Taxpayers Forced To Pay Union Goon Salaries

You probably didn't know this, but your tax dollars are paying union officials whose only work is to screw you.

Taxpayers across the nation spend millions of dollars annually to pay the salaries and benefits of government employees to work exclusively for labor unions, an investigation by the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has found.

The practice is called "official time" in federal law, or "release" time in local labor agreements reviewed by the Institute. At the federal level, it cost taxpayers more than $129 million in 2009, the last year for which figures are available, according to a report from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Similar provisions have become standard in labor agreements between unions and governments at the state and local level. Finding the total cost would require analyzing every government union contract in every state, county, city and school district in the country, a monumental task that those who have studied the issue say has not been done.

But one example exposed by the Goldwater Institute's investigation shows the City of Phoenix spent about $3.7 million to pay its employees to do union work last fiscal year, which ended in June.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/09/money-nothing-taxpayers-foot-bill-government-union-work#ixzz1YajvA4Bn