LaborPains.org

Decades after organized labor came into its own by improving working conditions for Americans, the movement is adrift. It is reeling from decades of corruption, embezzlement, internal rifts, and a record of customer service that makes the phone company look good.

(Click here to read our Labor Day op-ed in National Review Online)
(Click here to read another CUF Labor Day op-ed published in the Naples Daily News.)

Right now, labor is a mere shadow of its past. The kind of labor union that most of us grew up knowing just isn’t there anymore. Membership has been declining for decades, and despite economic realities, labor leaders continue to cling to the belief that Americans accept this idea of paying dues in order to keep their job.

Today, union officials have drawn up a new political agenda that should give all Americans shivers. It centers around stealing voting rights from employees and rigging federal laws to monkey-wrench business operations. And Americans should be concerned, because organized labor is aggressively pushing to expand increasingly sympathetic majorities in Congress and elect a President in 2008 that is beholden to their cause and willing to implement these scary provisions.

Labor leaders say they’re working for America’s employees, but their actions indicate otherwise.

Consider the state of the unions:

• Union membership is down to 7.4 percent of private sector employees and down to 12 percent overall (government employees are highly unionized, at a rate of 36.2 percent) – that’s down from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983
• Union bosses continue to be criticized for their lavish salaries, even while their membership declines
• Even after several major unions split from the AFL-CIO to improve their growth, some have found little success

How do you take a state with a sluggish economy and make matters worse? If you’re Michigan’s AFL-CIO, you ask politicians to raise taxes and increase the size of the bloated government:

The Michigan AFL-CIO enters the Labor Day weekend pushing for a tax increase to support state government services, and promising to help lawmakers who might face recalls for voting in favor of revenue increases.

As a Brit might say, that’s a capital (killing) idea!

In the 2004 election SEIU gave tens of millions of its members’ dollars to a political drive to defeat the president. Not only was the money wasted, but it apparently was used in illegal ways. The Politico reports:

The Federal Election Commission has fined one of the last cycle’s biggest liberal political action committees $775,000 for using unregulated soft money to boost John Kerry and other Democratic candidates during the 2004 elections.

America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits.

Good to know 2008 will break all sorts of political-giving records by labor leaders — but will that include record fines, as well?

UPDATE: In a fit of forgetfulness, I forgot the hat tip for Carter Wood. My bad.

• Thanks SEIU Bosses!: In Oregon, the news is bleak for the budget, because “The state will continue to shoulder the entire cost of health care premiums for employees and their families, an increasingly rare perk in either the private or public sectors as the price of health insurance skyrockets.”
• A Bill the Mafia Would Love: A letter to the editor of a Southwest Florida paper attacks the anti-democratic “Employee Free Choice Act,” saying “Under this Mafia-like legislation, union thugs can go to a worker’s home, threaten him and his family with bodily or financial harm to force him to sign an irrevocable Union Authorization Card.”
• Do It For the Children!: The Los Angeles Times highlights tactics of TV writers’ unions, reporting “To make their larger point about reality television, the guilds have seized on “Kid Nation” with its added dose of controversy — the welfare of children.”
• Farming Out Democratic Principles: As a party-line vote in California’s legislature passes an anti-democratic “card check” organizing bill for farm employees, Tom McClintock asks, “What is it about the right to a secret ballot that bothers you?”

We find running ads makes our point like few other mediums can. Today we launched our Labor Day ad, and fans of labor leaders’ propaganda will love it. It’s running in today’s USA Today and on the front page of the New York Times website — meaning several million people will get the story union bosses don’t want told. Happy Labor Day!

Carter Wood has the story on the Shopfloor.

Plus, Ed Feulner has more in the Indy Star:

OLMS is clearly doing a job that needs to be done. Its hundreds of criminal convictions prove that. Union leaders and their political puppets may not appreciate its efforts, but the rank-and-file should be cheering its watchdog activities this Labor Day.

Bret is out of the office today to interview a couple of union whistleblowers, so I’m filling in with the Union Fact of the Day.

Unions have never been known for their money management skills. And a quick check of the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) website reveals hundreds of cases where union leaders have embezzled their members’ dues dollars.

But breaking the law isn’t the only way union bosses squander their members’ money. We analyzed thousands of pension plans and determined that unions’ funds are often woefully underfunded — that is, they do not have enough money to cover the members in the plan if the plan ended today. Case in point: We determined that United Food and Commercial Workers plans are underfunded by more than $2 billion dollars.

Why have an innovative school when you can have one shackled by a union contract instead? In the Columbus (Ohio) school district, a French-immersion school is about to get less immersive, thanks to union-enforced transfer rules that are forcing unqualified teachers on the school. As The Columbus Dispatch puts it, “parents are justifiably upset by the news that four teachers assigned to the school for the coming academic year don’t speak French.” Unfortunately for the students, “the teachers’ contract requires that any vacancies be offered first to teachers who were laid off,” even if they’re not qualified to provide an immersive language experience.

Translation: c’est la vie.