Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind

by Mallory Factor

  The New York Times recently noted that labor unions realize that “their ground troops, not money, is labor’s signal contribution.”18 What the Times means is that the unions spend far more on soft money political organizing activities that favor their candidates and the Democrat Party than on hard money campaign contributions through their political action committees (PACs). But who needs campaign contributions if the union will provide all the support—people, phone banks, mailings, and advertising—that campaign contributions would buy in the first place?

  Unions also provide huge numbers of political “volunteers” for rallies, turn-out-the-vote efforts, and phone banks. But “volunteering” has a different meaning for unions than it does for most people. Republicans have a lot of independent grassroots volunteers—real people who give their time freely because of their love of country and of party. Democrats have some grassroots volunteers, too—but their real grassroots organizing work is performed by union members who can be paid to volunteer.

  The Federal Election Commission (FEC) does not allow volunteers for federal candidates, including Presidential candidates, to be paid by third parties for volunteering, and state laws vary on the point. But the unions get around these rules by compensating volunteers to do general political organizing work and get-out-the-vote efforts for the benefit of specific candidates. Although unions try to keep the fact that they pay their political volunteers a secret, unions offer expense reimbursement and stipends to members who act as political volunteers. The going rate seems to be $25 for two hours on phone banks for get-out-the-vote messaging, and $50 for a three-hour solidarity walk, plus meals and T-shirts are also provided.19 Tea Party volunteers certainly don’t get those benefits—but then again, they don’t have a union representing them. Yet!

  Another form of union political spending is “independent expenditures” or “outside spending,” which can be made by unions directly or through political organizations known as super PACs. Unions make independent expenditures directly, or through a super PAC, on advertising, mailings, or other media in favor (or against) specific candidates, but which are not coordinated with any candidate’s political campaign. After the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which allowed unions and corporations to make unlimited expenditures on political advertising and other political activities, unions ratcheted up their game. The decision allows unions to send their political troops out to canvass all households, union and nonunion, to increase support for their candidates and get their supporters to the polls. The New York Times notes that this change is “expected to increase labor’s political clout significantly in this year’s elections.”20

  Labor unions can spend union dues on political advertising and other political activity directly or contribute to super PACs to do the spending for them. Most unions do both. Labor union super PACs accounted for 25 percent of all super PAC spending in the 2010 election cycle.21 Many unions have their own super PACs and also contribute to other liberal super PACs like those funded by George Soros, the Hungarian-born magnate and huge donor to leftist causes.22 Andy Stern’s super PAC, founded in 2007 to help out President Obama and his buddies, was appropriately called Working for Us—the idea seems to be that the super PAC will elect politicians who will work for the unions and their agenda.23

  But wait, there’s more in the political bucket! Dig deeper and you’ll find union cash flowing to the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and various state Democrat parties. The unions also hire outside lobbyists directly and pay for them out of the dues in this bucket. Finally, many states allow unions to make donations to state and local candidates from their dues income (subject to certain limitations), which would also come from this bucket.

  When there’s a particularly hot-button union issue, unions also impose “special assessments” from their members, which gives the unions even more cash. Of course, they don’t really ask. They just require these extra assessments, which can be several hundred dollars in extra dues, on top of regular dues. A recent lawsuit involving an assessment by an SEIU local showed that these assessments can be pricey—workers had to pay an assessment equal to one-quarter their entire annual dues—on top of the dues that they paid already.24

  Union members are mostly kept in the dark about union political spending. While unions are required by law to make reports to union members on how their dues are being used, many unions simply don’t comply. And even if union members did know, they couldn’t do much about it.25 Rank-and-file union members don’t get a say in whether a special assessment is levied on them or generally whether their dues are raised. And most union members have very limited rights to prevent their union from spending their dues on politics.26 About 60 percent of union members object to union political spending, but only union workers in a few states that have passed paycheck protection laws are consulted before their unions spend their dues income on politics.27 And in those forced-dues states in which most union members reside, it is not as if they can leave the union or stop paying union dues if they are dissatisfied.

  Bucket #2: “Charitable” Giving

  Into the smaller second bucket, the unions put money for gifts, contributions, and donations to other organizations. And this bucket, too, is largely political. Union donations go to support left-leaning think tanks, political movements, and other organizations; the goal is to build alliances with like-minded political groups—the vast left-wing conspiracy, sometimes called the Shadow Democrat Party.

  To see how this works, let’s look at America’s largest union, the National Education Association (NEA), which represents teachers. As part of its huge political spending, the NEA’s national headquarters alone made over $88 million in direct grants and donations to various organizations, almost all to left-leaning organizations and political organizing projects.28

  The teachers unions are able to draw attention away from their huge political influence because Americans generally like and trust teachers. “Because they represent people working with children, National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers benefit from residual good will in a way that the Teamsters and United Auto Workers do not,” one commentator noted.29

  A typical NEA grant would be the $250,000 that the NEA gave to Arizona State University, which, like the NEA, is highly critical of charter schools.30 And just to ensure that NEA’s agenda makes its way in the media, NEA has given $100,000 to Media Matters, the George Soros–funded liberal “charitable organization” dedicated to targeting mythical right-wing media bias; $110,000 to the Center for American Progress, another Soros-funded radical-left think tank; and other grants to many more leftist organizations.

  Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is among teachers unions’ favorite causes. The New York City teachers union provided logistical support for the protestors; the union president said, “Occupy Wall Street isn’t a place—it’s an idea, a movement that has brought national and international focus to the danger to our economy that we face because of growing income inequality.”31 Is income inequality an issue of direct importance to teachers? Of course not. But for future battles affecting the union more directly, the teachers union needs to be part of the grand leftist alliance that OWS represents.

  While the teachers unions are almost 100 percent liberal in their public positions and support for other organizations, a solid 50 percent of NEA’s members consider themselves “more conservative than liberal,” according to NEA’s own polling.32 But that doesn’t stop NEA from continuing to pick its members’ pockets to support a hard-left agenda.

  So what rights do union members have to control donations by their unions to liberal causes? Practically speaking, none. Union members aren’t given rights to vote against or opt out of political spending, although nonmembers paying agency fees do have the right to opt out of political spending. Until that changes, unions will continue to use philanthropy and resolutions to build a very strong coalition of leftist organ
izations that will support unions getting more power over our workers and our nation.

  Bucket #3: Worker Representation

  Almost forgot about it, didn’t you?

  That’s because representing their workers isn’t as much of a core focus for government employee unions as political activity is. In this bucket, unions put funds for the actual cost of representing workers, negotiating contracts for them, handling grievances and, of course, organizing new groups of workers.33 You thought these causes were the central focus of the unions. So did union members. But representing workers is not really a big part of the unions’ business plan.

  Because members and the public consider these to be core union activities, unions have an incentive to show as much possible spending on representational activities as possible. NEA shows about 13 percent of its national headquarters’ spending on representational activities, whereas the top ten unions show an average of 30 percent of spending in this bucket at their national headquarters level.34 The difference may be that other unions like SEIU may spend considerably more than the NEA on organizing new workers, which also goes into this bucket for financial reporting purposes but is really about business generation and improving the bottom line. It’s likely that unions actually spend far less than 20 percent on real worker representation, especially at the state and national level, since negotiation and grievances are mostly handled at the local union level.

  How do we know that this bucket actually holds so little in practice? When members have sued to find out where their dues are going, unions have been able to show only that they spend about 20 percent of their dues income on these core union functions.35 An analysis of teachers union dues in Washington State found that 20 percent or less of dues income were used for “legitimate, chargeable union functions, such as collective bargaining, maintenance of the contract and grievances.”36 So politics is the name of the game for the government employee unions. Negotiation over worker contracts, in many cases is largely window dressing.37

  Direct Contributions

  Unions don’t generally make direct contributions to federal candidates, or most state and local candidates, out of their general revenues.38 If unions reported actual political contributions from union dues, they’d face negative tax consequences. Instead, unions set up special political action committees (PACs) for the purpose of making campaign contributions to candidates. Union PACs cannot be funded from union dues, but are funded instead from contributions collected from the union’s members. (In contrast, super PACs can be funded with union dues, but cannot make campaign contributions to candidates and are used mostly for purchasing advertising and sending mailings in favor or against candidates.)

  Member contributions to the union PACs are supposed to be voluntary and in addition to their union dues. In practice, however, unions frequently seem to extract these contributions from members without their consent. One recent FEC audit of a union showed that 93 percent of the time, the union was deducting PAC money from members without their written approval; in another case, the union was doing it 67 percent of the time.39 The moral of this story: don’t ever give your union the right to deduct amounts from your paycheck if you have the choice—of course, dues checkoff is mandatory for most union members.

  Direct donations to candidates through PACs are a part of unions’ political support for pro-union candidates, but the amounts aren’t particularly large. Unions are estimated to spend ten times as much on soft money political activities as on hard money campaign contributions to candidates, but this suits the candidates receiving the support just fine.40

  Reward Your Friends, Punish Your Enemies

  The government employee unions have a very simple action plan: reward your friends; slice and dice your enemies Benihana-style. Most Americans think that members of Congress and political leaders live in fear of the opinion of their constituents. But as we will see, Democrats live in fear of the people that really impact their reelection campaigns—the union Shadowbosses. And fear them they should, for hell hath no fury like a union official scorned.

  “An honest politician,” President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, Simon Cameron, supposedly said, “is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.” If the unions buy someone who doesn’t stay bought, they work to replace him with someone who takes orders better.

  “An honest politician,” President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, Simon Cameron, supposedly said, “is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.” If the unions buy someone who doesn’t stay bought, they work to replace him with someone who takes orders better. Of course, unions constantly try to replace Republicans with Democrats since, as a general rule, Democrats have less ideological objection to taking union orders. But they also replace Democrat defectors with more loyal Democrats. And if they don’t support you, they are going to work against you—usually very effectively.

  AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka now spouts that unions are going to be even more vigilant about holding politicians accountable: “For too long, we have been left after Election Day holding a canceled check waving it about—‘Remember us? Remember us? Remember us?’—asking someone to pay a little attention to us. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a snootful of that [expletive deleted].”

  AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka now spouts that unions are going to be even more vigilant about holding politicians accountable: “For too long, we have been left after Election Day holding a canceled check waving it about—‘Remember us? Remember us? Remember us?’—asking someone to pay a little attention to us. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a snootful of that [expletive deleted].”41 He added, “Unlike in the past, instead of saying ‘OK, we’ve elected you, now do what’s right by us,’ we are going to keep our machinery in place.” The point he is making is that the unions will stay focused on politics all the time—not just at election time—in order to get better service from their politicians. Trumka asserted, “We are going to make sure that our interests are considered at the front of the parade.”42

  Other unions echo this sentiment that they are keeping careful track of who is naughty and who is nice. Andy Stern, former head of the SEIU, told the Wall Street Journal in 2008 that he had set aside a $10 million fund just to get errant politicians unelected, and he said, “We would like to make sure people appreciate that we take them at their word and when they don’t live up to their word there should be consequences.”43 Similarly, one California SEIU official exclaimed, “We helped getchu into office, and we gotta good memory. Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll getchu out of office.”44 And this is no empty threat—of the top ten congressional candidates whom labor spent money to defeat in 2008, all lost their races.45

  Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis knows all about how the unions enforce party discipline. That is exactly how she first got elected to the U.S. Congress. In 2000, she went to Congress as the labor unions’ choice in California against an incumbent Democrat, Matthew Martinez, who had defied the unions to support the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).46 Solis was seen as more controllable. As one of her colleagues in the California Statehouse said about Solis and unions, “She’ll carry their water, no matter what.”47 And so, the unions helped her replace Martinez.

  By contrast, when Democrats strayed from the beaten path on Obamacare in 2010, unions threatened to crunch them underfoot like fallen leaves in autumn. When Mike McMahon, Democrat House member from New York, was thinking of voting against Obamacare, a representative of the SEIU came to him and told him that the union would withdraw its support for his reelection.48 Representative McMahon didn’t heed the union warning; he voted against Obamacare. And McMahon was defeated in his bid for reelection.49

  Labor Lapdogs

  The unions use their political support to influence our government. Don’t believe us? Ask Jon Corzine, former governor of New Jersey, who attended a Trenton rally of public workers and couldn’t restrain himself: “We will fight
for a fair contract,” he shouted. It must have made the union bosses proud—except that his job as governor was to negotiate on behalf of the state, not to negotiate on behalf of the unions.50 Even politicians are sometimes honest when they are speaking to their political allies and think no one else is paying close attention.

  Unions spend money electing candidates for President, Congress, governor, state legislature, mayor, school board, and many other offices at the federal, state, and local levels. But let’s take a close look at their spending on candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Overall, here is a look at the top ten federal U.S. House recipients of labor union cash from 1989 to 2010. Remember, these amounts represent only hard money campaign contributions, not their soft money political support, which would be much greater and for which no specific public information is available.

  TOP 10 LABOR UNION SUPPORTED MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

  Rank Politician Description Union Contributions

  1 Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) Minority Whip (2003–07, 2011–Present); Former House Majority Leader (2007–11) $3,042,153

  2 Richard A. Gephardt (D-MO) Retired Congressman (1977–2005) now working as pro-business lobbyist; Former House Minority Leader (1995–2003) $2,611,162

  3 Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) Governor of Hawaii (2011–Present); Retired Congressman (1986–87; 1991-2010) $2,510,585

  4 David E. Bonior (D-MI) Current Labor Law Professor; Retired Congressman (1977–2003); Former Democrat Whip (1991–2002); Leader of Democrat opposition to NAFTA $2,313,741

  5 Tim Holden (D-PA) Lost AFL-CIO endorsement when voted “no” on health-care bill $2,275,654