The crackdown on labor

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As we noted around these parts a few weeks ago, the Bush administration has decided to “get tough” on labor unions by forcing them to submit detailed financial statements. On the face of it, this sounds like a decent way to increase accountability and transparency among unions, to the benefit of members. But come on, this is the Bush administration, who honestly believes that’s the intention here? Right. As Nathan Newman points out, this is nothing more than a cheap way to bury organized labor in red tape, thus further eroding union influence. Hey, Grover Norquist openly bragged about it before the election—if Bush won, he would destroy organized labor.

But okay, what if unions really do need better transparency and accountability? Surely there must be some corruption among the ranks of organized labor? Well, Nathan looks into at least one accusation of corruption and finds it… wanting. Turns out the International Plumbers Union was fined $11 million for mismanaging a multi-billion dollar pension fund. Well, okay, there wasn’t actually any crime involved. It was more that the trustees could have been more efficient with an investment in the Florida Westin Diplomat hotel, a move that even the Department of Labor couldn’t bring itself to call a bad investment.

I’m not going to defend corrupt union bosses getting rich off their workers. But in the grand scheme of corrupt practices the White House could crack down on in the world, this is peanuts. As anyone who’s read, well, anything at all about Iraq knows, the White House clearly isn’t interested in transparency and accountability for mismanaged construction projects. There’s something else going on here.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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