According to an email received by a loyal Peak reader, it wasn't you who built your business, and it wasn't Barack Obama and the federal government who built your business. It was UNIONS. Here's what David Boundy, National Campaigns Director of the AFL-CIO had to say:
"Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and their wealthy cronies want you to think they built this country. But the truth is: WE built it. Working families built this country with hard work and the belief that work connects us all, and unions are the way we stand up for the principle that everyone’s work matters."
It's been made abundantly clear that the Romney/Ryan ticket is pro-families and pro-hardwork. But, are unions really "pro-worker" as Boundy claims? Unions have long outlived their usefulness of advocating for workers, as unions have morphed another arm of the Democratic Party, which makes some workers uneasy.
A recent report by the U.S. House Oversight Committee found that workers are uncomfortable with the amount of union money that is spent on political activites. From the report:
"Indeed, 69 percent government and non government union employees think that union leaders should stop spending union dues on politics, and 66 percent believe it to be unreasonable that such spending can occur without their consent."
And, in fact, not only do unions use member dues for political activities, dues also go toward the salaries of union bosses. Mindful of the fact that union members, on average, make approximately $48,800 per year, here is a list of the 2011 salaries of top union bosses from the Department of Labor:
- Mary Kay Henry, President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), earned $290,334;
- Gerald McEntee, President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal employees, AFL-CIO (AFSCME), earned $512,369;
- James Hoffa, General President of the Teamsters, earned $372,489;
- Dennis Van Roekel, President of the National Education Association (NEA), earned $460,060;
- Joseph Hansen, President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), earned $361,124, and
- Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), earned $493,859.
We're not denying that workers – unionized or not – have helped to make our country strong. Any entrepreneur can easily tell the tale of an employee who made a difference in his or her business, but it would be disingenuous to say that unions built businesses given the adversarial role with businesses they've taken in the past couple of decades.