Crazy union making crazy charges again?
The New York Daily News received a letter from prominent Jewish figures in New York, concerned about the 10% of the UFC that is owned by Abu Dhabi.
The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 has for years failed in its attempts to unionize the Station group of hotel-casinos in Las Vegas. Station Casinos, frequently named to Fortune’s 100 best Companies to Work For, is owned by Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who are also majority owners of the UFC (40.5% each). The minority shareholders in the company are Dana White (9%) and Flash Entertainment, an entertainment company formed by the Abu Dhabi government’s Executive Affairs Authority.
Although the UFC has nothing to do with culinary workers, and indeed provides a vast amount of union work at arenas across the nation, it has become a target of the union. Unable to offer rational criticism of the sport in public, the union has created an increasingly bizarre series of front groups purportedly made of citizens concerned about MMA, that are in reality a union group concerned about a casino chain.
Anti-UFC steps the crazy union has taken include:
•Backed anti-MMA legislation in New York;
•Called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate UFC parent company Zuffa, which the union accused of using monopolistic tactics to thwart competition from other MMA promoters;
•Launched a website complaining that UFC President Dana White swears a lot;
•Launched an online petition calling on FOX to back away from a deal to broadcast UFC events;
•Demand Anheuser-Busch pull its Bud Light sponsorship of the UFC;
•Supported wacky MMA legislation in California;
•Demanded the Marine Corps cut ties with the UFC;
•Demanded that OTM cut ties with the UFC;
•Asked FOX to remove UFC lightweights Jeremy Stephens and Abel Trujillo from their UFC on FOX 5 fight for having a record;
•Petitioned Toys”R”Us CEO Gerald Storch to pull all UFC related toys from the company’s stores;
•Sought to bar minors from UFC Boston; and
•Complained that a local gay and lesbian community center is honoring the UFC.
In an act so goofy that it can only have been cooked up by the culinary union, the New York Daily News received a letter from prominent Jewish figures in New York, concerned about the 10% of the UFC that is owned by Abu Dhabi, an ally of the USA for 41 years. The purchase was directed Sheik Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the son of the former United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Sheik Tahnoon is a black belt under Renzo Gracie, and an unparalleled patron of combat sports.
The group has penned a letter to friends of the Jewish community that will go to state lawmakers and run in Jewish publications highlighting the fact that the Abu Dhabi government owns a 10% stake in the sport’s biggest league.
This is a country that refuses to recognize Israel as a nation, refuses to allow Israeli citizens to travel in their country, and has banned the teaching of the Holocaust in their schools, the letter says.
At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise, we cannot stand by while Albany cuts a deal with a company whose profits will go directly into the hands of an enemy of Israel. It is our hope that New York will continue its proud tradition as a staunch friend to the Jewish community by rejecting the legalization of mixed martial arts and saying no to a company and country that is clearly no friend of Israel.
A television ad with a similar theme will run in the near future.
Among the 17 leaders who signed the letter are Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis; Yoel Schonfeld, a rabbi for the Orthodox Union and Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills synagogue in Queens; Rabbi David Keehn of the Queens Jewish Community Council, and Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a principal with Bernstein Global Wealth Management and the son of two Holocaust survivors.
Ultimate Fighting Championship officials fought back Sunday by saying that Abu Dhabi is not only considered an ally of the United States, but also has dealings with major New York City developers like Sam Zell and Stephen Ross and ownership stakes in iconic New York City real estate like the Chrysler Building and the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle.
This desperate, misinformed, last-minute attack borders on racial and ethnic stereotypes that have no place in public discourse, said Ultimate Fighting Championship spokesman Steven Greenberg.
Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (D-Queens), an Orthodox Jew who is a co-sponsor of the mixed martial arts legalization bill, said, It offends me that there are those who will use any excuse to play politics with our economy. This is just another tactic by the opposition to cloud the real issue.
Where organized labor once lifted millions of exploited workers into the middle class, the Culinary Union has stooped to the level of a UG troll in his mom’s basement. The union is spending member dues to accuse Dana White of swearing, and is trying to keep MMA unregulated and dangerous in New York because 10% of it is owned by Abu Dhabi. And the union has no issue what so ever with the UFC.
Curent Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie used to be a co-sponsor on the legalization bill, and hopes it will pass before the end of the legislative session in June.