Every four years, pundits look forward to Labor Day as the
launch of the “real” election season. This year, it’s especially
appropriate, since organized labor is going all-out to influence
not only the November outcome, but policy into the next president’s
term. With the Democrats’ control of Congress likely to continue,
and possibly expand, and the presidential contest a toss-up at this
writing, it is worth asking: What does Big Labor want?
At the top of the unions’ policy agenda is the misleadingly
named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would mandate an
organizing method known as “card check” whenever a union requests
it.
Facing a decades-old private-sector membership decline, unions
have sought other organizing strategies, and card check has been
among the most effective. Card check circumvents secret ballot
elections by requiring only that a majority of employees sign union
cards for a workplace to become unionized. Employees are often
urged to sign cards publicly and in the presence of union
organizers, which exposes them to high-pressure tactics which the
secret ballot is designed to avoid.
Were federal law to establish card check as union’s chief
organizing tactic, Big Labor would find it easier to corral new
members who might be reluctant or unwilling, but would no longer
enjoy the privacy of the voting booth.
So what would their dues money gain these thousands of new union
members? An unfolding corruption scandal and a look at the state of
union pension funds don’t paint a promising picture.
THIS MONTH, Tyrone Freeman, the head of California’s largest union
local, was forced to resign amid mounting allegations of misuse of
members’ union dues — including, reports the Los Angeles Times, “nearly
$300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a
Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse
and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the
Hollywood talent shop, records show.”
The local union, based in Los Angeles, is affiliated with the 2
million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of
the most powerful unions in the United States and one of the most
aggressive in organizing private sector workers.
The Times’ investigation relied in part on “the union’s
U.S. Labor Department filings,” which, as a result of improved
reporting requirements, are available online at UnionReports.gov. This site allows individual
union members to see how union officials are spending their dues
money — without having to ask the union officials themselves.
The AFL-CIO loudly opposed the Labor Department’s new reporting
requirements, which in reality were a long-overdue overhaul to a
dysfunctional system. Under the old reporting requirements (filed
in form LM-2), unions could report literally millions of dollars in
expenses under such meaningless descriptions as “sundry
expenses.”
Expect a union-friendly Congress to help labor bosses return to
the financial opacity they so fiercely defended — and which could
allow the likes of Tyrone Freeman carry on their spendthrift
ways.
Finally, new union members should consider their retirement
security. In recent years, many labor unions have sought to
leverage their pension funds to push for policy goals at public
companies’ shareholder meetings, which may have nothing to do with
union members’ interests.
For example, the SEIU and UNITE-HERE, the textile and
hospitality union, have joined with environmental activist groups
to pressure corporate America to adopt policies to reduce their
“carbon footprint” — their amount of emissions of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases.
JOINING WITH environmentalists is now an established union tactic.
Labor unions increasingly rely on their allies to attack a targeted
company’s record on “sweatshop” labor, environmental pollution, and
other issues, thus obscuring the union’s self-interested motive in
gaining economic concessions from the company.
Now, it appears that unions are leveraging their pension funds
to push companies to adopt policies favored by green activists —
even when they don’t benefit the unions’ own members, who
bear the cost of such activism.
Today, most union pension plans are funded at levels much below
those of pension plans provided by private employers, according to
a recent Hudson Institute study.
“Union-negotiated pension schemes consistently maintain
dangerously low ratios of assets to liabilities,” notes Diana
Furchtgott-Roth, the study’s author and former chief economist at
the U.S. Department of Labor. “Although nearly 90 percent of
non-union funds had at least 80 percent of the funds they need,
only 60 percent of union plans were at or above that mark.”
Compared to pension plans for rank-and-file employees, the
pensions funds for union officers and staff were in much better
shape — which undermines the argument that lower pension fund
values could be explained by weaknesses in the economy or the stock
market. “The success of the officers’ funds shows the heads of the
national organization know how to properly fund a pension plan if
they choose to,” explains Furchtgott-Roth.
But apparently many union officials choose to pursue activism in
causes that don’t directly benefit their members, instead.
Corralling in new members would allow this Ponzi scheme-like
arrangement to continue, feeding money into underperforming pension
funds.
So, to answer our original question, Big Labor wants more
members and more dues money to spend on politics — and it wants
Uncle Sam’s help in getting them.
Happy Labor Day!
