Labor Unions Spend $25 Billion on Political Campaigns, but Most Is Never Made Public: Analysis

Political campaign spending by labor unions not reported to the government could reach $25 billion, 90 percent of which goes to Democrats.

President Joe Biden addresses union workers at Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 in Philadelphia, Pa., on Sept. 4, 2023. Mark Makela/Getty Images

Journalists reporting on union political activities typically cite the figure of $54 million as the measure of labor campaign and candidate advocacy spending in 2022, but the actual total is closer to $25 billion, according to a new analysis of mandatory expenditure reports by worker organizations.

The $54 million represents the total derived from union reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for political action committees (PAC) spending during the 2022 campaign cycle.

But the analysis by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) of unions’ LM-2 reports to the Department of Labor, as well as additional unreported spending by the labor groups, reveals much more.

The LM-2 documents cover overall spending by labor unions, which during the 2021-2022 period reached $50 billion. Democratic candidates, causes, and committees typically receive more than 90 percent of all labor union political spending.

“The vast majority of what unions spend to influence elections and policymaking is not reported to the federal government as political activities. Some expenditures are improperly labeled as ‘grants’ or ’general overhead.' Others are tucked away in the budgets of smaller union affiliates that aren’t required to file full financial disclosures,” according to the NILRR report.

“However, the bulk of unreported political power is wielded by government union officials. They’re armed with the monopoly power to negotiate salaries, pensions, and hiring practices for entire swaths of federal, state, and local government workers. This makes monopoly bargaining in the public sector, by its very nature, political,” the report said.

“Public sector unions exist solely to change government employment policies. They have legal leverage over the policy process that other political groups do not have. Consequently, the money spent staffing, organizing, and promoting government sector unions has more of a direct impact on politics than whatever other groups spend to persuade voters,” the report continued.

“When we take into account all the inherently political money spent by public sector unions, Big Labor’s true total political spending for the 2021-2022 political cycle was over $25 billion,” according to the report.

(Left to right) AFL-CIO and AFGE National VA Council, Eric Jenkins is joined by former Army Capt. Debra Gipson, National MEB/PEB Representative, The American Legion, Gerardo Avila and Assistant National Legislative Director, Disabled American Veterans, Paul Raymond Varela during a House Veterans Affairs Committee, Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee hearing on 'Defined Expectations: Evaluating VA's Performance in the Service Member Transition Process' in the Cannon House Office Building, May 29, 2014, in Washington.  Rod Lamkey/Getty Images

Spokesmen for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents non-federal public employees, did not respond to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment on the NILRR analysis.

The Virginia-based NILRR is associated with the National Right to Work Committee, which advocates on behalf of state-level Right-to-Work laws that protect individuals’ right to keep their jobs without having to pay union dues as a condition of employment. Twenty-six states currently have Right to Work laws. Only 10.1 percent of all U.S. workers are union members, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 

Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee in Springfield, Va. Courtesy of the National Right to Work Committee

In addition to the impact of public sector unions, the major reason so much labor political spending goes unreported on official documents like FEC and LM-2 reports is labeling by union officials of such expenditures with names of non-political categories such as “Representation,” “Contributions, Gifts, and Grants,” “General Overhead,” and “Union Administration,” according to NILRR.

Among the examples of such mislabeled spending cited by the report are the $12,675,000 in grants given by the National Education Association (NEA) to the State Engagement Fund, a Left-of-Center “dark money” advocacy.

Similarly, “the AFL-CIO gave a total of $8,446,314 to Working America, a union-affiliated 501(C)(4) advocacy group that ’makes sure that the priorities of working people, their families and communities are heard from our state houses to the White House, from our city councils and school boards to the halls of Congress,'” the NILRR report said.

And the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America gave $8 million to the Strategic Victory Fund, another Left-of-Center 501(C)(4) that the non-partisan political research group InfluenceWatch.org describes as a fund “created to support Democrat causes on state-level issues in battleground states.”

Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Committee, told The Epoch Times that, despite the low percentage of workers who are union members, “President Joe Biden and other union cronies on Capitol Hill know that they must increase union bosses’ power to force workers to pay dues in order to keep the spigot of political cash flowing. We can only expect to see more of the same as a new election cycle gets underway.

“Voters should remember that Big Labor’s political machine is funded by rank-and-file workers—many of whom would be fired if they decided to stop paying dues—and is being manipulated not only to wipe out workers’ individual rights, but also to rig the system against taxpayers who are seeing their government hijacked by union special interests.”