What does a union endorsement mean anyway?

More on the front-running LOLcandidate:

The United Mine Workers of America and the United Steelworkers have endorsed John Edwards.

Not really. Neither the miners nor the steelworkers polled their membership and based the endorsement on a majority or supermajority vote. Union officials--usually labor lawyers and professional bureaucrats--decided that their organizations should tell their members to vote Edwards.

Having grown up in a union household in a neighborhood full of them, I'm well aware that the connection between union "leadership", union policy, and workers is very much like the connection between banana-republican presidentes and banana-farming peasants. Somewhere along the line there's an election, but it sure isn't an open corner of society.

Union leadership has an agenda, centering on expansion of union power over workers, the better to collect dues from the unsuspecting and divert earnings to "salting" campaigns (agitation) and political causes. Telling the workers how to vote is just part of that. Whether they listen is another story; quite a few union members are known to vote Republican because they like tax cuts and their right to keep and bear arms.

Edwards has slimeballs and swindlers on his side. So what?