Labor’s Free Ride

It began back in the Thirties, with the passage of the Wagner and Norris-LaGuardia Acts. Ever since then the government has been doing George Meany the favor of compelling millions of people to join labor unions, unmolested by the courts, Democratic or Republican Administrations, or the American Civil Liberties Union. But of all the abuses fathered by Wagner and Norris-LaGuardia, the most pernicious is the use by organized labor of union members’ dues for political purposes.

The law is very clear on this subject. Neither unions nor corporations may make outlays from their general funds to candidates or political organizations. In those instances in which corporate executives have done so and been discovered, they have been prosecuted. Not so in the case of labor leaders. It has only been since organizations like the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have entered the field that due process has been employed to restrain the labor moguls—and so far that restraint has been minuscule when compared to the magnitude of organized labor’s violations.

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Ralph de Toledano

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It began back in the Thirties, with the passage of the Wagner and Norris-LaGuardia Acts. Ever since then the government has been doing George Meany the favor of compelling millions of people to join labor unions, unmolested by the courts, Democratic or Republican Administrations, or the American Civil Liberties Union. But of all the abuses fathered by Wagner and Norris-LaGuardia, the most pernicious is the use by organized labor of union members’ dues for political purposes.

The law is very clear on this subject. Neither unions nor corporations may make outlays from their general funds to candidates or political organizations. In those instances in which corporate executives have done so and been discovered, they have been prosecuted. Not so in the case of labor leaders. It has only been since organizations like the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have entered the field that due process has been employed to restrain the labor moguls—and so far that restraint has been minuscule when compared to the magnitude of organized labor’s violations.