"Farmworkers Reap Little as Union Strays From Its Roots" LA Times article

[More Than A Feeling]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ufw8jan08,0,6225953,full.story?coll=la-home-local

Here is a brief summary from the top of the article:

Today, a Times investigation has found, Chavez's heirs run a web of tax-exempt organizations that exploit his legacy and invoke the harsh lives of farmworkers to raise millions of dollars in public and private money.

The money does little to improve the lives of California farmworkers, who still struggle with the most basic health and housing needs and try to get by on seasonal, minimum-wage jobs.

Most of the funds go to burnish the Chavez image and expand the family business, a multimillion-dollar enterprise with an annual payroll of $12 million that includes a dozen Chavez relatives.

The UFW is the linchpin of the Farm Worker Movement, a network of a dozen tax-exempt organizations that do business with one another, enrich friends and family, and focus on projects far from the fields: They build affordable housing in San Francisco and Albuquerque, own a top-ranked radio station in Phoenix, run a political campaign in support of an Indian casino and lobby for gay marriage.

Read the rest of the article. It does not paint a pretty picture, at least as far as the farm workers are concerned. Overall, it seems to me that the picture is mixed. Affordable housing and gay marriage are good things, and a union owned radio station is better for countering RW radio. Plus, how much is the UFW's supposed failures to organize a outgrowth of anti-union feeling in this country in general? On the other hand, perhaps the union has lost focus, and needs to get back to what was its core mission. Hiring non-union workers isn't cool, either. If even unions won't hire union workers, then who else will?

What do you all who are more familiar with unions think of this? (Unions haven't been my area of focus, but I saw this article mentioned on mydd.com, and I thought it would fit in this new forum.)