Stranglehold

Money Laundering, Unions, and Politicians

Some folks have been asking the national education unions to "show us the money". Lots of moola is being spent promoting the "spontaneous" orchestrated litany of outrage from the Boards of Trustees of 225 primary schools who are not complying with the Ministry of Education in the matter of national testing. Over $100,000 has been donated to the cause by the Principal's Federation--an educational union--to pay for PR spin, messaging, framing, tilting, and geeing up lazy media in their campaign against government education policy.

Well strike me down and call me a dead parrot, we hear you say. Where did the money come from? It came from you and me. That's right, you read correctly. The taxpayer forks over money to fund the workings of the school Boards of Trustees. The Boards of Trustees have donated to the principal's union, which in turn has used it to engage in a political campaign.

According to Kiwiblog, which has drawn on Whaleoil :

Now talking of the campaign against national standards, it is important to stress again that sadly the taxpayer is being forced to fund most of this campaign. Membership of the various principals’ associations is not paid for by the principal, but by the taxpayer through Vote Education.

Whale Oil has some documents showing the extent of the taxpayer funding – around $100,000 from the regional principal associations.

Whaleoil has the documented evidence here.

You might ask, How did this come about? Well, it is part of a collective bargaining contract with the Ministry of Education. The principal's union is to be funded by the taxpayer, in Vote Education, via the budget for Boards of Trustees. This came about during the previous Labour Government's reign--during which there was a deliberate objective of funding as much union activity as possible using taxpayer's money. It was payback and payoff time.  But the rort has been engineered through clandestine means, with taxpayer's money being laundered through various conduits until everyone either forgets or fails to see that we are all funding unions--who are working against (in this case) us.

This is scandalous. But it illustrates why all state sector unions must be de-registered. State sector unions inevitably engage in graft, fraud, corruption, and featherbedding--as is the case here. Our allegation is that corruption is intrinsic to state sector unions. What we see operating in the education sector unions is not an aberration--it is an inevitability.

Here is how the inevitability of corruption plays out. Unions are interested in two things primarily: increasing income for their hierarchy and members, on the one hand, and stifling competition for their members, on the other. Therefore, they have a vested interest in supporting and voting and campaigning for those politicians and political parties which will bestow more of your money upon them. And they do. Politicians need support, both monetary and organizational resources for campaigning. So a faustian bargain is struck. Unions support left-wing politicians and political parties, who, in turn, pay off their union supporters, using tax payers funds through the government spending budget. As time passes, state sector unions exert more and more control over government policies--regardless of who is occupying the Treasury benches--because they have the money, resources, and strangleholds over the operations of government departments.

This results in a perverse inversion of government where the taxpayers end up increasingly in servitude to state sector unions, and the unions, for their part, operating under the protection of a legislated monopoly, effectively hold us all to ransom. Instead of being public servants they become tyrants, holding all of us to ransom. We become the state servants. They become the masters of us all.

No Western democracy can long endure which allows state sector unions.