Show Me the Money!

By William L. Garvin

“For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil….” 1 Timothy 6:10

When people loudly proclaim that it’s not about the money, you can usually bet that it’s all about the money! Lately we’ve heard many lofty proclamations as to reason and intent, but it’s still all about the money.

For example, there’s the current dispute between the National Football League’s players union and the NFL owners. The height of hyperbole came from Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Viking running back, who lamented “It’s modern day slavery, you know?” Yo, Adrian, no we don’t know. While it’s hard to pick a favorite when you have multi-million dollar per year athletes pitted against multi-multi-million dollar owners, the reference to slavery is both ridiculous and nonsensical. Mr. Peterson should have spent more time in the classroom while he was in college.

A much more serious example is the flap over collective bargaining for state employees in Wisconsin. Make no mistake about it, the reason unions are spending so much time, effort, energy, and money is because they expect a significant return on their investment. It’s all about power and power stems from money.

Unions are able to finance their operations by union members paying dues. In an agency shop, all represented employees must join the union and pay dues or not join the union and pay a representational fee. In union shops, all employees must join the union and pay union dues. A second matter of extreme economic importance is “dues check off.” In this arrangement, the employer deducts the union dues from the employee’s paycheck and then gives one check to the union, thereby relieving the union of administrative costs and effort. Both practices are at issue in Wisconsin.

It should also be noted that there are twenty-two “right to work” states in which employees cannot be forced to join a union or pay dues. They tend to have slightly lower unemployment and slightly higher growth rates in their private sectors. Somehow they have all managed to hire teachers, police, fire fighters, garbage collectors, maintenance workers, etc. Government workers in these states are still mostly protected by civil service commission and merit system rules and procedures. They have due process and just cause protections and cannot be summarily dismissed as can occur in the non-union private sector.

These states believe they are protecting the individual worker’s freedom of association by not forcing them to support organizations whose policies and politics they oppose. They also believe they are protecting the worker’s right to not have a portion of their wages confiscated by unions. Proponents of right to work states refer to their unionized counterparts as “forced dues” states. In those states, approximately 93% of the union political contributions go to Democrat candidates. Not surprisingly, Brad Sherman, a Democrat congressman from California, has introduced legislation to outlaw “right to work” states. The Democrats also are pushing the very poorly named Employee Freedom of Choice Act that would eliminate the secret ballot and possibly even eliminate elections by workers as to whether or not they want a union. In an even more bizarre turn of events, the United Nations is actively investigating employment practices in North Carolina, a right to work state!

In Wisconsin, workers will have to vote every year on whether or not they want to keep their union. This is a threat to unions and Democrats, because they might just say no. In Wisconsin, unions will have to collect their own dues from their members. This is a threat to unions and Democrats, because they might just say no. In Wisconsin, it will be much more difficult for unions to buy Democrats who buy votes by granting union demands.

Today, unions are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat party. If conservative government workers no longer have to subsidize liberal union leaders and liberal politicians, the latter will lose power. Any time unions are threatened, so is the Democrat party. It takes money to stay in power and unions love to give money to Democrats so they can stay in power. It’s a symbiotic relationship except for the taxpayer, where it can be parasitic.