The Target retail chain has, for years, encouraged its workers in its 1,750 stores to refuse to join a union by using a 13-minute in-house video that, ironically, features actors who are union members.

 

Starring Ric Reitz and Nicky Buggs, members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), the 2003 film warns Target employees that unions are really “businesses” that are old-fashioned, greedy and can’t be trusted. In the video, employees are referred to as “team members” and customers as “guests.” It concludes with the message, “Refuse to sign...and keep Target union-free.”

 

Reitz, whose career has moved up since making the video (he plays the president of the United States in the new movie, The Green Lantern), admitted it was awkward working on an anti-union project. “If someone hires me to play a rapist, does it make me a rapist? You take the job, and you’re an actor,” Reitz told Salon. “Am I pro-union? Absolutely.”

 

His co-star in the Target video was Nicky Buggs, another union actor who has appeared in movies, television shows and commercials.

 

On Friday, Target faced its first union vote in two decades, but the employees of the Target store in Valley Stream, New York, voted against unionization 137-85.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Union Actor from Anti-Union Video Speaks Out (by Justin Elliott, Salon)

Target vs. Unions: An Inside Look (by Hamilton Nolan, Gawker)