This Labor Day, two New Jersey teachers are suing their union for allegedly funneling more than $40 million in mandatory dues to bankroll the union president's own gubernatorial campaign — and that scandal is just one front in the war on the American worker.
While union bosses loot rank-and-file paychecks to fund their political careers, tech oligarchs spent the holiday weekend declaring the working class obsolete — conveniently while selling the hardware that supposedly makes you redundant. The institutions built to protect workers are serving themselves.
The lawsuit, filed by Roselle teacher Dr. Marie Dupont and Hamilton Township teacher Ann Marie Pocklembo, alleges then-NJEA president Sean Spiller misused tens of millions in mandatory dues through the union's Garden State Forward PAC. That PAC sent more than $40 million to groups backing Spiller's 2025 gubernatorial bid, according to the suit.
Here's the steal: NJEA membership cards — the contracts between teachers and the union — explicitly told members that PAC contributions were voluntary and separate from regular dues. Pocklembo said she double-checked with the union to confirm she was not supporting its PACs. The teachers say the union broke its own contract.
The money flowed from mandatory dues to Garden State Forward, then to two union-affiliated political groups: Working New Jersey and Protecting Our Democracy. Spiller chaired the latter. "It looks to me like an obvious conflict of interest when the union president benefits from backroom deals to fund his own campaign with members' money," Pocklembo said.
A separate IRS complaint from the New Jersey Policy Institute alleges the NJEA failed to report Garden State Forward contributions — totaling more than $100 million since 2013 — as political activity. Only after the IRS came calling did the NJEA adjust its latest federal return, for the first time classifying the contributions as political spending. The pivot raises the obvious question: why were tens of millions reported differently for years?
Across the Delaware River, the pattern repeats. Todd Burns, a Pennsylvania utilities investigator, earned the highest performance rating and applied for a promotion — only for a less qualified, less senior friend of the hiring manager to get the job. Burns went to his union, AFSCME Council 13, expecting it to defend the contract it negotiated. The union put its insiders first.
Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared "AGI has arrived" on X. OpenAI president Greg Brockman announced "Welcome to the AGI era" after unveiling GPT-6 Astra. Both men have what economists might politely call an incentive: Huang sells the hardware. Astra was trained on Nvidia equipment. Huang promptly announced 400,000 more GPUs coming online. The man declaring human civilization changed sells the machinery required to change it. Newsweek noted the awkwardness but buried the lede — the self-dealing is the story.
And the data cuts against the doom. An Economist analysis found the AI boom has created roughly 1 million American jobs, compared to roughly 200,000 layoffs attributed to AI since mid-2023. America added 162,000 jobs in August. Unemployment sits at 4.1 percent. Occupations closest to the AI boom have added roughly 730,000 jobs above trend since 2022.
The jobs aren't disappearing. They're just not being protected by the people collecting dues to protect them.
The question this Labor Day isn't whether robots will replace you. It's who's going to fight for you when the people taking your money are spending it on themselves.
