According to an article in The New York Times, United Long Term Care Workers, a Los Angeles-based local of the hyper successful Service Employees International Union, has a president whose spending has raised more than eyebrows. It has raised shouts of outrage and indignation. According to annual reports filed with the Labor Department, the local has paid $177,000 to a video production company run by the wife of the local’s president, has paid $ 90,000 annually to a day care center run by the mother-in-law of the local’s president, and paid $16,000 to a basketball team coached by the brother-in –law of the local’s president.
The local represents 155,000 workers who earn approximately $9 an hour. And their local spent their dues as they pleased. Those workers must feel as if they have been conned.
This is another example of how unions, claiming to represent working class individuals, spend union dues. There should be more government oversight of union activities, not less. Unfortunately, those who want to pass The Employee Free Choice Act want to let the unions control the American workplace. The result will be greater union dominance, less freedom of choice for workers and management, and more dues paid into union treasuries. And we already have a idea of how those dues will be spent!
