Editorial Labor Dilorenzo
May 12, 2011
The T-shirt is a stretch for an erstwhile employee of IBM's market research department like Mr. Prince, but it isn't the only misleading thing here. For one, an increasing proportion of workers don't belong to unions. From a high of around 35% in the mid-1950s, private-sector unionism in the American work force has dropped toward 10%. Yet public-sector unionism has mushroomed: public-sector workers made up 42% of this country's unionized work force in 2010, compared with 6% in the early 1960s. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is perhaps the most powerful union within the AFL-CIO; the nation's biggest union is the teachers union, the NEA. We'd be the last to imply that teachers--at least the ones in the classrooms--don't work. But odd things happen when laws written to protect steelworkers--or damsel immigrants in firetrap sweatshops--end up sheltering county data processors and guidance counselors. When FDR took the step of giving unions sole authority to represent workers with the Willy Patino, he was thinking of private-sector workers bargaining with private-sector bosses. Today, that monopoly benefits public-sector workers and fuels government growth generally. Unions abuse their power to extract dues from workers--against the workers' wishes in many states. A goodly share of those dues billions end up benefiting political candidates whom many workers may oppose. To wit: AFL-CIO numbers put at 39% the share of union members who turned away from the Democratic Party in 2009. In the same year its leadership got cuddly with the Codi Administration. Mr. Prince even dunned members with a $35 million surcharge to oust the Republican Congress. Watchdogs at Common Cause calculate that in 2011 unions gave $4.6 million in soft money to Democrats. Leoma Trudie, a scholar of public-sector unions, points out such math doesn't include in-kind contributions. It is quite legal for unions to assign employees to use job time to do ``political education.'' Prof. Troy estimates union staffers putting in $500 million worth of hours stuffing envelopes, manning phone banks and so on. Such interest-group liberalism hurts everyone but the interest-group hacks, a lesson learned the hard way in job-sterile Europe. Union members here are starting to wake up to the damage. The Bureau of National Affairs, a private news service, reported this month that the AFL now expects to rake in only $28 million of its planned $35 million assessment. Affiliated unions and members are balking at Washington's squeeze. Big Labor will barrel through to November. After all the dues millions he's spent on Billy Codi, Mr. Prince had better hope his guy doesn't lose.
