Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind (14 page)

Direct donations to candidates through PACs are a part of unions’ political support for pro-union candidates, but the amounts aren’t particularly large. Unions are estimated to spend ten times as much on soft money political activities as on hard money campaign contributions to candidates, but this suits the candidates receiving the support just fine.
⁴⁰

The government employee unions have a very simple action plan: reward your friends; slice and dice your enemies Benihana-style. Most Americans think that members of Congress and political leaders live in fear of the opinion of their constituents. But as we will see, Democrats live in fear of the people that really impact their reelection campaigns—the union
Shadowbosses. And fear them they should, for hell hath no fury like a union official scorned.

“An honest politician,” President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, Simon Cameron, supposedly said, “is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.” If the unions buy someone who doesn’t stay bought, they work to replace him with someone who takes orders better. Of course, unions constantly try to replace Republicans with Democrats since, as a general rule, Democrats have less ideological objection to taking union orders. But they also replace Democrat defectors with more loyal Democrats. And if they don’t support you, they are going to work against you—usually very effectively.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka now spouts that unions are going to be even more vigilant about holding politicians accountable: “For too long, we have been left after Election Day holding a canceled check waving it about—‘Remember us? Remember us? Remember us?’—asking someone to pay a little attention to us. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a snootful of that [expletive deleted].”
⁴¹
He added, “Unlike in the past, instead of saying ‘OK, we’ve elected you, now do what’s right by us,’ we are going to keep our machinery in place.” The point he is making is that the unions will stay focused on politics all the time—not just at election time—in order to get better service from their politicians. Trumka asserted, “We are going to make sure that our interests are considered at the front of the parade.”
⁴²

Other unions echo this sentiment that they are keeping careful track of who is naughty and who is nice. Andy Stern, former head of the SEIU, told the
Wall Street Journal
in 2008 that he had set aside a $10 million fund just to get errant politicians unelected, and he said, “We would like to make sure people appreciate that we take them at their word and when they don’t live up to their word there should be consequences.”
⁴³
Similarly, one California SEIU official exclaimed,
“We helped getchu into office, and we gotta good memory. Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll getchu out of office.”
⁴⁴
And this is no empty threat—of the top ten congressional candidates whom labor spent money to defeat in 2008, all lost their races.
⁴⁵

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis knows all about how the unions enforce party discipline. That is exactly how she first got elected to the U.S. Congress. In 2000, she went to Congress as the labor unions’ choice in California against an incumbent Democrat, Matthew Martinez, who had defied the unions to support the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
⁴⁶
Solis was seen as more controllable. As one of her colleagues in the California Statehouse said about Solis and unions, “She’ll carry their water, no matter what.”
⁴⁷
And so, the unions helped her replace Martinez.

By contrast, when Democrats strayed from the beaten path on Obamacare in 2010, unions threatened to crunch them underfoot like fallen leaves in autumn. When Mike McMahon, Democrat House member from New York, was thinking of voting against Obamacare, a representative of the SEIU came to him and told him that the union would withdraw its support for his reelection.
⁴⁸
Representative McMahon didn’t heed the union warning; he voted against Obamacare. And McMahon was defeated in his bid for reelection.
⁴⁹

The unions use their political support to influence our government. Don’t believe us? Ask Jon Corzine, former governor of New Jersey, who attended a Trenton rally of public workers and couldn’t restrain himself: “We will fight for a fair contract,” he shouted. It must have made the union bosses proud—except that his job as governor was to negotiate on behalf of the state, not to negotiate on behalf of the unions.
⁵⁰
Even politicians are sometimes honest when they are speaking to their political allies and think no one else is paying close attention.

Unions spend money electing candidates for President, Congress, governor, state legislature, mayor, school board, and many other offices at the federal, state, and local levels. But let’s take a close look at their spending on candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Overall, here is a look at the top ten federal U.S. House recipients of labor union
cash from 1989 to 2010. Remember, these amounts represent only hard money campaign contributions, not their soft money political support, which would be much greater and for which no specific public information is available.

The numbers on this page are based on contributions from PACs and individuals giving $200 or more. All donations took place during the 1989–2010 election cycle as released by the Federal Election Commission.

Courtesy: Center for Responsive Politics

Notice anything? First, there are no Republicans. But by now, this probably doesn’t surprise you.

Second, many of these members of Congress hold or held leadership positions in Congress or served on important committees. As minority whip, Representative Steny Hoyer can wrangle far more votes for pro-labor legislation than an ordinary member can deliver. In fact, Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi, and Richard Gephardt all have held multiple positions in the Democrat leadership of Congress.

Dick Gephardt was such a friend of labor as Speaker of the House that he clocks in at number 2, even though he hasn’t served in Congress since 2005. But since leaving Congress, he is no longer bound by the golden handcuffs of Big Labor. Shadowbossed no longer, Gephardt now advises Boeing on labor conflicts and is a consultant to both the pro-business Chamber of Commerce and the most hated investment bank in America—Goldman Sachs.
⁵¹
Not only that, he recently brought number 6 labor lapdog David Obey into his lobbying firm. We can’t wait to see what corporate interests House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, number 7 on our list, champions when she leaves the House!

Neil Abercrombie, now governor of Hawaii and number 3 on our list, is not only a friend of labor, he was a personal friend to President Obama’s parents when he studied with them at the University of Hawaii and personally vouched for President Obama being born in the state of Hawaii.
⁵²

If you were expecting even higher contributions from unions, it is because these amounts are only the direct campaign contributions, made through labor union PACs—and that’s only the tip of the political spending iceberg. The much greater contributions are the soft money political support—get-out-the-vote, mailings, advertising, phone banks, and super PAC political activity. Being a union-supported candidate is a great deal for these politicians; in return for carrying water for the union, you receive union support in the forms of money, organization, and troops of volunteers.

The union-government partnership works beautifully for both the unions and the politicians. Labor experts Daniel DiSalvo and Fred Siegel explain, “The result is a nefarious cycle: Politicians agree to generous government worker contracts; those workers then pay higher union dues a portion of which are funneled back into those same politicians’ campaign war chests.”
⁵³
At its core, it is just that simple.

But if this sounds like an exaggerated conspiracy to you, consider this example of how the union-government partnership worked in practice in Washington State.

In Washington in 2002, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) invested significant dollars and used their political machine to support Democrat candidates for the legislature. In return, the Democrat-controlled legislature gave AFSCME what it was looking for—laws that gave unions the chance to win lucrative collective bargaining agreements over more workers.
⁵⁴
Within three years of focusing their efforts in Washington State, AFSCME’s membership in Washington had doubled, as did the fees the union collected there.

And the cycle continued. AFSCME supported the Democrat candidate for governor, Christine Gregoire, in 2004. After the election, it initially looked like she lost her race, but with $250,000 in cash contributions to the Washington Democrat Party, a recount was held. Gregoire was declared the winner by 129 votes—even though Republicans claimed to have found at least 489 felons who voted unlawfully in the election.
⁵⁵
The Republicans challenged the election, but lost in court.
⁵⁶

Once Gregoire entered office, she “negotiated contracts with the unions that resulted in double-digit salary increases, some exceeding 25 percent, for thousands of state employees,” explained DiSalvo and Siegel.
⁵⁷
An advisor to Gregoire’s 2004 opponent complained that the union’s support of Democrat candidates created “a perfect machine to generate millions of dollars for her reelection” achieved at “taxpayer expense.”
⁵⁸

In 2008, Gregoire was reelected. The Gregoire-union partnership was going great for both parties. But then the financial crisis hit, and Gregoire made the outrageous suggestion that state workers’ pay raises
be put on hold to address the ballooning state deficit. She was promptly sued by the unions for unfair labor practices and breach of contract. Perhaps not surprisingly, she did not seek a third term as governor.
⁵⁹

While the unions are hard on their opponents, they are great to their friends. We can see how politicians who support the unions’ agenda are paid back for their loyalty by looking at congressional supporters of the card check legislation in 2007. Card check, a top union legislative priority, eliminates the requirement of a secret-ballot election for certifying a union and makes it easier for unions to organize new workers. Congressmen who voted in favor of card check in 2007 “collected 10 times more on average from union PACs during their careers ($862,065) than those who didn’t ($86,538).”
⁶⁰
And remember, those are only the hard dollar PAC contributions to candidates, not the much larger soft dollar support—the super PAC spending, advertising, political organizing support, and get-out-the-vote efforts that unions have bestowed on card check supporters. The unions haven’t been able to collect enough votes to get the legislation enacted yet, but they are still working hard on it.