Labor law fails to protect whistleblowers

The ethics of big labor tend to be completely backward, protecting the corrupt while punishing the diligent. One reason why is a federal labor law that fails to protect union officials when they try to protect their members from crime, as James Sherk writes in National Review’s “Corner” blog. In a recent article that appeared...

The ethics of big labor tend to be completely backward, protecting the corrupt while punishing the diligent. One reason why is a federal labor law that fails to protect union officials when they try to protect their members from crime, as James Sherk writes in National Review’s “Corner” blog.

In a recent article that appeared in the National Review, Sherk detailed the story of the president of an International Union of Operating Engineers, or IUOE, local in Los Angeles who found evidence that funds were being siphoned from his local’s apprenticeship fund and tried to put an end to it. But instead of backing him up, his superiors at the IUOE had him removed from his post. The embezzler got promoted. And the lawyer from the IUOE’s national office, who should have been trying to get his bosses to do the exact opposite of what they did, is in line for a plum job with the National Labor Relations Board. (Be sure to check out Sherk’s article – the little details make this whole thing priceless.)

As Sherk puts it, “Unlike employees in many other industries, union officers lack whistleblower protections. The law does not prevent unions from punishing employees for exposing corruption.”

Even a local union official is vulnerable to retaliation when he or she calls attention to wrongdoing within a union. And if that’s the case, what chance does an individual union member stand when union bosses fail him?

The failure to look out for whistleblowers is of a piece with a labor law that gives union bosses broad powers with little accountability for how those powers are used. The whole system at times seems based on the assumption that union officials can do no wrong, and that workers can trust union bosses to never err. We should all know by now that just isn’t so. For instance, when Chicago Teachers Union’s demands contribute to nearly 1,500 Chicago school teachers losing their jobs, it should be pretty clear that union bosses aren’t infallible.

So why do we treat union bosses as if they never fail? Illinois labor law should be changed so that workers have more choices, and union officials are more accountable to the men and women they represent.