Burning Union Money

The Wall Street Journal and other publications have reported that the unions spent many millions of dollars to elect Barack Obama to the Presidency. In fact, the president of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern, stated: “We spent a fortune t o elect Barack Obama.” To that fortune can be added the many millions of dollars spent by the AFL-CIO. The unions apparently spent their members’ money not like drunken sailors, but like lobbyists on a mission.

Now Bloomberg News has reported that one of the AFL-CIO’s officials has circulated a report claiming that the union indulged in “creative accounting.” The union members would no doubt like an explanation of how their union went from a $45 million surplus to liabilities of more than $90 million. And the net assets of the SEIU went from $64 million to $34 million. Yet a few years back, Andy Stern vociferously declaimed that the AFL-CIO was spending too much on Washington politics and not enough on union organizing efforts. We can assume that both men finally came to an agreement after realizing that if they financed the election of a pro-union congress and president, they could spend a lot less money on organizing, especially if their indebted friends on Capitol Hill pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

When President Bush strengthened and dilated the union disclosure rules, the unions howled as if the hammer justice were about to smash their piggy banks. Now, however, Washington is overrun with union advocates, and they are listening to union concerns about the Bush Administration’s rules. If the unions aren’t asking for those rules to evaporate, then they certainly want them to be watered down.