United Steelworkers Caught Contributing to Far-Left Political Party in Canada

Here’s a question: Why is the United Steelworkers taking its members’ money and spending on a “social-democratic” political party in Canada?

According this report, the Steelworkers here in the U.S. has sent nearly $70,000 to fund the NDP in Canada over the last four years.

OTTAWA – A U.S.-based union’s financial contributions to the New Democrats in Canada have raised some questions for the party’s federal branch.

The United Steelworkers of America’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pa., filed paperwork with the U.S. Department of Labor that shows tens of thousands of dollars sent to the NDP in Ottawa between 2007 and 2010.

Records show the American union sent $5,000 last year, more than $39,000 in 2009, $8,500 in 2008, and in excess of $17,000 in 2007 to the New Democratic Party of Canada or the New Democrats of Canada.

While union contributions to provincial political parties are legal, they were banned along with corporate donations at the federal level in 2007.

While the USW’s contributions may be legally questionable, what is more interesting is that the NDP is, by U.S. standards, a far-left political party:

The NDP evolved from a merger of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The CCF grew from  populist, agrarian and democratic socialist roots into a modern social-democratic party.

It just seems like, not only do today’s union bosses care little about what they do with their members’ money, but they seem not to care at all about the outsourcing their politics to other countries.

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