The campaign season is heating up and the lies are starting to clog the television airwaves. The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, an out-of-state organization with a conservative agenda, has launched a massive ad campaign to ruin the reputations of Rep. Tom Allen and Maine’s organized labor population during a highly contested Senate race.

The advertisements claim the Employee Free Choice Act eliminates the private ballot method of forming unions, but that is a total lie, and it is shameful that this group would pretend to be fighting for the working class in Maine. The third party group is attempting to swindle workers out of their basic right to negotiate with employers for fair contracts by manipulating facts and airing false claims.

Secret ballot elections are not eliminated under the EFCA. Workers can still participate in the process with all the anonymity they had in the past. What the EFCA does is create another option for employees to express their desire to unionize so they are not dependent on government-run workplace elections, and subject to intimidation and manipulation from company management.

The ad campaign is doing an amazing job of harming Maine employees by attempting to turn the public against a progressive piece of legislation that is designed to benefit workers by giving them another voice in the process.

Hopefully, voters will see through the lies and realize the campaign is just a cheap political attack on one of Maine’s strongest advocates for employee rights.

Phil Nelsen, Lewiston