Whatever one thinks of the pros and cons of gay marriage, there is little doubt that some of your average union members out there are at least skeptical about the idea. So, why then, has organized labor given over $1 million dollars to a ballot measure that would essentially support gay marriage in California? That’s the question the Wall Street Journal asks this morning, in a very good editorial. Spending union dues in this fashion is nothing new for the organized labor movement. Too many union leaders consider the dues of their hard working members as an some sort of political (and sometimes personal) piggy bank. In fact, if you search through union financial records, you can find countless examples of Big Labor donating to gay advocacy organizations, the Rainbow Coalition, ACORN, etc. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a noted scholar at the Hudson Institute and the former Chief Economist at the Department of Labor, uncovered many such expenditures in a report she released last year on union spending. There is no doubt that the leaders of organized labor today also consider themselves part of a broader left-wing political front. The reality however is that a lot of union members – and would be union-members – do not subscribe to that political view. Unions might be more attractive to workers if they stayed out of political fights like this and instead focused solely on helping workers – but with the state of union leadership today, there is little chance that will happen.
