Unions Heads as Power Elites

Here's an interesting little tidbit: if elected, Tim Hudak has indicated he would prohibit unions from using compulsory membership fees to support political causes. That might include active lobbying on behalf of a provincial political party over another. In fact, unions have gone out of their way this election to openly encourage their members to vote Liberal. The reason is obvious; the McGuinty government has given public-sector unions whatever they've demanded in wage settlements.

And of course there are other areas where unions are politically active. Most notably in choosing 'sides' in the Middle East Israel-Palestinian conflict. Israel bad, Palestinians good. So lobbying emphatically and with a selection of choicely-slanderous accusations that cannot be mistaken for anything but anti-Semitism in action, public-sector unions at all levels scream for divestment campaigns and product boycotts slamming Israel.

There's a quaint old impression that unions have a distinct obligation to their card-paying members revolving around collective bargaining processes. Unions, in other words, use all reasonable means at their disposal to influence the bargaining process to their members' advantage. In terms of sick days, holidays, pay scale, overtime, that kind of thing. Matters seem to have got a little out of hand, however, and those elected to head unions have taken to stretching their mandate.

Their mandate now seems to include influencing their union members that they should all reflect the same interests, values and condemnations of social-political conditions that have nothing whatever to do with union business. This does not sit too well with all union members, while likely the majority have little interest in what their leadership gets up to, as long as their raises come in on timely schedule.

Those union members who understand where their dues are being parcelled out and take exception to it when it diverts from actual union-employee-employer business can protest, but they are informed they can make their protest count at the polling booth. It's democratic up to a point. That point goes off on a tangent when it suits the union executive imposing their propaganda forays on the entire membership.

It should be illegal for union dues to funnel into a program that seeks to undermine the legitimate candidacy of a political party. Advertisement campaigns paid for by union dues to benefit one political party over another represents an infringement on each member's right to choose which political party he/she supports.

The nations comprising the Council of Europe, Australia and the United States recognize this to be a problem, and they have enacted laws in 47 nations to bar unions from forcing their members to pay for political action. Union members' dues should never be appropriated to run media campaigns in favour of a particular political party. Or to disfavour a foreign country, in a misguided attempt at exerting political pressure.

Those managing union dues and executive committees, on the other hand, if they are really devoted to these causes, can excuse themselves from their professional and elected offices, pool their resources, including personal funding, and go about that business of distorting the public weal on their own dime.