One reason unions have very little corruption is that they are some of the most financially transparent institutions in the country, far more than corporations or even other non-profit organizations.  Unions have to disclose the salaries of EVERY individual employee and disbursements to every person or organization they do business with.  (Go to the DOL's Internet Disclosure page for more)

Corporations, on the other hand, don't even have to disclose details of taxes they pay to the government, much less what they pay their employees or the details of who they do business with. Over at Progressive States, we profiled one state, Montana, which is trying to bring some transparency to corporations by forcing them to disclose core details about their corporate income tax payments.

The author of the bill, Sen. Jim Elliott, was outraged a few years ago by disclosures that 40% of the top 500 national and multinational businesses in Montana paid under $500 in corporate income taxes, less than most individual Montana taxpayers.  Unable to get specific details, he was angry that he and other lawmakers had to write tax policy without knowing which companies are abusing loopholes to evade paying their fair share of taxes.

So he filed his bill and the Montana State Senate approved the bill, SB 242, last week.  As Sen. Elliott recently wrote in his locally distributed column:

There are several valid reasons for shining light into the world of corporate finance, not the least of which is because they do have inordinate political power. If we require financial disclosure of the President, Senators, and Members of Congress, why not require it of the most powerful political force?

One reason Enron and other corporations can perpetuate such large-scale scams on the public is that they don't have to file public tax disclosures.  The profits they report to shareholders is vastly different from what they report to the IRS, yet the only information the public has on a corporation are the cooked books they report to shareholders, not their IRS filings.  So companies like Enron are allowed to use creative accounting to lie to the public about non-existent profits, even as they secretly file tax returns with the IRS showing that they have no real profits.

The IRS cannot legally disclose such tax filings on individual corporations and only one state, Wisconsin, allows limited disclosure on state corporate taxes -- and that requires costly fees by the public to obtain.   The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently released a report with a blueprint for states across the country to parallel Sen. Elliott's efforts in Montana to promote tax disclosure across the states.  And it would be nice if the federal government required public tax disclosure as well.

But the comparison is striking.  Here you have corporations that regularly and systematically lie to the public about non-existent profits in their SEC filings, even as the government allows their tax returns to remain secret, yet labor unions are required to disclose every penny they spend and the salary of every employee.

And unions are the ones with the image of shadowy corruption?  It's a testament to the power of corporate propaganda in this country.