Are Unions REALLY Working For Their Members?

Or are they just using union dues in order to push their liberal agenda? You decide:

Political spending by unions far exceeds direct donations​

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Published July 10, 2012
The Wall Street Journal
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WASHINGTON – Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, a finding that shines a light on an aspect of labor's political activity that has often been overlooked.

Previous estimates have focused on labor unions' filings with federal election officials, which chronicle contributions made directly to federal candidates and union spending in support of candidates for Congress and the White House.

But unions spend far more money on a wider range of political activities, including supporting state and local candidates and deploying what has long been seen as the unions' most potent political weapon: persuading members to vote as unions want them to.

The new figures come from a little-known set of annual reports to the Labor Department in which local unions, their national parents and labor federations have been required to detail their spending on politics and lobbying since 2005.

This kind of spending, which is on the rise, has enabled the largest unions to maintain and in some cases increase their clout in Washington and state capitals, even though unionized workers make up a declining share of the workforce. The result is that labor could be a stronger counterweight than commonly realized to "super PACs" that today raise millions from wealthy donors, in many cases to support Republican candidates and causes.

The hours spent by union employees working on political matters were equivalent in 2010 to a shadow army much larger than President Barack Obama's current re-election staff, data analyzed by the Journal show.

The usual measure of unions' clout encompasses chiefly what they spend supporting federal candidates through their political-action committees, which are funded with voluntary contributions, and lobbying Washington, which is a cost borne by the unions' own coffers.

These kinds of spending, which unions report to the Federal Election Commission and to Congress, totaled $1.1 billion from 2005 through 2011, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The unions' reports to the Labor Department capture an additional $3.3 billion that unions spent over the same period on political activity.

The costs reported to the Labor Department range from polling fees, to money spent persuading union members to vote a certain way, to bratwursts to feed Wisconsin workers protesting at the state capitol last year. Much of this kind of spending comes not from members' contributions to a PAC but directly from unions' dues-funded coffers. There is no requirement that unions report all of this kind of spending to the Federal Election Commission, or FEC. ​

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/10/political-spending-by-unions-far-exceeds-direct-donations/#ixzz20Erq9dPS​

 

I've been saying for years that the unions are nothing more than a fundraising arm for liberal politics. Any benefit they provided the employees has long been eliminated.

 

You would have a hard time convincing liberals of that fact, David. Most liberals have blinders on when it comes to unions.

 

Average teacher makes $44G while their top union bosses pull in nearly $500G​

Teachers across the country face pay freezes and possible layoffs, but the heads of the two biggest teachers unions saw their pay jump 20 percent last year, to nearly half a million dollars apiece.​

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American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten's pay jumped to $407,323 last year, while her counterpart at the National Education Association, Dennis Van Roekel, got a raise to $362,644. Factor in stipends and other paid expenses and Weingarten took in $493,859 and Van Roekel $460,060 for 2011.​

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The big salaries drew jeers from many educators and their advocates in the U.S., where the average nationwide salary for teachers is a scant $44,000 a year. By contrast, nearly 600 staffers at the NEA and AFT are raking in six-figure salaries, according to Association of American Educators Executive Director Gary Beckner.​

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“In terms of salaries, union executives rake in nearly 10 times the average household income and far more than any teacher," Beckner told FoxNews.com. “Are teachers or anyone in the private sector experiencing those increases in times of financial hardship?"​

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The union bigwigs are well-insulated from the paycheck-to-paycheck lives of most schoolteachers, said Tracie Happel, a elementary school teacher in Lacrosse, Wisc., who has spoken out in the past against the practices of the unions.​

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“It’s always about the union. It’s never about the teachers or students,” Happel said. “When you’re a teacher, you know you will not always be able to have the money for renovations on a house or go away on vacation, but it’s a tough pill to swallow when you can’t do those things when the people who are supposed to represent us get paid more and more every year.”​

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Happel added that while she is safe for now, many of her colleagues in worse situations.​

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“They are finding it hard to pay their bills. They are having trouble with basic monthly bills.”​

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Officials for the AFT and the NEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But John Ellsworth, a teacher in the Michigan's Grand Ledge Public Schools, told the Mackinac Center, a Michigan-based think tank, that teachers deserve the best advocates union dues can buy.​

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"Public education is vital for the preservation and growth of our nation and its economy," Ellsworth said in an email. "Leaders of the national teachers' union try to rally people behind this truth. I wish we had people serving in government who recognized the importance of public education, but instead children and teachers need their own advocates since politicians abandon public education so readily."​

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Tony Amorose, a history teacher with the Dearborn School District in Michigan, said no one begrudges union officials fair salaries. But he said the steep increases are out of step with what the rank and file see. After 21 years of teaching, he earns $74,000 a year. He said he gets by just fine, but worries about the pay younger and less experienced teachers get.​

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“It would be nice if the unions held the line a bit in a show of solidarity,” said Amorose, who is campaigning for state office. “I don’t mind paying dues, but I don’t see them going down with my compensation. They keep going up. I find it a bit frustrating that they would give themselves such significant salary and compensation increases.”​

Michael Van Beek, Mackinac's director of education policy said the problem isn't necessarily high pay for union leaders, it's the way they get it.​

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“These compensation levels are not based on market demand," Van Beek said. "This pay largely relies upon monopolistic collective bargaining privileges these unions enjoy, which forces school employees to financially support them. This is why transparency of these unions is so important.”​

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The significant raises of the two union leaders salaries came at a time when the saw memberships dwindling.​

“They [the unions] want us to be seen as laborers and not professionals,” said Kristi LaCroix, an English teacher from Kenosha, Wisc., who added that the unions did not want to use Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial reform plan because it gave teachers the choice to be represented by a union which would give them the ability to avoid paying mandatory dues.​

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“They want us to be seen as laborers and not professionals. I get nothing for my dues except them going to keeping ineffective teachers employed and treated like a servant.”​

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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/14/teacher-union-bigs-rake-in-dough-despite-budget-cuts-across-education-sector/#ixzz20bfuqORg​

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Sorry, but I must disagree with you premise. If you are really for a free market, that includes paying absurd salaries for people you agree with as well as people with whom you disagree - so long as they are doing it legally and the payees are doing so willingly. Hint; both the governments and the members have a say in creating and directing this "monopoly".

 

Actually, we agree on this point, RLM. Being private entities, unions can certainly pay their management anything they desire. They could, in fact, pay them 100% of collected dues if they wanted to and give their members absolutely nothing in return. This doesn't bother me in the least. I don't know how long they would remain in business, but that's another point. The point I'm making is that unions are supposedly set up for the benefit of their members who should (in theory) share equally (or at least proportionately) among the bounty. If union members believe they're not getting their "fair share", they should either quit the union (if that's even possible in their case), petition their leaders for an equitable solution, find a new non-union job or, if all else fails, shut up. The union members in this article were upset that their leaders were making sooooooo much money. I say, "So what"?

 

And you missed the prime methodology. They should vote in those whose stance they agree with and vote out those they disagree with. I don't know all the by-laws, but that may include recalling the officials.

 

Agreed. But, as we both know, unions are more crooked than Chicago politics (if that's possible). Backroom deals are the norm in union politics and actually getting someone in power who has the best interests of the members at hear is extremely rare. Union members usually get stuck with losers representing them whether they like it or not.

 

One question: If workers didn't have organized labor to look out for their interests, who would?

 

Today's unions mainly exist as a fundraising arm of the Democrat Party and care little, if any, for the workers' interests.

 

So are you are saying that unions take money or "dues" from workers and never lobby or endorse candidates that vote for worker's rights? Because I can give you an endless list of democrats that HAVE voted to strengthen workers rights in this country. I can't really come up with many Republicans that are pro-LABOR. The Republicans tend to take money or "dues" from millionaires and billionaires so that the Republicans will vote to carve holes in the tax code that favor these millionaires and billionaires enormously. The entire system runs on legalized bribery and a company like BP can contribute more money out one quarters profits than all the money collected by all the unions in the entire country. So if money is free speech, and corporations are people, Republicans control the vast majority of free speech and the wealthiest people making an advocate for workers of this country all that much more essential and you seem to want to silence the only free speech by railing against unions. I don't agree with that.

 

BTW Instead of railing against unions and the workers they represent and completely giving wealthy corporations and individuals a pass for doing exactly the same thing but using the GOP instead of a union, why not try and condemn all money based politics? The fact that you side with millionairea and billionaires and I side with the workers says a lot about both of us and you don't pass the smell test.
Here I am probably in the upper 95% of income earners trying to level the playing field for everyone by supporting hard working Americans and you are probably in the mid 60% of wage earners fighting for the 1%. Is your ideology really that twisted that you feel you have to side with people that you have nothing in common with and are actively working to keep people like yourself down? That is simply twisted.

 

Are there really people out there stupid enough to believe unions exist to help the workers? Really?

 

Obviously at least one person...

 

Here are just 5 things directly brought to workers by unions...

1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now. Yet in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged in massive strikes in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. By 1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time.
2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income. It is also true that at the time when most Americans belonged to a union — a period of time between the 1940′s and 1950′s — income inequality in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the history of the country.
3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor. The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.
4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”
5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”​

Now the question is, Who is stupid enough to think that unions have done nothing for the workers in America?

 

And the cave man gave us fire. Now the question is, who is stupid enough to think that cavemen have done nothing for the workers in America?

 

Improving Life for Workers

ByJohn Stossel

It seems intuitive that a free market would lead to a "race to the bottom." In a global marketplace, profit-chasing employers will cut costs by paying workers less and less, and shipping jobs to China.
It's a reason that progressives say government must step in.

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So America now has thousands of rules that outlaw wages below $7.25 an hour, restrict unpaid internships and compel people to pay union dues. These rules appear to help workers. But they don't.

"Collective bargaining" sounds good. Collective bargaining "rights" even better. Employers are more sophisticated about job negotiations than individual employees, so why shouldn't workers be able to join together to bargain?

They should be. But in 27 states, labor laws force workers to join unions. When CBS offered me a job, I had to join AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. I didn't want to. I don't consider myself an artist. I didn't want to pay dues to a union that didn't appear to do much. But I had no choice.

Laws that force workers to join unions treat millions of diverse people, most of whom want very different things, as undifferentiated collectives. That means that good workers get punished.

When I was at ABC and CBS, union culture slowed us down. Sometimes a camera crew took five minutes just to get out of the car.

But without a minimum wage or union protection, wouldn't employers abuse workers? In a real free market, no, they can't. Because workers have choices. Employers have an incentive to maintain a good relationship with employees -- one that keeps them reasonably loyal -- because workers can quit and go work for a rival.

If globalism leads to a "race to the bottom," why do 95 percent of American workers make more than minimum wage? It's not because companies are generous, but because competition forces them to offer higher wages to attract good workers. Companies may move jobs overseas to escape high U.S. wages (or U.S. taxes and regulations), but they clearly prefer to keep jobs here, close to their headquarters, suppliers and customers.

Unions once helped advance working conditions, but now union rules hurt workers because they stifle growth by making companies less flexible. When I arrived at CBS, I was stunned to discover that I couldn't even watch a video in a tape player without risking a grievance being filed by a union editor, saying I'd encroached on his job. Work ground to a halt while we waited for a union specialist to press the "on" button. ABC and CBS, being private businesses that had to compete, eventually got rid of those rules. But it took years.

Unions eventually hurt union workers because unionized companies atrophy. Non-union Toyota grew, while GM shrank. JetBlue Airlines blossomed, while unionized TWA and Pan Am went out of business. Unions "protect" workers all the way to the unemployment line.

When I criticize compulsory unions and regulations, it's not because I want rich employers to get fat off the labor of workers. It's because I've learned that markets are fluid -- and the best way for more workers to find good jobs is to leave everyone free to make any contract they wish.

Outlawing the low-wage job that taught a teenager skills or the internship that gave a kid a foot in the door doesn't insulate people from hardships of the market. It insulates them from knowledge about how to function in an ever-changing economy.

That's not compassion. That's a denial of reality.

Advocates of "kind" central planning overlook the gradual, piecemeal improvement that markets make. Focused on government's promise of once-and-for-all solutions (promises that rarely lead to actual solutions), people miss how free markets gradually help humanity solve problems.

Economic historian Robert Higgs joked that it will always be easier to rally politically inclined people behind unrealistic, revolutionary causes than to rally them around subtle economic progress, because no crowd marches behind a banner proclaiming, "Toward a Marginally Improved Society!"

The best way to help workers is to get the government to butt out and let competitive markets work.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/30/improving_life_for_workers_114310.html

 

So...in the 1880's the unions had a positive impact on the workers? Great!
Why does the Sprinsteen song "Glory Days" come to mind??

 

What a stupid comment. Like I said, this is only 5 things unions have worked for to benefit the workers of America and I could list hundreds more given the time and of course the inclination to cobble together information that would only be ignored.

The truth of the matter is that the main reason people like you are so against unions is mainly because how effective they have been over the last century fighting for workers rights. The direct correlation between income equality, safety in the work place, living wages, and a myriad of other worker's rights rise and fall with the amount of union representation they enjoy at any given time. Blaming unions is just a Right-wing talking point that has no relationship with reality. And you suckers fall for the nonsense like the dupes you are. You guys have taught me well that you simply can't fix stupid.

 

My experience with unions goes back to the late '80's when I worked for a company that required us to join the Teamsters union and I became a union steward (mainly because we had union meetings once a week & we got free pizzza...a bit bonus for a poor college kid). I quickly found out the only function of the union was to protect the worst of the worst employees...drinking on the job, no call-no shows and the like. I also participated in union/mgmt contract negotiations where I found out how chummy the 2 sides were behind closed doors. I guess the most enduring lesson I learned (and what turned me off the most) concerned the collection of union dues. The union bosses weren't shy in protecting the privilege to have union dues collected weekly, directly out of the paychecks. They knew, if given an option, most wouldn't pay and if the money wasn't broken down in weekly installments the workers would more readily see how much they were actually paying in dues.