Fun Union Facts
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney boasted recently that the union consortium intended to pour millions of dollars into this year’s Congressional elections — hardly a shocker. What is news is that this year, for the first time, rank-and-file union members are getting a look at precisely how much of their mandatory dues money is going to fund Mr. Sweeney’s political causes, and plenty of other interesting details as well. . . .
Hard-working union members deserve to know, for example, that of the AFL-CIO’s $82 million in discretionary disbursements from July 2004 to June 2005, only 36% went to representing members in labor negotiations — which is what unions were created to do. A whopping $49 million, or 60% of its budget, instead went to political activities and lobbying, while another $2.4 million went to contributions, gifts and grants. The National Education Association was even more skewed toward politics, spending only 33% of its $143 million discretionary budget on improving its members’ lots.
By our calculations based on the filings, the AFL-CIO spent at least $2.7 million alone on T-shirts, flyers, telephone calls, Web site hosting, and other support for 2004 Presidential candidate John Kerry. Groups that received AFL-CIO money included Citizens for Tax Justice, an organization devoted to higher tax rates; the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank that campaigns against Social Security privatization and tax cuts; and the Alliance for Justice, a ferocious opponent of President Bush’s Supreme Court nominees.
Dues-paying workers of the world might want to ask: Why is Mr. Sweeney spending more of their money trying to raise taxes, or fighting for the cultural left, than he is on collective bargaining?
Read the whole thing.
I find it particularly interesting that the teachers’ unions spend so much of their money on political activity even as teachers routinely complain about not being paid enough. Maybe teacher wages wouldn’t be such a problem for teachers if they weren’t paying such high union dues.
Just a thought.
