The Problem with Organized Labor

This news has been breaking recently, noting that this election the AFL-CIO will commit around $53 million to "electing a pro-worker president" and "six pro-worker seats in Congress."

That is to me, dear readers, disgusting. Using statistics from the AFL-CIO website, we can find the highest-ever recorded membership count for the "nation's Union Movement" as 14,070,000 members. This means that even if private sector unionization were at the 1974-5 rate (which I would bet it is not - most numbers put it at around a stunning 8% today), this would amount to $3.77 million per member spent on the Presidential Election. I can't make this up (nor would I, if I wanted to).

What's worse, the union is committing 200,000 "regional organizers" to the task, which no matter how you slice it, means 200,000 less people organizing for the rights of workers across the country. I'll remember that the next time the national union claims understaffing as a reason for not supporting a wildcat strike.

The workingpeople of this country deserve better than $53 million for the hope that a President might listen.