THINGS THAT BUG ME ABOUT UNIONS

I was born into a family of union activists and devoted over 40 years of my own life to working for unions, but there are a few things about them that truly “get my goat”—to say it politely.  I have touched on them in some of the roughly 1,400 FEDSMILL posts I have issued since 2011, but thought it might remove any doubt about my biases if I put them together in one piece.

Hedge Fund Unions—I look at the Dep’t. of Labor and IRS reports federal employee unions file annually to find those that appear to be closer to being hedge funds than unions.  Some unions have tens of millions salted away in investments and other assets that far exceed their existing liabilities, annual expenses, or financial obligations. They built this wealth by adopting a percentage-based dues system where member dues are a perpetual percent of their federal salary. That increases the union’s income every time the employee is promoted, gets a step increase, or is given an annual COLA adjustment. It also permits the union to perpetually increase its funds without ever having to justify a dues boost to the members at a convention. (Imagine if VISA or your mortgage lender was allowed to increase your payments every time your income went up.)

A related gripe is that unions that are aboard the percentage dues gravy train all-too-often just let the cash pile up without using it to improve the union or increase member benefits. If unions are going to just stockpile cash, members should demand some restrictions on these funds.  For example, require a member rebate once the surplus exceeds a certain amount, institute a new benefit for members, or roll out a new member incentive program.

If unions continue to hoard cash, the federal agencies they bargain with will soon start using those piles of union gold to demand that unions pay for their own official time and other negotiable perks.

Unchecked Union Presidencies (Finances) – Unions began largely to offset the massive, unchecked power of America’s earliest tycoons. Sadly, a few unions have organized themselves so that their national presidents have the same ability to be arbitrary, abusive, aloof and unresponsive.  The clearest examples involve situations where only the union president has control over or even access to the union financial details. While they often allow a staff member to know what they are doing, it is always someone they control through non-disclosure agreements and the threat of instant termination. So, I applaud systems like AFGE and NFFE have where the second highest nationally elected official at least has official access to the financial information or as a Secretary-Treasure is the person who implements the President’s financial decisions. Without someone else having formal implementation role in the union’s financial decisions, the national president can do a lot of questionable things with the money.

Unchecked Union Presidencies (Administration)– Some unions allow their national presidents to make significant decisions without being challenged.  This could be appointments to national bargaining teams, decisions over whether to arbitrate a local’s grievance, determining whether to fire a managerial staff member, etc.  Unions dealing with federal agencies ALWAYS demand the right to grieve and arbitrate the widest possible range of issues. Yet, those same unions allow their leadership to be immune from challenge even when the decision has immense consequences for an individual. National unions should be willing to let at least local officers and top staff members grieve and arbitrate significant decisions of the national union. It is hypocritical for national union presidents to cloak themselves in the equivalent of Papal Immunity. If unions ignore this long enough, do not be surprised if federal agencv LR negotiators demand the same kind of exemptions from the negotiated grievance process.

Ignoring Members’ Education – Yes, I know that unions negotiate contract rights and answer questions when members call. But the rights that federal employee union members have are vast. They exist not just in the negotiated contracts, but also federal regulations, statutes, and court decisions.  In my experience, the average employee knows about maybe 5 percent of their rights. So, why are not unions devoting a lot more effort toward informing members of their rights?  For example, why not weekly Do-It-Yourself quizzes to focus them on all their rights in the collective bargaining agreements and elsewhere.  Or maybe easy to use web pages that let members explore their rights in privacy before involving the union? Members do not read contracts when they come out, which means that they often fail to recognize when one of their rights has been violated.  Deeply training stewards about member rights is a big help, but that does not even reach 1% of the typical bargaining unit.  It is old school thinking and not enough.

Controlling Versus Serving Members – Unions hold conventions every two or three years where they not only elect officers, but also consider ideas members have for changing the way a union is run. Members usually have the right to propose amendments to the union constitution and bylaws. They can be as important as calling for a new dues system or as seemingly minor as requiring the national office to give every local president the contact information for every other local union president, e.g., name, email address, phone number, etc. Once the proposals are submitted, some unions allow their convention delegates to reach their own conclusions about how to vote. However, other unions activate something approaching a Vulcan mind-control program pushing the convention delegates to do what the national president wants them to do. The national leaders issue written recommendations about how delegates should vote on each issue, sprinkle union staff throughout the delegates to whisper in their ears what the national president wants, bad-mouth the motives of the people who proposed the amendment, push out misinformation about the proposal, limit the ability of the amendment sponsor to reach the convention delegates, etc. All these not so subtle mind-control mechanisms simply disrespects the judgement of the union’s members.

Closed-System Communications– A national union usually has something between dozens of locals and hundreds of them. But despite the historical commitment to “Solidarity” that unions boast about, some of them actively obstruct the ability of local leaders to interact with one another. How?  The national union simply does not share with the leader of every local the name, address, email, and phone number of every other local leader.  Without that, it is near impossible for local leaders to communicate among themselves, build coalitions, share observations, etc. Stated differently, it is very difficult for them to step outside the boundary lines the national union leader wants them to stay within. If a federal agency leadership tried to deny the union the ability to communicate with everyone in the bargaining unit, there would be mountains of litigation, Congressional petitions, etc.  So, why should national union leaders be allowed to deny the union’s local leaders the ability to communicate whenever they wish?