Workers Call Bain Capital Film Inaccurate

(The Wall Street Journal) - Three former factory workers featured in a film about layoffs at companies bought by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital say they weren't laid off by Bain, as the film implied, but got promotions and raises after Bain bought the plant they worked in.

The workers' charges of inaccuracy involve "When Mitt Romney Came to Town," a 28-minute film also known as "King of Bain." The film has become a focal point of the Republican presidential race in the past week. It was cited by rival Newt Gingrich at a televised debate last weekend and has been posted online by Winning Our Future, a group supporting Gingrich's candidacy. The group is also airing ads in South Carolina cut from the film.

Some Republicans are worried that Gingrich and other GOP candidates questioning Bain's work are adding credibility to similar attacks leveled by Democrats seeking to undermine Romney. On Friday, Gingrich called for Winning Our Future to address concerns about the movie.

"I am calling for the Winning Our Future Super PAC supporting me to either edit its 'King of Bain' advertisement and movie to remove its inaccuracies or to pull it off the air and off the Internet entirely," Gingrich said in a written statement.

Winning Our Future senior adviser Rick Tyler said that after reviewing a partial transcript of the taped interviews, the organization stands by the account presented in the film, but that it is reviewing the full interviews from which the movie was made to be sure the context is correct.

The film profiles four companies acquired by Bain and portrays the corporate restructurings that followed as a "cash rampage" that "would ultimately slash jobs in nearly every state in the country."

Mike Baxley and Tracy and Tommy Jones worked at UniMac, a washing machine plant in Marianna, Fla., that Bain purchased in 1998. They are three of the seven workers named in the film and the only ones mentioned in the Marianna segment.

The film presents the workers as saying that after Bain bought the plant, the company cut costs at the expense of product quality and worker welfare, and that they lost their jobs.

In fact, the company was sold by Bain to Teachers' Private Capital, the private equity arm of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, in 2005. It was the Canadian purchaser that oversaw the Florida plant's closure and the shift of its operations to Ripon, Wis., in 2006.

During Bain's ownership, the three employees each received multiple promotions, they said. After the plant closed, Jones said, he landed a consulting contract with UniMac's parent company, helping to coordinate the move of that plant and another in Florida. He, his wife, Tracy, and Baxley parlayed that work into Washers-R-Us, a commercial washing machine sales-and-service business in Marianna.

"I guess I have to apologize to Mitt by voting for him. I certainly won't vote for Gingrich," said Baxley. He said he had received two promotions and a 30 percent pay increase while Bain owned the UniMac plant, a unit of Alliance Laundry Systems LLC.

Baxley and the Joneses said they were approached in September by John Burke, who said he was a private producer from Baton Rouge, La., making a documentary about factory closings throughout the US, Baxley said.

Calls to Burke on a cell phone number Baxley provided weren't returned. Tyler of Winning Our Future said he didn't know who John Burke was and that the group had purchased the movie from an independent filmmaker named Jason Meath. Meath couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Baxley and the Joneses had lunch with Burke, who initially seemed uninterested "in our success story," Baxley recalled.

A week later, Baxley said, Burke returned to Marianna, interviewed the three former workers on camera and paid them with Visa gift cards.

When he saw the film this week, "I was shocked," Baxley said.

The three former workers still do business with the Wisconsin factory, and "this could affect us negatively there," Baxley said.

Read more: The Wall Street Journal