Okay maybe they’re not really the most insidious lobbying group in US politics… but hey, they’re still pretty bad.
Even the most starry-eyed of patriots knows that corporate lobbyists are the puppeteers behind the majority of US politicians, but sometimes the specificity of these groups boggles the mind. They’re like Catholic saints—there’s one for everything.
The National Frozen Pizza Institute is actually a subsidiary of the American Frozen Food Institute—which already seems ridiculous. But why does frozen pizza need its own lobbyists? Why, to protect their god-given rights to exploit labor, of course! From the “Labor and Immigration” section of their website:
NFPI opposes efforts by the National Labor Relations Board to impose new workplace rules, similar to provisions contained in card-check legislation rejected by Congress, which would severely limit the ability of employers to engage employees, while robbing many employees of a ballot, during labor organizing proceedings.
Experienced immigrant food workers employed on American farms and packaging plants are a critical part of America’s food supply. NFPI supports the adoption of comprehensive immigration reform policies that address the unique needs of American food makers by providing seasonal immigrant laborers with realistic avenues for temporary legal status while they work in the United States. NFPI opposes efforts to impose the mandatory use of the federal “E-Verify” system by employers that do not adequately address the workforce needs of food makers.
“Card-check legislation” refers to a system by which unions would be able to form with a majority sign-up—more easily than they do now. But how will Big Pizza exploit migrant labor if that happens?
If that’s not insidious enough, remember all the hullabaloo about Congress declaring pizza a vegetable? Yeah, that was the Pizza Lobby! And if you check the “Nutrition” section of their website, they can tell you how much they love providing healthy lunches for America’s school children!
A glance at their monthly newsletter Pizza Piece (come on, they couldn’t call it The Slice?) shows they’ve had their doughy little hands in everything from fighting dairy market controls to GMO labeling.
The capitalists… they stole my pizza.