Centerfield

I think that private sector workers are increasingly insecure and tossed away when they're no longer needed, because of the decline of private sector unions.

But I am dubious about public sector unions. Not only have government employees not been oppressed, have benefitted from civil service protections and rarely laid off, they also are a concentrated interest group that has a disproportionate influence in electing their bosses.

In sum, I think the playing field is tilted too much in favor of public sector unions, and too much against private sector unions.

I absolutely agree with Rick on that. There are many examples from many states of public employee union members getting spectacular benefits that simply are not on par with their private sector peers.

That said... I'm of a very mixed mind on the value of labor unions. I belonged to a union for a couple years. I won't say which one but it's often referred to as one of the "good ones" in ethical terms. But, I wasn't the least bit impressed with their ethics when they tried to cut a side deal with my employer which couldn't possibly be construed as beneficial or even neutral to the union members who worked there at the time. It left me with a very jaded view of labor unions. But, at the same time I know from personal experience that some employers (especially big corporations or their subsidiaries) will happily screw their employees six ways to Sunday and those I most certainly don't have any pity for.

Companies simply hyave more power to tell unions to get bent than governments do.

On the issue of union spending, let's all take the time to notice one VERY important point (especially YOU Pat!): unions are run by officials that are elected by the rank and file members. So if you are a union member, and you don't like how your dues are spent, you are free to elect someone else, or run for union office on a reform platform.

I take pains to point this out to Pat because he has reliably and repeatedly made the "elections are the sound legal mechanism for reform"argument in various discussions about government reform.

I hasten to add that I don't find this argument either especially compelling or especially uncompelling, I only note that it's a valid point to make whether the subject is union reform or government reform.

Also, I'm willing to be frank that unions are a stronghold of democratic campaign financing (though I'm unconvinced that union leadership is going to the wrong bacon store). My take is that this is a political battle fueled by the GOP seeing an opportunity to disrupt the balance of power. Such a naked and unseemly power grab must of course be clothed in principled righteousness, hence the newfound concern for how some very small portion of union workers dough is being spent.

Bottom line for me? Unions are little democracies that are the worst way to balance power between labor and management, except for all other forms.

Unions are little democracies that are the worst way to balance power between labor and management, except for all other forms.

LOL - Very well said, Brian!

Brian, I agree that union members elect their leaders, which is why I added that little sentence that begins "More importantly..." Part of the problem, however, is that until Secretary Chao passed these recent disclosure requirements, which the unions fought tooth and nail, the average union member had no way of knowing just what his union bosses were spending money on. And this is hardly a "new found" concern, nor is it entirely a GOP phenomenon. As we have discussed previously, the courts have held that union members in closed shops have a right to pay only that portion of the dues which goes directly to REPRESENTATIONAL work by the unions, rather than political advocacy.

And of course that's not even mentioning the historical problems the unions have had holding honest elections.

Good discussion... I personally have found it difficult to generalize Unions in any way shape or form. The statement that all government Unions are bad while all private Unions are good is a bit black and white for me. I know there is a lot of people hate the NEA, but let's not forget they are, IMO, representing a group of people that are largely under appreciated and under paid. In Washington State, starting salaries for some teachers are as low as $26,000 a year.

I think the problem with Unions is the same problem tha we have in this country with politics in general. We lose site of the big picture when we are too focused on our own self interest, and some in this situation develop a win at all costs strategy, i.e. the current Democratic and Republican parties. What Unions need to do, public or private, is to realize that they are one slice of a bigger pie that represents the entire village, if you will.

Teachers threw stuff at your school bus, Pat, because they were too short sighted to see past anything but their own personal well being. They weren't worried about you or your right to get the education your parents paid for with their tax dollars, but rather their own self interest. However, their cause wasn't neccesarily as wrong as their methods.

This been said, there should be a law that bans public employees Unions from participating in partisan elections. It seems to be a conflict of interest to me that a public employee, who is charged with implementing the policies of an elected official, can join a Union that campaigns against that official. It is sort of like a Union in the private sector throwing out the company CEO.

What an individual government employee does with his or her own time is their business alone, but Unions who are funded by dues that come from tax payer dollars, should be more regulated than they are. In a sense, a portion of our taxes went toward electing John Kerry last year who received the endorsement of all the Federal unions.

From the WSJ:

"Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you're better off working as a union rep than in the classroom."

Later in the same article:

"Well, last year the NEA gave $45,000 to the Economic Policy Institute, which regularly issues reports that claim education is underfunded and teachers are underpaid."

That seems pretty consistent to me. Teacher pay is a political issue, so the union gives money to a group that lobbys for better teacher pay.

In addition, probably every head football and basketball coach in a major college conference makes more than the union head's $439k. Not many faculty earn that much. Where's the outrage about that?

If the WSJ editorial page wants to fight for public disclosure, I can't wait for all the editorials about the relationships between lobbyists and public officials.

until Secretary Chao passed these recent disclosure requirements, which the unions fought tooth and nail, the average union member had no way of knowing just what his union bosses were spending money on

I am very much in favor of disclosure. Once again, unions go in the same class as other democracies, whose honesty can be encouraged by transparency.

the historical problems the unions have had holding honest elections

Well, unions are not alone in having problems conducting honest elections, right? Yet, again, they deserve classing with other democracies, such as say the states of Florida, Ohio, Oregon, and so on, to name just a few.

the courts have held that union members in closed shops have a right to pay only that portion of the dues which goes directly to REPRESENTATIONAL work by the unions, rather than political advocacy.

Hmm, that's interesting. Is that the proper word, or are you speaking stricly of representation as it relates to collective bargaining. Because otherwise, it's reasonable to presume that all actions taken by elected representatives are representational. It's a tautology, I guess that'd be the word.

And let me add that I don't disagree with the ideal principle that in a perfect world unions would largely or even completely constrain themselves to bargaining for worker conditions and compensation with management. My concern and is that reduced overall union clout leads to more power for management and for one of the two parties. I think it may be a bad time for this, against a backdrop of graying demographics.

Representational is a term of art in this context, with a specific meaning. It generally refers to union activities directly connected with collective bargaining or employer-employee disputes. On a micro level, employees of a company are not charged for leave for work-day time they use to engage in representational functions (appearing as an advocate at a fellow employee's disciplinary hearing, for example), or for time spent negotiating the new union contract with the employer. On a macro level, it refers to expenses spent on collective bargaining and the like, rather than on political advocacy. If you look at the disclosure reports, you will see the expenses broken out into several categories, one of them being "representational" expenses.

I used the term to include the "financial core" union activities as set forth in Beck v. Communications Workers of America, which held (as you know from our previous thread on unions in November) that non-union employees in a "closed shop", a business where only union members can be employed, can only be required to pay for union activities such as collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment, not political activities unrelated to those actual union functions.

That's some pretty selective citation there, tim. What you skipped:

The NEA gave $15,000 to the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights." The National Women's Law Center, whose Web site currently features a "pocket guide" to opposing Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito, received $5,000. And something called the Fund to Protect Social Security got $400,000, presumably to defeat personal investment accounts...the Floridians for All Committee, which focuses on "the construction of a permanent progressive infrastructure that will help redirect Florida politics in a more progressive, Democratic direction," received a $249,000 donation from NEA headquarters.

Sound educational purposes, all!

Is that the proper word, or are you speaking stricly of representation as it relates to collective bargaining. Because otherwise, it's reasonable to presume that all actions taken by elected representatives are representational.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Communications Workers v. Beck that workers who are forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment may not be required to pay dues beyond those necessary for collective bargaining purposes. They also are entitled (if they so choose) to a refund of any portion of these dues that is used by their union for political purposes. Is that clear? Since they are not voluntary union members, yet are forced to pay dues anyway, they have NO representation within the union, even though they're paying full dues.

Unions work very hard to prevent workers from exercising their Beck rights, or even being informed of them. Non-union-member workers who pay the mandatory dues and attempt to exercise Beck rights have been beaten up, threatened, libelled, etc. The unions greatly restrict the time slots in which the applications for exclusion can be made, then "lose" or ignore the submitted paperwork, closing out the "window." Union members asserting Beck rights are generally kicked directly out of the union, denied any representation at all--and then subjected to the same harrasments as non-members who try to assert Beck rights. Some "democracy," eh?

You can see this at work in the Washington state referendum of 1992 (I-134), which made non-bargaining dues voluntary. When over 3/4's of union members disincluded themselves from paying the political portion of their dues, the union promptly set up a new compulsory "fee" for "political educational" and "community outreach." They actually ended up collecting more under the new "fee" than they had under the old system--and it was not possible to opt out of the new fee. Which, of course, was spent on the same old political causes.

Tully:

Let's see, the citations you note that I skipped totalled $669k. That's chump change. At 48k you could hire another 13.9 teachers.

It's no secret the WSJ editorial page is anti-union. It's no secret the Bush Administration and the GOP are anti-union, as are their financial contributors. That's fine. It's always been that way. Anybody who votes GOP thinking it will be good for labor isn't paying attention.

What I find hard to swallow is this holier than thou call for transparancy of union expenditures while consistently remaining silent on transparency of corporate expenditures regarding the lobbying of government and funding of conservative think tanks and causes.

Nobody asks the file clerk at Aetna or Lilly with an elderly mom in a nursing home what he or she thinks of their company's financial and political involvement in the Medicare prescription drug act and how the government is not allowed to negotiate lower prices for drugs.

Nobody asks the truck driver at BP if he or she thinks it's a good use of company funds to lobby for an energy bill that is negotiated behind closed doors.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never read a WSJ editorial expressing concerns for those workers.

tim, the one number you cited was $45k for a vaguely education-related purpose. Less than the pay of one average teacher, and less than 7% of the amounts of clearly non-educationally-related items I cited. You then try to change the subject.

Called on it, you once again attempt to change the subject. The subject is union's political spending, and the forced extortion of dues for same. Wanna try again?

For every story of union intimidation there is a story of union busting. This disclosure is fine and dandy but there is little disclosure from corporations about their activities. I'd love to see the detailed union busting budget of WalMart.

As for forced extortion, from what I've seen, Beck is enforced pretty well. If not you'd have seen a lot of GOP/conservative lawsuits against the unions.

Where are those anyway?

If not you'd have seen a lot of GOP/conservative lawsuits against the unions.

Political parties don't have standing to sue, Marcus. Only those non-union members forced to pay dues have standing. During the Clinton admin, dozens of workers filed suit against the National Labor Relations Board, attempting to get the NLRB to enforce Beck. The NLRB, composed largely of pro-union staff, dragged its feet and refused to enforce, basically telling the Supreme Court and the non-unionists to piss off.

They were abetted in this by the Clinton admin, which issued executive orders providing cover to the NLRB. As the NLRB is the regulatory and primary jurisdictional body for Beck complaints, this action by the Clinton administration damn near buried Beck rights entirely for almost a decade. Individual complainants had to mount federal lawsuits against well-heeled unions and the NLRB to seek relief of what amounted to a few hundred dollars a year, at most. That kinda stifled the idea under anything but class action--and the "class" had to be confined to a particular union chapter, not unions in general. Tort attorneys did not exactly leap on the less-than-lucrative bandwagon.

Since then suits and administrative actions have proliferated in the wake of a 2001 Executive Order repealing the Clinton admin orders. You can find 'em if you bother to look. Wagner v. PECG. Baldwin Steel. Marquez v. SAG. And the Bush admin has been sued by the unions to prevent it from enforcing Beck and mandating Beck notices in union workplaces. UAW vs. Chao.

Only now is that Bush admin order finally seeing some enofrcement, over the objections of the NLRB and the unions. The disclosure requirement (the topic of this post) is part of that.

"Called on it, you once again attempt to change the subject. The subject is union's political spending, and the forced extortion of dues for same. Wanna try again?"

The original post wasn't about the forced extortion of dues for political spending. You brought that up.

I didn't change the subject. I commented on the selective focus of the WSJ editorial. The focus of the article was how workers are screwed because their dues aren't being spent properly. But the WSJ doesn't care about the effect on other workers by their employer's political spending.

And by the way. I used to teach in a public school. We were represented by NEA but nobody had to join.

Tim,

I wasn't aware that corporations collected dues from thier employees? I thought it was the corporations paying the employees salary and using the corporations own funds (not the employees) for political activities.

Now you might have a case if you were talking about STOCKHOLDERS rather then employees but I'm pretty damn sure corporations are legaly required to disclose all thier expendatures to thier own stockholders....and if they are being deficient in doing so, I believe the S.E.C. might be wanting to have a little chat with them (i.e. you can get sent to jail as a corporate officer for trying to withold financial information from your stockholders....and there have been a number of cases were corporate officers have).

Furthermore, it's not exactly like owning 50 shares of IBM makes you as captive a participant as trying to be a pipe-layer that doesn't want to be a member of a union. If the stockholder doesn't like what the corporation is doing with thier dough...not only can they try and vote out the board at the next stockholders meeting, but they can vote with thier wallet by dumping the stock...... not quite the same constraints as trying to dump your career.

Sorry but your analogy doesn't hold water (IMO). In one case you have some-one (the corporations) spending thier OWN money...in the other (the unions) you have some-one spending SOMEONE ELSES money.

Tim, steer manure. Not even a good try.

The original post was about the union use of dues for political expenditures, and the possible opinions of members about the use of those funds. In subsequent comments preceding yours, the thread author cited the Beck decision as related, which is about forcing non-union members to pay dues for union's non-bargaining political activities. Namely, extortion, a related and germane part of union's political expenditures. That part of my post was addressed to the whole of the discussion preceding your initial post.

Your initial post tried to move discussion from the topic at hand to the perceived journalistic bias of one of the sources cited, yet you cited not one factual error or relevant factor, making your re-direction meaningless. That's called "changing the subject," also known as "red herring" and "digression." I noted your selective citation, and provided more citation from the very same source, stuff you left out, to demonstrate the selective citation being used.

And your follow-up you once again tried to change the subject over to the red herring, which was not the topic under discussion. QED.

One hopes the subject you taught wasn't logic.

The form for looking up union political expenditures is now here.

I'm in favor of union deregulation, which would allow multiple unions / workplace. That would tend to reduce political payments because people will choose the lower dues unless given a good reason; union political support would also tend to be more closely tied to need.

Unions like the current situation, where particular unions tend to monopolize particular workplaces, and say that it improves collective bargaining power. I think that's true, but at the expense of the worker they claim to represent. Under deregulation, even multiple unions would tend to agree that unfair management action is unfair management action, and take action; multiple unions would tend to discourage greedy union actions and extreme strikes.

Competition has served to reform many aspects of American lives. Why not unions?

Hi, Pat,

In my case, my mom, her mom and dad, her mother and father, my sister, my aunt, my cousin and one of my college roommates are all teachers. (And none of them were anywhere near Louisiana when you were in school. ;-)

It's too bad that you got garbage thrown at you one day, but most teachers get rhetorical garbage thrown at them every day. Not only are they expected to be baby sitters/disciplinarians/nurses/therapists/coaches with more eyes than Argus, they're always being called on the carpet for being too strict/not strict enough/too religious/not religious enough/too friendly/not friendly enough/etc. or God forbid, gay.

Which is OT, but none the less satisfying to vent. ;-)

Unlike the coal miners in West Virginia, nobody ever died teaching, but nobody ever got rich off it, either. The coal industry, the lumber companies, the oil, the gas, etc. all have their lobbyists; the NEA is usually the only thing standing between the those who'd cut the education budget (and teacher's saleries) and the teachers themselves.

As far as Beck is concerned, I'd like to think that most teachers are smart enough to realize that a union is the only thing standing between them and getting screwed six ways to Sunday by the pols and the public, and no, God isn't going to give them first place in the Rapture line if they refuse to join.

Oooo, unionism as religion! Solidarity as faith, for us or against us, back the union leader line in partisan politics or be damned! Waive your Beck rights, or God's gonna git ya!

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. ;-)

How does withholding the political and non-education non-bargaining related portion of dues hurt teachers? Beck only withholds the NON-representational portion of the dues. If you want to donate to vote reform campaigns in Ohio, nothing's stopping you--but why should your mandatory union dues pay $12,000 for it? Or $25,000 for tax reform in Florida? Or $40,000 to an ethnic civil rights organization?

Nothing prevents individuals from donating to these purely political causes. But they're not "representational" activities related to collective bargaining by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. So why should a union be allowed to rob the pockets of people to pay for them, even the pockets of those not members of the union, simply because those people work in a particular field? You might as well claim a right for the Dems or GOP to mandate contributions to them for being a citizen. Just as good a case.

nobody ever died teaching

Don't tell Socrates. (I have great respect for teachers, and know what they put up with. Even the bad ones suffer for their pay.)

I will note that when it comes to strikes, not all on the picket lines are hotheads, but all the hotheads WILL be on the picket line.

It's OK, Tully; you've got as much right to vent as anyone else, more so than me, since I'm a guest and you're one of the hosts. ;-)

Actually, I'm a Congregationist, but my brand of Protestatism doesn't include telling people they're going to Hell if they vote for a party that supports gay rights (as one of my more fundamentalist friends actually told me) or if they belong to a union that supports said party, God will leave them behind during the big Rapture. I've seen that happen too often, especially in places like West Virginia (no need to say more there)

As I recall, Socrates was tried and found guilty of "corrupting the youth of Athens", which was a rhetorical sidestep for having the wrong student in his class. The powers-that-be couldn't get him, so they got Socrates instead. As he lay dying of hemlock poisoning, he turned to one of the witnesses and said "By the way, I owe so-and-so a chicken. Would you pay that debt for me?" One of the great classic deathbed lines.

It's also one of the first examples of teacher scapegoating, though another might be "Socrates' teacher was a woman." which is either a support for women's rights or against them, depending on your opinion of Socrates.

I'm glad you realize what $#@% teachers put up with. I should add the example of one of my teaching friends, who teaches English for adult immigrants. One of her students fell in love with her, so in an "Endless Love" kind of moment, he set fire to her office, thus bringing new meaning to the phrase "Hot For Teacher". ;-)

No, nobody was hurt, but the student was sent to the local mental hospital and the teacher shook her head and returned to her husband.

Jean, I love teachers; my father's one, my mother was, my step-mother is, my sister is, my grandmother was, and about half a dozen spinster great-aunts were, too, back in the day. Some at university level, others lower down. One was in charge of the Mississippi School for the Deaf in the 30s and 40s.

But having seen the Louisiana teacher's union (which really shouldn't be called that, as about half its members are bus drivers and cafeteria workers) up close and personal during my stint in the governor's office, I can assure you that they STINK at advocating anything for teachers. Legislators and the public do NOT support pay raises for teachers because of public pressure from teacher's unions, but often in spite of them. Their tactics were generally so inept and so at odds with how society expects teachers to behave that they were extremely counter-productive in accomplishing their stated goals.

As a concrete example... My old boss, Gov. Mike Foster, promised to forgo his salary until he got teacher pay up to the Southern regional average. He never was able to claim his salary (8 years!), but the budgets he pushed through the legislature gave teachers 6 substantial pay raises and brought them closer to the regional average than they had ever been (higher than the average was when he took office, in fact, but the average increased over time, too). And he put strings on the money doled out to local school boards to make sure they HAD to pass the money along to the actual teachers, not just inflate administrator's salaries.

But when the union decided to protest teacher pay, they called a sick-out and dubbed it the "Foster Flu".

Better pay for teachers does not need that much selling. What keeps the public from supporting it is often the resistance of the union to any measure which would help insure that the raises go to the GOOD teachers and not to the BAD teachers. The bad teachers are a definite minority, but there are too many of them (and too many bad principals, too, but that's another story altogether). And the union doesn't want any of those bad teachers disciplined for anything short of out-and-out criminal conduct, and certainly doesn't want them held accountable or measured to see how well they are actually doing their jobs.

My sister teaches 3rd grade in an inner-city Atlanta school. Every single one of her class passed Georgia's accountability tests. But she knew after her first year which of her colleagues actually cared about the kids and knew what they were doing, and which were just going through the motions. Good teachers can make a huge difference to children from even the poorest and most despairing backgrounds... and still have a life of their own outside of school; it does not take miracles. As soon as the union agrees to help weed out the bad, uncaring teachers from the good, deserving ones, then I'll listen to their whining. But as long as they demand more money and no accountability, they can scream all they want for all I care. I'll still do all I can to help teachers, but it won't be thanks to any help the union gave them.

I've been in our local schools almost every day for several years now, so I've seen the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. We get far more of the first than we deserve, and far fewer than we would like. But the latter two categories are far smaller (at least around here) than many would like to believe.

I have a union & education related story, but it has to wait until later this month. The teachers were on one side, the unions (including the NEA and AFT) on the other. And the union bit is peripheral to the big picture.

Tully, in general I agree with the relative proportions of the good, the bad, and the ugly. But there are a lot of teachers in the middle who could really go either way. That's where having solid leadership from the principal (first and foremost) and the school system itself have a huge impact. The best, most deeply committed teachers (my sister, I'm so proud of her!) are going to do well no matter what. But there's a large number who will either rise up or sink down to the level of the principal and the teachers around them at their school.

And the integrity and professionalism of the administration--which has much to do with the choice and positioning of principals.

Tully:

"The original post was about the union use of dues for political expenditures, and the possible opinions of members about the use of those funds."

That's all I commented on. Others add content and that's okay. But I'm "changing the subject" by questioning the content of the link in the original post.

I give no evidence and you attempt to take me to the woodshed. Other posters go on and on about good teachers and bad teachers without a shred of data, but that's okay.

90% of all U.S. jobs are non-union and the percentage has been growing for two generations. The numbers in WSJ editorial are (at the risk of repeating myself) chumpchange when compared with the clear as mud political contributions by those who employ 9 out 10 US workers. Contributions in support of policies that create conditions favorable for all kinds of things workers love, like more dangerous working conditions, tax and trade policies that drive down worker's wages and benefits, and increased environmental pollution. CEO's averaged a 30% increase in compensation in 2005, while the average worker saw an increase of 3.5%

Sure, there are crooked unions. My dad was a Teamster. They don't get much more crooked than that. But they've never missed a pension check. The underfunded US Pension Guarantee Fund (isn't the SEC supposed to oversee that Cengel?) should have such a record.

If there is a red herring it's this whole idea that unions and their lack of transparency in funding political contributions is some sort of huge problem. It's dwarfed by what corporate America is doing.

PS for Jean--Socrates could have "escaped," but refused. Said that he had always lived by the laws of Athens, and always would. Whatever else we say about him, he lived by his code. And died by it.

Tim, you blatantly tried to change the subject to media bias and corporate America. Yep, that's digression. And you're still trying. If you want to go with the "question the source" argument, it'll be criticized because it's a dishonest approach, an unrelated issue, a matter of preferential framing at best. You offered no valid rebuttals of the WSJ's veracity or data, just ad hominem'd the source and tried to conflate your way out of the topic area. Specifically, you used selective citation to springboard your digression to corporatist sins after impugning the source. In your most recent post, you try to vanish the topic thread under discussion by trivializing it and (surprise!) changing the subject. "We shouldn't talk about these sins, they're chump change, look at those other guy's sins!"

Do you understand the difference? Corporations aren't unions. Corporate America's political donations are irrelevant to the specific topic of union's political usages of non-representational dues portions of both members and non-members. The WSJ is a data source like any other--if you wish to rebut it, don't sling mud, bring data. And then show how the rebuttal of the original data affects the topic, if at all. If you wanna rail about the sins of corporate America, I'll even start a rant thread for you, where you can make your point however you like. Just say the word. I have a few rants of my own about corporatism, some of which echo yours.

But don't try to convince me that changing the subject to something else entirely is a legitimate way of discussing the specific subject. It isn't. It's changing the subject. Which isn't Korporate America or comparitive demonology or coaches salaries or the WSJ's editorial biases, but unions and their non-representational political usages of dues, some of which are extorted from non-members in apparent violation of relevant Supreme Court decisions.