Organized labor PAC funding

Let’s talk today a little bit about Political Action Committee funding, or better known as a PAC. Without a doubt, you’ve seen this line thrown around in news articles or heard someone say it when they are debating with other candidates. The old saying is “There are two things in politics: Influence and money.” While this is mostly true, there reasons to participate financially.

The union version of this involves you and your political action chair sitting down and talking about why it’s important to get involved financially, and then asking for a monthly political action fund donation at either state level, international level, or both. If you agree, you then sign a sheet of paper authorizing money to be taken out of paycheck monthly. In our union we have members that don’t give a single dollar to either, and we have members who give substantial amounts of money to both.
Money is still flowing to campaigns though, and a majority of it is from big businesses.

“Why would I give the union more of my money?”

Your actual union dues are made up of a certain percentage of your base salary. There are other items that are taken out sometimes. For us as firefighters, we have “house funds”, short term and long term disability, and life insurance policies (if you elected to have it) taken out along with monthly dues. So the total amount you see coming out isn’t just union dues itself. Political Action doesn’t come out of your dues you pay. You have to actually sign an authorization form to have dues taken out. This isn’t our local union’s process, this is the law.

“Money from union dues goes to support politics already and I hate it.”

There’s nothing wrong with hating politics, in fact it can be a headache sometimes. As millennials, we like changes to happen fast. But the bottom line is that you can shield yourself from it all you want, but the political world will continue to spin either way. I look at it as myself and other firefighters can influence the people who are making decisions about my job its safety, or some old washed up politician with corporate interests can. The Millennial generation should look at it the same way. We can protect our planet, or bury our head in the sand and let big oil do it. Same to be said with our labor laws. If you don’t like getting out of college with a bachelor’s degree and having no options for work, you can help change what is legal for workers. Labor unions are constrained by some of the most stringent PAC laws in the country. Big businesses, in fact, have almost no rules at all. They don’t have to publicly disclose anything according to federal law, except for ads that they take out. There is no time frame for them to report them. Also, shareholders have no right to know who the corporation is supporting. Unions on the other hand have to opposite situation. They have to report everything. If they don’t, they are fined. Everything you could ever want to know about the political spending of a union is accessible to you by a public disclosure request. This isn’t the same for Boeing, Wal-Mart or Exxon. The array of laws that unions have to follow for political funds equates to one thing: complete transparency. If you heard a story about something that occurred in the 1950’s with unions and political money, and still believe that is occurring, you should probably get out from the rock you’re living under and take off your tinfoil hat.

“Unions only support democrats.”

Again, this statement is false. Unions only support the people that support them. Historically, that tends to be the more left leaning side. The Democratic Party used to have true labor concerns as a large portion of their platform. Although they have wandered away from it in recent times, I would suspect that labor will get recaptured in the coming years. I’ve met with a couple of Republicans that support firefighter issues recently, even in the extreme state of polarization that is occurring in politics right now. As firefighters are in a unique situation. Most of the firefighter union membership as a whole tends to be more conservative, and the right leaning party likes to have “public safety” on their side. My advice is always, “Lobby your hobby and vote your paycheck”. Millennials need to get involved so they can lobby what is important to them. It’s crucial to be involved politically on multiple levels, including financially. If you take a look around the country, you can see what is happening to organized labor and see what is coming at us. 

In the 2016 election, 68% of PAC fund money came from businesses, 9% came from ideological contributions, and 4% came from labor. Monetarily, we cannot compete with corporate interests. But organized labor and millennials in general have the tenacity that some overpaid, soft CEO doesn’t. 

Cheers,

Brandon