Blowing the whistle on Big Labor
By Michelle Malkin • September 3, 2007 01:30 AM
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/09/03/bl ... big-labor/

The Center for Union Facts is marking Labor Day by reminding Americans of union fatcats and the corruption of Big Labor. The state of the unions is…not good:

* Union membership is down to 7.4 percent of private sector employees and down to 12 percent overall (government employees are highly unionized, at a rate of 36.2 percent) – that’s down from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983

* Union bosses continue to be criticized for their lavish salaries, even while their membership declines

* Even after several major unions split from the AFL-CIO to improve their growth, some have found little success
Things are so bad with one carpenters’ union that it outsourced picketing duties to homeless people.

As I noted a few days ago, Big Labor is busying itself these days suing the government to protect illegal alien workers instead of American workers, lobbying for amnesty, and working to undermine employer sanctions for businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

In NYC, the traditional Labor Day parade has been cancelled amid massive corruption charges leveled against the head of the parade’s organizing union. The NYPost editorial board notes the symbolism:

The parade sputtered out entirely for most of the ’70s due to sparse attend- ance, and hasn’t even been held on Labor Day for the past decade.

Then again, this hasn’t exactly been a stellar year for the sponsoring organization, the Central Labor Council: Its former head, Brian McLaughlin, is under indictment for racketeering, embezzlement and fraud, to the tune of $2.2 million.

As U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said in announcing the indictment - which includes 44 counts and runs to 186 pages (here’s the PDF): McLaughlin’s alleged larceny “lends new meaning to the term ‘hand in the till.’ â€