Organized Labor’s Dirty Little Secret

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Labor leaders know Americans would reject their ideology if they knew it was rooted in Communism. So they lie. The Unions’

his Brotherhood will continue to oppose commu nism, Nazism or any other subversive “ism.” We will support our God, our Nations, our Union.” The statement above can be found in constitu- tion of the International Brotherhood of Electri-“T

cal Workers, the largest trade union in existence. At one time, similar language could be found in many constitutions of prominent labor unions. No more. It’s not entirely clear when this wording was dropped, but you’d be hard-pressed to find the sentiments expressed anywhere within the organized labor movement these days — in word or deed.

By RUSTY BROWN Special Projects Director Of course, that comes as no surprise for anyone even remotely familiar

with the current political landscape, in which union leaders champion the most radical leftist ideas imaginable and with increasing frequency come right out and say their goal is to do away with capitalism. In March, for example, teachers in Minneapolis, Minn., walked off the job, leaving schools in the area shut down for three weeks. At some point

Dirty Dirty Little Little Secret Secret

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during the protest, Greta Callahan, head of the Minneapolis Teachers Federation, a subsidiary of the American Federation of Teachers, took bullhorn in hand to declare, “Our fight is against the patriarchy. Our fight is against capitalism. Our fight is for the soul of our city.”

Funny, most folks both in and out of the union would have sworn its job was to advocate on behalf of teachers for better wages, benefits and working conditions — ideals in no way inconsistent with the workings of a marketbased economy.

But they’d be wrong.

Make no mistake: The values and institutions that made America the envy of the world are now squarely in the crosshairs of unions around the country. Small wonder zealots like Callahan are so unabashed in their support for the same “isms” earlier labor leaders were proud to condemn.

Nor is it a surprise that teachers’ unions and school boards, which are largely elected by unions, all fight together, by any means necessary, to keep the curriculum and what goes on inside the school a secret from parents and the communities.

The fundamental liberal agenda cloaks itself in a variety of protective coverings today — Socialism, Democratic Socialism, Communism, wokeism, social justice, cultural revolution, etc. — but all are simply fruit from a different branch of the Marxism tree.

For obvious reasons, budding Bolsheviks continue to ignore the painful lessons of history and insist their vision of Utopia can be realized if only the tenets of his or her preferred strain of statism are scrupulously followed.

What this narrative conveniently overlooks, however, is the simple fact that human beings crave liberty, while collectivist governments, by definition, cannot exist without first empowering the iron fist of the state to impose an arbitrary version of “fairness” on the masses rather than allowing individuals the freedom to achieve it on their own.

With respect to unions, this inconsistency shows up most frequently in discussion of wages. Labor leaders love to wax eloquent about the need for a “fair” wage, but who gets to determine what that means?

What seems fair to a low-skilled, easily replaced worker will almost certainly seem unreasonable to a privatesector employer burdened with the responsibility for not only keeping workers happy but also earning the profits needed to keep the company in business.

Not coincidentally, unions representing public employees don’t share this limitation. When you’re paid by taxpayers rather than profits, there’s no reason not to ask for the moon in contract negotiations — especially when you know you’ll probably get it.

There’s a famous axiom among those who study organizational behavior that the instant a group of individuals band together to advance an ideal or achieve a given end, those goals become secondary. The organization’s first goal is always to survive and, if possible, grow.

Labor unions are certainly no exception to this rule. In practice, this means the concerns of the rank and file are routinely subjugated to the need of the union to attract additional members and collect more dues money.

For public employee unions, in particular, the overriding objective is always to grow the size and scope of government — and labor leaders already predisposed to authoritarian ideology are only too happy to oblige. Union leaders reflexively choose the most liberal path, and members are dutifully instructed about which candidate they can vote for and what side of every issue they need to support — even when doing so violates the worker’s core values.

Unions have become the single biggest influencer in American politics, and their support almost exclusively goes towards one side.

Politics and government go hand in hand and are seen as the way of the future for labor unions.

And true to all the best communists, unions consistently find a way to profit from the hard work of their members. One of the most glaring examples of this corruption is a scheme recently uncovered involving the National Education Association (NEA) and a life insurance company called Security Benefit Group.

The arrangement began in 2005,

PAGE 36 n FREEDOM MATTERS when a series of odd payments were discovered from Security Benefit to a handful of unions, mostly NEA subsidiaries. Security Benefit was required to disclose the payments to the U.S. Department of Labor, and did so under protest, claiming the payments were either reimbursements for an event or a fee to promote its products.

These payments were mostly small amounts around a few hundred dollars, with the largest being five total payments of $17,500 each to the Alabama Education Association. Security Benefit has consistently appeared on union financial disclosure forms ever since, but unions, for the most part, are not required to itemize receipts, rendering the full extent of the payments invisible until 2019, when Security Benefit was once again required to file its own disclosures.

It turns out the payments have grown enormously. Last year, nearly $600,000 spread over four payments went to the Indiana State Teachers Association alone, and just shy of $4 million went directly to the NEA.

This report also included a number of smaller dollar figures to various unions and $200,000 that went to the International Association of Firefighters.

Why is this a big deal? One company incentivizing another company to promote its product happens all the time.

The problem was the product being pushed. In 2007, a lawsuit was filed alleging NEA breached its fiduciary responsibility to its members through its “Valuebuilder” annuity accounts, which had well over $1 billion under management.

The lawsuit claimed fees charged in the plans were excessively high, one of which reached 10.62 percent, making it nearly impossible for investors to earn money in the plans.

In 2005, just before the lawsuit, NEA Member Benefits — the arm of NEA that pushes these plans — recorded an income $52 million.

The case was dismissed in 2010 on a technicality that the lawsuit was filed under the wrong statute, and it appears to have been pursued no further. Even so, the current federal fil-

The Early Divide

Gompers Debs

Most modern historians recognize Samuel Gompers and Eugene V. Debs as the fathers of the American labor movement. Often overlooked, however, is their fundamental disagreement about the best mechanism with which to advocate for workers.

More specifically, Gompers was an ardent believer in capitalism, while Debs ran for president five times on the Socialist Party of America ticket.

Born in London in 1850, Gompers rose to the presidency of the Cigarmakers International Union in 1875 and, in 1886, the American Federation of Labor.

He advocated “Pure and Simple Unionism” meaning that unions would avoid forming a political party in order to preserve the unity of the labor movement.

At the AFL’s 1903 convention, he thundered. “I want to tell you Socialists that I have studied your philosophy … I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for 30 years. And I want to say that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy. Economically, you are unsound; socially you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility.”

Debs, born in 1855, was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World, as well as Social Democracy of America (1897), the Social Democratic Party of America (1898) and the Socialist Party of America (1901).

“I am not a capitalist soldier,” he wrote. “I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the worldwide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.”

ings show the scam is still being orchestrated, and the NEA executives are profiting handsomely from the hard work of its members.

Sadly, stories like this are far from rare.

Perhaps an even more despicable example of a union cashing in on the backs of its own members concerns the International Association of Firefighters’ iconic Fill-the-Boot campaign.

To be clear, there are no lawsuits or criminal charges pending regarding this matter, although IAFF’s pensions have been a source of legal concern in recent years. In most cities, you’ll find firefighters every year standing on the streets with their boots, collecting donations for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

They famously claim that 100 percent of the funds collected go to the MDA. However, there are payments every year going from MDA back the national headquarters of the IAFF.

Some years those payments run into the millions. What’s that money for?

Who knows? But what it isn’t doing is benefiting the kids and families suffering from muscular dystrophy.

Again, corruption is the rule, not the exception, in the sort of top-down governmental systems favored by labor leaders. And for obvious reasons.

Lenin, Mao and the procession of acolytes who followed them through the decades had no misconceptions about Marxism. Far from the altruistic paradise it promises, all of these systems require someone in power to oversee the redistribution of wealth that never quite finds its way down to the proletariat.

Not surprisingly, Marxist adherents from the dawn of the movement have gravitated to labor unions as the logical instrument with which to undermine other systems of government and hand themselves the levers of political power.

As Lenin advised the leftist radicals of his day, “You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations — even the most reactionary — in which proletarian or semiproletarian masses are to be found. The trade unions and the workers’ cooperatives (the latter sometimes, at least) are the very organizations in which the masses are to be found.”

Once upon a time, union leaders may have recognized that no form of government in history has a better track record of lifting the status of everyone who participates than capitalism. But again, once individuals organize, the collective good goes out the window.

Organized labor has always sung — and will always sing — the siren song of socialism, not because it’s in the best interests of the workers whose dues pay the bills but because it’s the surest way to line the pockets of the people who make the rules.

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