According to http://www.unionfacts.com:

<p>
“When most people think of violations of labor law, they think first of “Big Business.” But employees, employers, and labor organizations file thousands of charges each year-called “Unfair Labor Practices”-alleging violations of labor law by union officials.

The National Labor Relations Board's annual report for fiscal year 2005 included the number of Unfair Labor Practices alleged against employers and unions. Once again, union officials faced a disproportionately high number of allegations of wrongdoing, when compared to employers. The worst part: The vast majority of allegations said that members were the ones hurt by the union officials that are supposed to protect them.

The NLRB reported in 2005 that:

Unions faced a total of 6,381 allegations

82% of charges against unions alleged illegal restraint and coercion of employees (by comparison, the leading allegation against employers — at 53% — was for refusal to bargain)

594 charges were for illegal union discrimination against employees

The NLRB reported in 2004 that:

Unions faced a total of 6,917 allegations of wrongdoing

80% of those charges were filed by individuals

Unions filed more than 100 charges against other unions

81% of charges alleged illegal restraint and coercion of employees

More than 600 charges alleged illegal discrimination against employees, an increase of about 6 percent from 2003.”

But the CONSTANT illegality is what concerns me the most.

From a recent book review on the topic:

Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement | Book Reviews

Published by EH.NET (October 2006)

James B. Jacobs, Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2006. xxxii + 320 pp. $33 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8147-4273-0.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Melvyn Dubofsky, Department of History, Binghamton University.

A quotation from the labor leader David Dubinsky that opens this book summarizes the author's purpose: “Racketeering is the cancer that almost destroyed the American trade-union movement.” James Jacobs, the Warren E. Burger Professor of Law and Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice, NYU School of Law, amasses the evidence to prove Dubinsky's claim. Jacobs asserts that the “Mafia,” or as he prefers to label it, La Cosa Nostra (LCN), turned its penetration of trade unionism into its most profitable criminal activity and the accumulation of political power. In Jacobs' words, “the Mafia's unique political and economic position in American society derives from its base in the labor movement” (p. xii). The LCN's penetration of unionism explains organized labor's dwindling power (p. xiii). Indeed, in a twist on conventional explanations of “American exceptionalism,” Jacobs cites the criminalization of trade unionism as the most singular feature of the United States.

Jacobs makes his case for the links between LCN and trade unionism not in the manner of an historian or a social scientist, but in the style of an attorney preparing a brief for the prosecution. He vacuums up every available scrap and shred of evidence to establish historical and contemporary connections between crime and unionism, seldom pausing to subject the evidence swept up with his vacuum to careful analysis or doubt. In building his case for historical connections between criminals and unions, Jacobs draws upon any publication that buttresses his point, whether or not the source is reliable, scholarly, or verifiable. For the contemporary connections between crime and unionism, he relies on his own investigative work for a state commission in New York that probed organized crime's penetration of unions, research and publications that he compiled with the assistance of other attorneys and legal scholars, and the findings of a presidential commission on organized crime (PCOC). Jacobs appears incredulous about what he has done and what he continues to do, observing in a footnote, “… studying racketeering in the labor movement is no more antilabor than studying family violence is antifamily” (p. xiv).

Nevertheless, there is simply no doubt that some unions and their officials cooperated with organized crime, that criminals gained control of many union locals and few international unions, and that criminals and corrupt union officials enriched themselves at the expense of rank-and-file unionists, exploited businesspeople.  A recent book by Robert Fitch, Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise (New York, 2006), lays out a similar case with more sophistication. Anyone interested in the illicit activities that soiled such unions as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA), the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), as well as many locals in the building trades, will find all the evidence they desire in the pages of this book or Fitch's.

So it seems like I'm far from the only person who's pointing out the long-time connections between labor unions, corruption, and organized crime.  Guess that all of this presentation of FACT is just a “smear campaign,” right?  Yeah, sure

“With union memberships in decline nationally, a new Zogby International poll shows that just one-in-three (35%) non-union workers would consider voting to unionize their workplace, while a 56% majority would not.  The poll also finds workers nationwide are generally content with their jobs and their employers.

The survey of 802 workers nationwide was conducted June 14 through 21, 2005, and has a margin of error of +/-3.6 percentage points. Polling was performed by Zogby International on behalf of the Public Service Research Foundation.

The poll found broad-based consensus among employees against unionizing, with 56% of all non-union workers in the survey saying they would vote against bringing a union into their workplace. One-in-three (35%) indicate they would consider voting for a union, but just half of that group (16%) say they would definitely vote to unionize, while two-in-three of all those who oppose unionizing (38%) would definitely vote against unionizing.  These trends held for all age groups under 65, but was most noticeable among workers age 30 to 49, where three-in-five (60%) indicated they would not support unionizing.

This opposition to unionizing holds in every region of the country as well, with majorities in the Eastern U.S. (61%), South (50%), and Central/Great Lakes Region (60%) and a 49% plurality in the Western states all saying they would resist unionizing their workplace.

The survey also found men more likely to oppose unionizing their workplace, by a 61% to 50% margin versus women, and married people are more likely to oppose unionization than single people by a 61% to 51% margin.”