The “Occupy Wall Street” crowd may be dramatically out of step with the American electorate, but Big Labor likes what it sees. The AFL-CIO union has bought two prominently-placed Google ads for a pair of initiatives supporting the protests.
The search term “occupy wall street” turns up two sidebar ads that link to AFL-CIO websites, as seen in the screenshot below (click to enlarge). Google Adwords, the site’s advertising service, charges 10 cents per click for a prominently-placed ad on that search results page.
The first ad points to aflcio.org/iam99percent, where visitors are greeted with a contact form, an offer for a free bumper sticker, and the option of subscribing to “Occupy” news and event notifications.
The second ad points to a petition site run by Working America, which bills itself as a “Community Affiliate of the AFL-CIO.” The petition generally outlines the generic “Occupy” position on the evils of Wall Street. It even references Bank of America’s so-called “Durbin Fee” (though AFL-CIO declined to use that term), which compensated for price controls on debit cards’ merchant fees by imposing a $5 monthly fee for debit card users.
Numerous polls over the past couple days have shown that the “Occupy” protestors’ radical anti-capitalist views are far outside the mainstream of American public opinion. But then so is Big Labor’s political platform. The AFL-CIO apparently likes what it sees in these protests, and is willing to pay to support them.