Propaganda backfire

I got a flier in the mail today from Food City warning me not to listen to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union's criticisms of Food City. The first backfire is that I was not aware the UFCW was criticizing Food City.

The second backfire comes from the obvious hypocrisy of the few actual arguments in between the vacuous corporate "values" boilerplate. The flier says UFCW has two goals: to get more union dues, and to destroy Food City. It's not clear how a union would collect any dues from workers at a company that has been destroyed. And for a for-profit corporation to make dire warnings about how other organizations are motivated by the desire to make money was ridiculous enough -- then I noticed that the flier contains a $5 coupon!

Inside, the flier tells us that UFCW paid $200,000 to a consulting firm to help spread its message. So I can only presume that this glossy flier was hand-made by Food City executives, rather than farmed out to *gasp* a consulting company that does PR campaigns.

I have yet to investigate the particulars of this dispute, but I think I can say I'm much more sympathetic to UFCW than I was before I checked my mail.