Political Use of Union Dues

Re “Battling the Unions Is the New Class War,” Commentary, Dec. 8: Jesse Jackson is writing farce, after first experiencing it as tragedy. Certainly, his point that the union movement helped improve America is correct, but a union’s primary mission is to improve the lot of its members (higher wages, retirement plans, health care), not to pretend to environmental science or national political involvement.

I belong to the Screen Actors Guild. Early in the ’96 election cycle I wrote to my leadership that according to the 1988 Supreme Court decision in Teamsters vs. Beck, I was entitled to a refund of that portion of my union dues used for political purposes. I had to ask, or not know.

Gov. Pete Wilson is trying to enable the enforcement of that ruling, which has gone unenforced for nine years. Jackson doesn’t seem to trust that informed union members will support their own interests. Someone has lost faith.

L.L. GINTER

Marina del Rey

* Jackson hit the proverbial nail on the head. It seems it does take a man of God to properly and accurately illuminate the dark side of the “rabid” right’s nefarious and cowardly pogrom against nearly every segment of our society wherein selective disenfranchisement has squelched the power of the collective voice. Jackson sees how a powerful conservative (sic) group of predominantly white males has formed a veritable hunting party whose prey consists of those least capable of defending themselves: immigrants, minority men, women and children, the poor and the less-educated among us.

I did not include unionized workers in the list because I understand why they were saved for last by the likes of Wilson, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott. It is because they know how disastrously this late component of their plan might, and most likely will, backfire. It might have been a workable plot had its creators not underestimated the resolve of the individual union members or the extent to which that little word “organized” is honored and tended among their ranks.

G. FRED LOGAN

Laguna Niguel