Forced Dues-Funded Political Army Ready to March

(Click here to download the May 2014 National Right to Work Committee Newsletter

In Election Season, Union Officers, Staff  Often Campaign Full Time

In the 2013-2014 election cycle, Big Labor bosses will likely pump even more money, most of it from their forced-union-dues treasuries, into politics and lobbying than the $1.7 billion they are estimated to have spent in 2011-2012.

This fall, AFL-CIO czar Richard Trumka, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) czarina Mary K. Henry, and other union chiefs are especially determined to punish state legislators and executive officials who have rolled back their monopolistic special privileges in recent years.

Union kingpins are also prepared to use every trick in the book to retain their control over the U.S. Senate and at least hold their ground in the U.S. House, despite a national electorate that is perhaps more skeptical than ever before of Big Labor and its allied politicians.

privilege-to-collect-forced-duesNeck Deep Into Politics

Just like in 2012, in the last few weeks before Election Day 2014, there will be hundreds of thousands of union-label volunteers combing neighborhood after neighborhood in state after state to get out the vote for pro-forced unionism candidates.

Of course, the union bosses’ “volunteers” will be spearheaded by thousands and thousands of paid union operatives.

How can Big Labor afford to invest so heavily in politics? Forced dues make it possible for unions that file federal LM-2 and LM-3 disclosure reports with the U.S. Labor Department to spend nearly $3.8 billion a year, or $14.4 million per working day, on salaries and other cash compensation (not including benefits) for union officers and staff members.

In non-election years, union professionals fill their days infiltrating businesses in every state, stirring up hate-the-boss strife among workers.

But during election season, this army is transformed into a full-time political operation. Union officials run phone banks and get-out-the-vote drives, prepare campaign mailings, and walk precincts.

National Right to Work Committee Vice President Mary King commented:

“No other type of nonprofit organization has a large enough payroll to make ‘in-kind’ political contributions of anywhere near the magnitude that federal disclosure-filing unions’ roughly 157,000 paid officers and staff are able to make.”

Other Types of Nonprofits, Businesses Can’t Compete With Union Political Machine

Ms. King continued: “There is no parallel political army in the business world, either, since business owners and profit-minded shareholders rarely if ever are willing to release their managers from normal business for months on end so they can politick full time.

“Fortunately, the Right to Work Committee’s candidate survey program, even though its budget represents only a tiny fraction of what Big Labor spends on electioneering and lobbying, does offer an effective counterbalance to the forced-dues political machine.”

As many Committee members know, the federal and state survey programs ask candidates to commit themselves to oppose forced unionism and support national or state Right to Work legislation if elected.

Candidates are given several chances to return their surveys and answer 100% in favor of Right to Work.

And millions of grassroots Right to Work supporters are mobilized to lobby candidates to respond to their Right to Work surveys.

“In the federal program, all major-party candidates as well as key significant third-party candidates in every U.S. Senate and House race are being asked to participate in the Committee’s Survey 2014,” said Ms. King.

“And pro-Right to Work citizens in every state where there’s a Senate race and in every House district are being contacted and requested to help turn up the pressure on their candidates to respond to their surveys.

“The Right to Work survey program has been and will continue to be extraordinarily successful in part because the vast majority of American voters oppose compulsory unionism. That’s a stubborn fact that the union bosses, for all their money and manpower, simply can’t get around.”