Big Labor’s media megaphone mutes California—and Silicon Valley—workers
The legacy media’s love affair with unions paints a rosy picture of Big Labor, but Maddie Dermon at National Review argues it’s more PR than reality. This glossy coverage risks sidelining concerns about corruption and overreach from Silicon Valley workers who prize independence. Are local workers buying the hype, or tuning it out?
Mainstream media have the nation convinced that organized labor is the best thing that has ever happened to the American workforce. But considering that just 10 percent of America’s workers are active dues-payers, record public support for unions is attributable to the media’s idolization of Big Labor rather than to the benefits of signing up for workplace representation. …
Despite the labor “renaissance” touted by unionized reporters writing for the New York Times and Huffington Post, just 6 percent of private-sector workers are members of a labor union, fewer “than at any time since the early 1900s.” While emphasizing the benefits of unionization, Big Labor’s favorite reporters fail to mention widespread corruption plus misuse of membership dues. In March 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce identified a slew of private-sector unions involved in more than “$3.2 million in embezzlement and $220,000 in bribery.”
This adds insult to injury for unionized workers unaware of the fact that Big Labor spends billions of dollars’ worth of membership dues paid under the guise of workplace representation to back left-wing candidates and causes during election season. Likewise, in the public sector, the four major government unions spent $2.79 billion of member dues on progressive political advocacy from 2021 to 2022, leaving just $554 million, less than 20 percent of total spending, for “representational activities.” Nor were public servants spared from Big Labor’s corruption. As of February 2022, the Freedom Foundation had filed 13 federal lawsuits implicating government unions in schemes to forge publicemployee signatures on union-membership forms, forcing workers to pay dues against their will. …
Luckily, Americans are taking note of the gap between glowing headlines and the reality of joining Big Labor’s rank and file. Though most express support for organized labor in theory, six in ten U.S. workers are uninterested in paying union dues themselves. Meanwhile, the mainstream media are losing credibility, too. Polls indicate that half of Americans express doubt regarding the traditional media’s commitment to truth, leading many to seek out local, independent alternatives.
[Editor's note: Despite California's status as one of the most pro-union states in America, membership in the Golden State has declined in recent years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.]
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