This weekend, Stefan Gleason wrote a great op-ed piece about the corruption of labor unions. One of the centerpieces of democracy, the secret ballot, is a road-block for labor union leaders and organizers who aim to force their will upon the workplace:

In June, a narrowly divided (National Labor Relations) Board voted to reconsider prior precedent that bars employees from demanding expedited secret ballot elections to throw out an unwanted union imposed on them as a result of a "card check" drive.

Appearing at a news conference on Capitol Hill in support of related legislation introduced by Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., that would require secret ballot elections in all cases, Dana employee Clarice Atherholt explained: "We're simply asking for a secret ballot vote so that we can have a say in our future without being intimidated or harassed."

Unfortunately, Big Labor and its partisans don't agree. Sens. John Kerry, John Edwards and Kennedy, along with 14 other senators and 31 members of Congress, recently joined together to file a "friend of the court" brief arguing against Atherholt and the other disenfranchised workers.

Before I write about labor unions, I should probably begin with a full disclosure: I am an industrial laborer. To be specific, I work in a paper mill and I am a member of the local labor union. I live in Virginia, a right-to-work state, and union membership is not compulsory where I live. I am a member of the local union because I have chosen to join, not because I have had to. I joined the union because I wanted to be able to vote on the labor/management issues that affect me. As I see it, joining the union was a no-brainer. Membership at my mill is close to 100%.

I believe that the good wages I enjoy and that the relatively safe and usually comfortable workplace I work in are largely mine because the labor union fought for them years ago. I know that there was a time when factory work (in general and at my specific mill) wasn’t much of a life. The wages were low, the conditions were more dangerous, and workers felt owned by the mill. I know that the unions fought long and hard to change things, and I benefit from that change. For that, I am grateful to those who came before me. I know that without them, my life wouldn’t be as good as it is today.

I also know that things have changed.

Both locally and nationally, labor unions are the most corrupt, ineffective, disingenuous organizations in the country today. On a local level, my experiences with our union have been almost entirely negative. I’ve learned that, locally, my union representation is indifferent to the needs and concerns of most of the workers in the mill. Our union (and this is typical) is steered by officers and executive committee members who hold the same older seniority ranks. Therefore, they’re only concerned about issues that affect people who have older seniority. The standard response from shop stewards and officers when a younger person goes to them with a problem is ”Contractually, there’s nothing we can do about it.” However, when an issue affects workers who have more seniority, then they try to rally up the troops and remind us that we’re in a “brotherhood,” that we must “stand together,” and that a union is “like a family.” Frankly, it’s bullshit.

On a national level, it’s worse. Labor Unions spend millions of dollars collected from their membership to campain for Democrats. This may be fine with members who are democrats, but those members aren't a majority. I’m disgusted with the fact that some small amount of my union dues is going toward the Kerry campaign. I’ve managed to become a little bit of a gadfly at my mill by complaining about that. Most of my co-workers are conservative. They, like me, resent working for the Kerry campaign. And the number of us who support George W. Bush at my facility far outnumbers those who support Kerry. The irony would be funny, if it didn’t bother me so much: A factory with a parking lot full of cars with Dubya bumper stickers is itself full of workers paying union dues that contribute to the Kerry campaign. Short of dropping out of the union, there’s nothing we can do about it. And we're the lucky ones. In many states, the only way to change it is to quit your job. Read the following from the National Institute for Labor Relations Research:

Eighty percent of unionized workers laboring under forced-dues contracts added up to 8.5 million private sector employees in 1992. With 45% of those workers rejecting Bill Clinton at the polls, the fact is that nearly 4 million private sector employees were forced to contribute to Clinton's campaign with their compulsory union dues.

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1779, "is sinful and tyrannical." What was tyrannical then is tyrannical now.

Hopefully, there is some change to come. One more reason why it’s so important that we re-elect George W. Bush is that he has worked hard to force labor unions to tell their members what they are doing with our dues. Of course, big labor has fought the president tooth and nail. As Bush’s Department of Labor has pushed for reform of Labor Unions, the AFL-CIO has done everything it can to keep it’s deceitful leverage. From Human Events Online:

This all takes place in the wake of the 1988 Communications Workers v Beck Supreme Court decision where the court ruled that expenses made by a union not attached to the "financial core" of collective bargaining and other legitimate union functions, could not be made compulsory.

In other words, money spent by the union on political activity had to be refunded to any members who objected to the expense. In 2001, the AFL-CIO had $164,246,963 in expenses and 13,250,198 members. It spent over $40 million in the 2000 elections, engaging over 1,600 "coordinators" in 35 states, according to a February 2000 article in the Washington Post.

A 2001 paper by Charles Baird written for the Smith Center, projects that total union in-kind donations in the 2000 election cycle alone, if similar to that of the AFL-CIO, could reach $900 million.

Unions have tried to avoid the Beck decision and retain their political influence by listing no political expenses on their LM2 disclosure forms. Because Beck was never enforced, they were never required to list their political expenses, and even their legitimate expenses were grouped in such large amounts as to be almost meaningless.

It bothers me to see Kerry speaking before crowds of cheering workers at his rallies, because I feel that those crowds are largely made up of “heritage Democrats,” people who vote Democratic because they always have, their father always did, their grandfather always did, and they believe with religious fervor that the Democrats honestly represent the “little guy.” It bothers me to see people who never question what they’ve been taught and never see through the lies, and even become hostile toward those who disagree.

But, it bothers me more to know that those of us who have seen liberalism for what it is and hold conservative values are often forced to contribute to the campaigns of those who don’t represent our core beliefs.