by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Restaurant-industry lobbyist Rick Berman says there are two things that set his firm, Berman & Co., apart from others in the trade. The first is that "we always have a knife in our teeth." The other is that "we don't chase the smaller issues. . . . Our work is restricted to and focused on issues that affect shareholder value. These big issues include labor costs as they relate to health insurance and the minimum wage, achieving operator sales increases, and tax rates as they are affected in particular by payroll and excise taxes."

Based in Washington, DC, Berman speaks for hotels, beer distributors, taverns, and restaurant chains such as Cracker Barrel, Hooters, International House of Pancakes, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, Red Lobster, Steak & Ale, TGI Friday's, Uno Restaurants, and Wendy's. His strategy for helping these chains maximize "shareholder value" is aimed at two goals: minimizing wages for restaurant employees, while driving up sales of his client's high-markup products--in particular, booze, soda pop, fatty foods, and cigarettes.

"Other groups drive consumer behavior on meat, alcohol, fat, sugar, tobacco and caffeine with outrageous quotes, exaggeration, junk science and even violent acts," Berman said in a 1999 interview with the Chain Leader, a trade publication for restaurant chains. "Our offensive strategy is to shoot the messenger," Berman went on. "Given the activists' plans to alarm beyond all reason, we've got to attack their credibility as spokepersons."

By way of disclaimer, we should note that our attention was first drawn to Berman & Co. when our 1997 book, Mad Cow USA, was attacked recently by one of Berman's front groups--the "Guest Choice Network," whose stated mission is to expose what it calls "the Nanny Culture -- the growing fraternity of food cops, health care enforcers, anti-meat activists, and meddling bureaucrats who 'know what's best for you.'"

According to the Guest Choice Network, Mad Cow USA "set new standards for food scare tactics." Guest Choice has even produced a report, titled "Mad Cow: A New American Scare Campaign," which insinuates that we are the masterminds behind recent headline stories about mad cow disease that have appeared in places as far apart as Agence Press France, ABC World News Tonight, and the Wall Street Journal. The report includes sinister-looking charts and arrows alleging hidden conspiratorial ties between us and groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Center for Food Safety, Consumers Union, Fenton Communications, the Organic Consumers Association, Dr. Tom Pringle (who until recently managed a website about mad cow disease, at www.mad-cow.org), and CJD Voice (an internet-based discussion and support group for people who have lost family members to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a mad cow-like disease in humans).

Guest Choice claims that all of these groups and individuals are part of a massive "junk-science smear campaign" to "ignite a U.S. panic" so that anti-meat "food police" can "frighten us all into eating only what bears their imprimatur."

It is a curious honor, of course, to be accused of "junk science" by a flack for junk food. Given some of the garbage that Berman's clients feed to an unsuspecting public, it's hardly surprising that he would see a need to "attack our credibility as spokespersons."

But what about Berman & Co. itself? How much credibility should anyone give a restaurant industry spokesperson who brags of having "a knife in his teeth"? The sad fact is that the news media has given him plenty.

Minimizing the Minimum Wage

The Guest Choice Network is only one of several organizations through which Berman & Co. seeks to advance the interests of the restaurant industry. It also sponsors the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), which calls itself a "non-profit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding employment growth." In reality, EPI's mission is to oppose any increases in the minimum wage so that restaurants can continue to pay their employees as little as possible.

The Employment Policies Institute was launched in 1991, around the time of the economic recession that led to the electoral defeat of then-president George Bush, "Even the name of this new institute is misleading," noted Los Angeles Times business columnist Harry Bernstein at the time. "It calls itself EPI, the same name used for years by the older and much more progressive Economic Policy Institute," Bernstein wrote.

In addition to imitating the name and acronym of the Economic Policy Institute, Berman's outfit even used the same typeface for its logo. "Your choice of name for your organization is causing serious and unfortunate public confusion," stated Economic Policy Institute communications director Roger Hickey in a letter to Berman. Hickey added, "Reporters, leaders of public interest groups, Congressional staffers and members of the public have all expressed to us surprise and puzzlement as a result of mistakenly thinking our organization to be responsible for the public activities and publishing of your organization." Berman eventually agreed to change the logo, but news stories still occasionally appear in which studies written by Berman's organization are mistakenly attributed to the Economic Policy Institute.

In reality, the two groups have dramatically different public policy agendas. The Economic Policy Institute, which has ties to organized labor, supports a living wage and mandated health benefits for workers. Berman's organization opposes both and in fact opposes any minimum wage whatsoever.

"Even the name of this new institute is misleading. It calls itself EPI, the same name used for years by the older and much more progressive Economic Policy Institute."
--Harry Bernstein, Los Angeles Times

In 1992, Bernstein at the LA Times noted that Berman's organization was using "misleading studies" to help put a positive spin on rising unemployment. "The conservative EPI, financed mostly by low-wage companies such as hotels and restaurants, is issuing reports the titles of which alone could help put a bright face on the miserable job scene," Bernstein wrote. "The latest one is 'The Value of Part-Time Workers to the American Economy.' It hails as a great thing the distressing growth of part-time jobs because they offer 'flexibility' in economic planning for both workers and companies, and say that flexibility is vital 'in the growing and increasingly competitive global economy.' Tell that nonsense to the more than 6.5 million workers forced to take part-time jobs because nothing else is available. That is an increase of more than 1.5 million involuntary part-timers since 1990, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says."

Then, as now, fast-food employees were the largest group of low-paid workers in the United States. One-quarter of the workers in the restaurant industry are estimated to earn the minimum wage--a higher proportion than in any other U.S. industry. This is the real reason why EPI appears on the scene whenever federal or local governments consider a proposal to increase the minimum wage. Its standard tactic is to trot out a study using contrived statistics designed to show that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost if the wage is raised. (In reality, studies by labor economists show that the job-loss effect of increasing the minimum wage is either small or nonexistent and that its benefits to low-wage workers and their families far outweigh the costs. Even the Food Institute Report, an industry trade publication, admitted in 1995 that "the weight of the empirical evidence suggests that the effects [on the number of available jobs] of a moderate raise from its current level are likely to be negligible.")

EPI has has been widely quoted in news stories regarding minimum wage issues, and although a few of those news stories have correctly described it as a "think tank financed by business," most stories fail to provide any identification that would enable readers to identify the vested interest behind its pronouncements. Instead, it is usually described exactly the way it describes itself, as a "nonprofit organization" that studies "issues affecting entry-level employment," with Berman as its "executive director."

In 1995, EPI lashed out at Princeton University professors David Card and Alan Krueger, after they published a survey of fast-food restaurants which found no loss in the number of jobs in New Jersey after implementing an increase in the state's minimum wage. Berman accused Card and Krueger of using bad data, citing contrary figures which his own institute had collected from some of the same restaurants. But whereas Card and Krueger had surveyed 410 restaurants, Berman's outfit only collected data from 71 restaurants and has refused to make its data publicly available so that other researchers can assess whether it "cherry-picked" restaurants to create a sample that would support its predetermined conclusions.

In 1996, the federal government passed a long-overdue hike of the minimum wage from $4.25 to $4.75 an hour. Berman argued at the time that the pay raise would hurt people on welfare by making it harder for them to find jobs "because employers will be looking for people with higher skills to justify the minimum wage increase."

Workers on Welfare

In 1998, the Employment Policies Institute Foundation blasted a proposal by Senator Ted Kennedy to raise the federal minimum wage by $1 an hour. "In Senator Kennedy's own state of Massachusetts, single mothers would take home only 19.1 cents for every extra dollar they earn," Berman & Co.'s John Doyle claimed in a news release. "Why so little? The higher minimum wage will actually reduce their eligibility for vital programs designed to help those in need, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Food Stamp program and the Earned Income Tax Credit."

Even assuming that Doyle's estimate is correct, the implication of his argument is that taxpayers should have to foot the bill for welfare programs to make up for the fact that his clients refuse to pay their employees a wage that would bring them above the federal poverty level.

Elsewhere, however, the EPI has opposed the very idea of government welfare programs, while simultaneously rejecting the the idea that employers should have to pay enough money even to enable full-time employees to afford food, clothing and rent. In October 2000, Berman complained that the idea of paying a "living wage" amounts to "paying people based on their need" and not on their "skills" or "contributions." Requiring employers to pay a "living wage," he said, represents "a welfare mentality."

EPI even has a strident "living wage" website (www.livingwage.org) which portrays efforts to establish a living wage as a conspiracy driven by "labor unions, the New Party (an affiliation of labor union organizers, academics and community activists), and ACORN (The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). How far will they go? The most ardent living wage activists have made it clear that they want nothing less than a national living wage."

When it comes to corporate welfare, on the other hand, EPI's attitude suddenly changes. For example, it has supported government payments directly to his clients in the form of the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC), which gives businesses a tax credit of up to $2,400 for hiring "hard-to-employ individuals" such as welfare recipients.

Berman & Co. also participated actively in the campaign to kill President Clinton's health reform plan in the early days of the Clinton administration, claiming once again that the plan would destroy jobs. To publicize this claim, he created yet another front group called the "Partnership on Health Care & Employment," representing mostly large companies known for paying low wages and high worker turnover, such as Marriott, Burger King, Kmart, Walgreen's, and Holiday Inn. It released a study claiming that compulsory insurance for business would wipe out nine million jobs.

During the health reform debate, EPI's study was cited in TV commercials sponsored by the Republican National Committee, claiming that the Clinton health plan would cost millions of Americans their jobs. The ads continued to run even after Berman admitted that his study had actually been written before the Clinton administration even formulated the details of its health plan.

The Wheel Behind Drunk Drivers

Some of Berman & Co.'s most visible lobbying has been waged against efforts to lower the legal blood-alcohol limit for drivers. It runs the American Beverage Institute, which was organized in 1991 with the stated mission of promoting "responsible alcohol consumption," but actually represents restaurants and retailers that sell alcohol.

In 1998, Berman used his close ties with Republican politicians Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott to help kill federal legislation supported by advocacy groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) that would have lowered legal blood-alcohol levels for drivers from .10% to .08%. In addition to MADD, supporters of the legislation included a who's who of highway safety experts, law enforcement and medical professionals including the American Medical Association, the American College of Emergency Room Physicians, the National Safety Council, the National Transportation Safety Board, the National District Attorneys Association and the Alliance of American Insurers.

Berman says that lowering the legal blood-alcohol concentration for drivers would target social drinkers, people who are "doing something that isn't particularly dangerous behavior." He claims that a person can reach a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent simply by drinking two glasses of wine in two hours.

This claim is contradicted, however, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which cites scientific evidence showing that a 170-pound man would actually have to consume five drinks in two hours to reach the .08 level. According to the NHTSA, virtually all drivers are substantially impaired at .08 with regard to critical driving tasks such as braking, steering, changing lanes and general judgment.

"The facts show you are very impaired" at .08, says NHTSA Administrator Ricardo Martinez, "and if that's the fact, the question is, should those people be behind the wheel of a car and put on a road where coming in the other direction may be my family? That's why we think .08 should be the law of the land."

Berman's claims are also rejected by experts on drunk driving such as Rhode Island police officer Richard Lombardi. Lombardi replied to Berman's claims by saying, "I don't deal with statistics. I deal with reality." He added that he doesn't want to wake families up at four in the morning any more to tell them a loved one is dead.

Some of the harshest words for Berman came from Millie Webb, a member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving who suffered serious burns and lost her four-year-old daughter in an automobile accident caused by a driver whose blood-alcohol level was .08.

"As a victim of an .08 crash," Webb said, "I greatly resent the campaign being conducted by the alcohol industry against this life-saving amendment. Shame is in short supply in our nation's capital. Today, we have a Mr. Richard Berman of the American Beverage Institute, peddling a phony poll, fire-bombing the most credible research and researchers in the field, and using scare tactics in an attempt to kill life-saving .08 laws. . . . In the case of Mr. Berman, decency and the truth are also in short supply."

In fact, the defeated .08 rule is actually more lenient than drunken driving levels in most European countries. Even France and Germany, countries known for their love of alcoholic beverages, both have a legal limit of .05.

Berman's success in killing the measure prompted MADD national president Karolyn V. Nunnallee to complain, "Our nation's drunk driving laws have been written by the alcohol and hospitality industry--a tragic irony that will likely result in many needless deaths and injuries at the hands of impaired drivers."

Calling Mommies Nannies

Berman launched the Guest Choice Network in 1996, proclaiming that its "mission is to expose the anti-choice antics of the 'nannies.' " The website is organized into sections, exposing the "nanny war on fatty foods," the "nanny war on tobacco," "nanny war on genetically engineered foods," "nanny war on coffee, soda," "nanny war on alcohol," and "nanny war on meat, dairy." It attacks a broad range of targets and has even devoted an entire separate website (www.cspinot.org) to attacking the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which it accuses of anti-alcohol zealotry that "combines scare tactics and junk science to scold adult college students about alcohol consumption."

Regarding alcohol consumption alone, the Guest Choice list of "nannies" includes:

• Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which Guest Choice describes as a group of "professional fund-raisers" who try to "scare us away from even responsible drinking."

• The Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems, which it accuses of "strident opposition to any consumption of adult beverages."

• New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for his proposal to confiscate the vehicles of people convicted for drunk driving. Guest Choice characterizes Guiliani's plan as a "car-theft ring."

• The U.S. Department of Transportation, for publishing a study which concludes that "a majority of the driving population is impaired in some important measure" at blood-alcohol levels "as low as .02%."

• The Office of Highway Safety in Georgia, for an effort to tighten enforcement of existing drunk-driving laws.

Guest Choice has also attacked various city and state officials throughout the United States for their efforts to establish smoking bans in restaurants. Other targets include:

• The Washington Post, for running a health story which stated, "Research suggests kids who drink a lot of soft drinks risk becoming fat, weak-boned, cavity-prone and caffeine-addicted."

• The Arthritis Foundation, the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and the National Association of High School Principals for attempting (in collaboration with the dairy industry) to encourage kids to drink milk instead of soda pop.

• Journalist Eric Schlosser, described as "the nanny culture's current man of the hour" for his book, Fast Food Nation, which documents the nutritional deficiencies of the American burger-fries-and-soda lifestyle.

• Ralph Nader's group, Public Citizen.

• The Consumer Federation of America.

• The Harvard School of Public Health.

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Its warnings about salmonella-related food poisoning prompted Berman to complain, "For nearly three decades, [CDC] has been whipping up fear over food while remaining virtually unchallenged by the press or the scientific community. By generating more heat than light, [CDC] helps create fear . . . over . . . food products."