematic.
- Barber himself benefited from his union connections due to his Moral Monday activity and that of Moral Monday organizers.
- Protesters and others affiliated with the movement were bankrolled by the Service Employees International Union and other union groups.
Barber gives speeches
"In 2014, William Barber pocketed over $20,000 from the national labor union bosses to give paid speeches," Harnett said. "That means, while he was organizing protests to advocate for things like teachers' pay at the General Assembly, he was pocketing cash from the teacher's union at the same time." That assertion echoes an email sent by the North Carolina Republican Party two weeks ago that said, "In 2014, records show that William Barber directly pocketed at least $20,000 in payments from labor unions while he was organizing Moral Monday protests of GOP-led policies in North Carolina."
That's was about a month after Barber gave a speech to the union's national convention in Chicago. Video of that speech shows Barber expounding on voting rights, the treatment of the poor and other themes common to his speeches on behalf of Moral Mondays in North Carolina.
"If a Republican was paid $20,000 by the Koch brothers to give paid speeches, the Democrats, Moral Monday crowd and media would be up in arms about it," Diaz wrote in response for clarification. "Let's be generous and say his speeches are an hour long each. That's ($5,000 per) hour! Yet, he's protesting for a $10 minimum wage at the General Assembly ... That's complete hypocrisy."
Barber was in court testifying with regard to the voting rights lawsuit Monday, and a request for comment was not immediately returned.
Money for organizing?
Harnett also claimed that unions have spent more than $1 million to pay people associated with the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina.
"But even more important and even more troubling, one of the groups backing Moral Mondays, a group you probably have never heard of, Action NC, received at least $1.2 million from the Service Employees International Union, otherwise known as SEIU, to organize Moral Mondays in 2014 alone."
He also remarked, "We're also release the most concrete evidence to date that unions are paying people to protest on Moral Mondays."
In turn, CWOC paid $1.2 million to Action NC, a liberal nonprofit based in North Carolina for "payroll services." Similar transactions were reflected in 2013.
"Had anyone from the NC GOP bothered to ask, we could have very easily explained the nature of the contractual relationship between us and SEIU," said Kevin Rogers, policy and public affairs director for the group. "Instead, the NC GOP took publicly available records without any context, concocted their own off-the-wall explanation and attempted to pass-off those lies as fact."
With regards to the payments from CWOC, Rogers said, the money listed as for "payroll services" was for payroll services.
"Action NC had, and continues to have, a contract with SEIU to provide back-end payroll and HR services to the staff of the Carolina Workers Organizing Committee. We do not mange, direct, or in any way supervise those employees. Any questions pertaining to the duties of these individual employees should be directed to CWOC," he said.
The money paid covered both administration fees as well as money paid to CWOC's employees, he said.
As for Action NC itself, Rogers said, "We are in the business of building stronger communities, but this does not include paying anyone to attend Moral Monday events or any other events, for that matter. Our members are volunteers and receive no financial compensation for their participation."
Diaz described Rogers' response as "spin" from Action NC.
Diaz later sent along a picture of men holding SEIU-branded signs at the Moral Monday protest in Winston-Salem on Monday. The signs read "Respect Human Rights."
The calls
Harnett and Diaz made a number of claims in their news conference and website. WRAL News did not try to fact check all of them or rule on clearly hyperbolic statements that attributed motives to others, such as union organizers wishing to undermine voting laws so their workers could somehow cheat in North Carolina elections.
As well, without input from CWOC or further documentation, there's nothing to show what the money from SEIU was used for or whether any of it was used in relation to Moral Mondays.
However, that doubt cuts both ways, and Harnett and Diaz both made statements that aren't fully backed by the evidence at hand. They say, among other things, that they have provided "concrete evidence to date that unions are paying people to protest on Moral Mondays." That's not the case. They can show a paper trail that tracks money from national union groups to a North Carolina nonprofit. The GOP can show that nonprofit is a backer of the Moral Monday movement. Whether union involvement in a particular effort is a good thing or a bad is a matter of political interpretation.
But the documents do not show that the money in question was used to pay Moral Monday protestors or organizers. At best, the GOP can argue that some $30,000 might have been used for T-shirts, signs and video services and the like, but that's a far cry from proving that the Moral Monday groups are "paid by unions to fight voter ID in North Carolina" or hire "paid actors to pretend to protest and to get arrested at the legislature." We give this GOP claim a red light for overstating their case.
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