Wednesday, January 04, 2006
The Dirty Not-So-Secret About Unions
The WSJ ran a piece yesterday (subscription required) revealing the National Education Association (NEA) spends its members money. Holy Coast does a good job of looking at it.
Needless to say the NEA coffers are essentially, as Holy Coast puts it, a "cash cow" for liberal Dem causes and organizations. Of course, there are issues of membership agreeing with this political expenditure and so forth. But what I find most troubling is that a union has so much extra cash at all. They have a very specific job, they should be collecting enough money to do that job -- why do they need anything more and why does the membership permit it?
Well, they are coersive organizations, that's why the membership permits it. The line between extrotion and dues is pretty fine in some shops. Unions have a long history of this. Anybody remember Jimmy Hoffa? Why would organized crime want in on unions anyway? -- Because of the money.
But what's really troubling is that the government worked so hard, the Democrat government (this was a Kennedy thing), to break the union/mafia connection, not to reform, but to make the money available for their politcal uses.
It's time for serious reform and regulation with regards to unions. Closed shops need to be abandoned, dues need to be regulated in accordance with formulas that limit the accumulation of funds, types of investments for pension funds need to be heavily regulated, the list is pretty extensive.
A lot of unionism has lost its power in America, but what remains is not the best, but the most misguided; its continuance assured not by doing that which it was created for, but by this kind of near-corrupt activity.
Needless to say the NEA coffers are essentially, as Holy Coast puts it, a "cash cow" for liberal Dem causes and organizations. Of course, there are issues of membership agreeing with this political expenditure and so forth. But what I find most troubling is that a union has so much extra cash at all. They have a very specific job, they should be collecting enough money to do that job -- why do they need anything more and why does the membership permit it?
Well, they are coersive organizations, that's why the membership permits it. The line between extrotion and dues is pretty fine in some shops. Unions have a long history of this. Anybody remember Jimmy Hoffa? Why would organized crime want in on unions anyway? -- Because of the money.
But what's really troubling is that the government worked so hard, the Democrat government (this was a Kennedy thing), to break the union/mafia connection, not to reform, but to make the money available for their politcal uses.
It's time for serious reform and regulation with regards to unions. Closed shops need to be abandoned, dues need to be regulated in accordance with formulas that limit the accumulation of funds, types of investments for pension funds need to be heavily regulated, the list is pretty extensive.
A lot of unionism has lost its power in America, but what remains is not the best, but the most misguided; its continuance assured not by doing that which it was created for, but by this kind of near-corrupt activity.
