Published: December 2, 2009

Cassandra at Delaware Liberal gives some ink to this interesting question today ~ Why Did The News Journal Turn Down This Ad?

    The SEIU has been working at organizing the janitors at Wilmington Trust HQ. The janitors are hired and managed by Optima Cleaning Systems — but the SEIU filed unfair labor relations charges against this Optima this past spring with the NLRB. The NLRB and Optima settled at least part of the charges made, which resulted in some monetary restitution by Optima to 7 individuals and required Optima to post where employees could see it a formal notice listing the ways that Optima was not to interfere with organizing activities.(Write up on one of the settlement events from the Philly Inquirer here.)

    The SEIU (even with this settlement) isn’t stopping keeping up the pressure on Optima, and that seems to be the purpose of the ad. Advocacy ads certainly aren’t unusual, so I’m scratching my head over why this one is somehow out of line. So here is the ad that the revenue-squeezed News Journal declined to run — what could possibly be the problem with running this ad?

Because the ad embarrasses the Wilmington Trust Company, Cass, and we can't have that now can we? SHEESH.