INDIANAPOLIS – Rep. Braun’s latest ad once again makes patently false claims about his business, but the facts about his horrible treatment of workers and reliance on importing cheap auto parts from China aren’t changing.
Rep. Braun’s new ad includes the outlandish claim that “Mike’s company is America.” To Rep. Braun then, “America” means making a profit from foreign labor at the expense of American workers, as his ad doesn’t mention that he made $18 million last year alone in profit from selling auto parts made in China and other foreign countries. In fact, one of the Meyer employees prominently featured in the ad, Meyer VP Nick Gramelspacher, traveled to China to help develop Meyer Distributing’s business dealings according to the magazine of the Specialty Equipment Market Association.
The ad also boasts that Meyer “treats employees like family” but ignores its extensive and well documented history of poor worker treatment. That history includes lawsuits and hundreds of violations that allege he fails to pay employees what they’ve earned, denies them breaks, and forces them to work dangerously long hours, according to reports from the Associated Press and the Journal Gazette.
And while the ad also praises the Meyer health care plan, Rep. Braun’s employees have openly criticized the company’s health care benefits, including its high deductibles. The AP also exposed a blistering account of a Meyer employee who was fired and had his health insurance taken away while recovering from heart surgery because Meyer deemed him not healthy enough to work.
Finally, the ad repeats the false claim that Rep. Braun pays his employees “nearly double the minimum wage.” That claim is easily debunked by jobs listed on Meyer’s own website, which advertise wages between $11 or $12 an hour, well under the $14.50 he would be claiming he pays.
“Rep. Braun’s business isn’t America – instead, it’s lawsuits, violations, and foreign profits at the expense of American workers. He has lied to voters time after time about his business because he seems to believe that Hoosiers aren’t smart enough to see how he’s stretching the truth,” said Michael Feldman, spokesman for the Indiana Democratic Party. “From distorting his employees’ pay to covering up his reliance on Chinese auto parts, it’s clear that Rep. Braun would rather run away from the truth about his business record than address its serious flaws.”
To get the rest of the facts, click HERE.
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