Union robber barons

By Daryl Montgomery and Jack Kemp

Now the Indiana State Teachers Insurance Trust has gone bust, two Heritage Foundation authors detail the situation in National Review Online. A law designed to protect them did not hold the union accountable, perhaps caused by the teachers believing the only people capable of being Robber Barons are capitalists. The teachers have been robbed and their insurance fund is barren:

'Sunlight protects against corruption and unethical practices. Congress passed the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) in the wake of scandals in the 1950s involving ties between organized labor and organized crime. Congress believed that workers had a right to know how their unions spent their dues. Lawmakers hoped that transparency would discourage kickbacks to the mob.

For over 40 years, however, the Department of Labor barely enforced the law. The disclosure forms allowed unions to list multimillion-dollar line items for “other” and “miscellaneous” expenses with no further details. In practice, the law did nothing to hold unions accountable.'

Tha Obama administration is loosening reporting regulations for labor unions, inviting more such abuses by labor bosses.