ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHY MOST WORKERS CAN'T STAND UNIONS

National Review

 

Another Example of Why Most Workers Can’t Stand Unions

By Dominic Pino

April 14, 2025 5:54 PM

 

Do most workers want their paychecks skimmed to:

 

compensate a union president’s daughter to travel with him?

pay two personal drivers for the union president?

pay for a union officers’ retreat at a luxury golf course?

pay for very expensive flights to South Africa for unclear reasons?

spend $300,000 per year in rent for a penthouse suite belonging to Harry Belafonte’s nonprofit?

pay that nonprofit’s president a salary as the union’s “national program director” despite her doing nothing for the union?

fund concerts that take place in the same town and at the same time as the union president’s annual family reunion?

pay one of the union’s former drivers, who now runs a production company that books artists for those concerts, an even $5,000 three times for “airline tix,” at least partly in cash?

help pay Jesse Jackson’s medical bills?

 

These are all expenses alleged to have been paid by 1199SEIU, the largest health-care workers’ union in the country, in a story by Maya Kaufman of Politico. The union’s president, George Gresham, has been in office since 2007, when he was elected unopposed. There hasn’t been a competitive election for union president since 1989.

 

The union denies wrongdoing and insists that its expenditures were “properly vetted and recorded.” The crazy part is that it might actually be true. The rules governing union expenditures are so lax that it’s possible many of these absurd expenses are technically permitted, which is all the more reason that most workers don’t want anything to do with organized labor.

 

It’s not a coincidence that unions are often corrupt. It’s a natural consequence of U.S. labor law, which gives a union monopoly power as the exclusive bargaining agent over a workplace. Once it is ensconced, it rarely has to justify its existence again, such that 95 percent of American private-sector union members never voted for the union that represents them. Monopoly power and little accountability is a recipe for corruption.

 

Workers know that, which is part of the reason why only 5.9 percent of American private-sector workers are union members, a record low. They’ve heard about other union presidents like George Gresham in the past, and they know there are more like him who will be exposed in the future. They’d rather keep more of their paycheck instead of giving it to people like him.