Today’s Washington Post has a good rundown of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s alleged pay-for-play deal with a high-ranking Service Employees International Union boss we’ve been telling you about. This paragraph is particularly revealing:

[SEIU president Andrew] Stern has emerged as a central player in the labor movement by pressing aggressively to expand union rolls, along the way irritating AFL-CIO leaders, whom he accused of being complacent, and leaders of some SEIU chapters who accuse him of cutting deals with business and government that enhance his profile while undercutting local chapters. Among his victories was Blagojevich’s decision to let SEIU, and not the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, organize Illinois’ child-care workers.

Stern’s personal machinations to secure his own PR are entirely at odds with workers’ interests. But more importantly, take a look at that last sentence again: "Among his victories was Blagojevich’s decision to let SEIU, and not [AFSCME], organize Illinois’ child-care workers."

Far Left magazine The American Prospect summarized the SEIU-AFSCME battle in 2005. In Blagojevich’s first race for governor in 2002, the SEIU provided a thousand volunteers in the weeks before the primary election, enough to push the Congressman over his nearest rival by just one percent. As governor, Blagojevich repaid the SEIU by issuing executive orders that effectively ensured that the SEIU (and not AFSCME) would "represent" the 5,000 home-care workers and 48,000 child-care workers in the state.

This potentially unconstitutional scheme to impose monopoly bargaining on home care providers has resulted in many hundreds of thousands of new forced union dues payers across America. It’s a huge new cash cow for union bosses.

The fact is, if union bosses spend millions of dollars to get a candidate elected, they expect something in return. Blagojevich was happy to oblige.

Sometimes, that means giving union bosses like Andy Stern and his ilk close access to governors like Blagojevich to let them pick political appointments. Sometimes, it means legislative power grabs like the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (aka the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill). And, of course, union bosses use their political power precisely to gain even more revenue and political power.

And that’s the bigger picture in the Blagojevich scandal — Big Labor’s influence wouldn’t be possible without forced unionism.