Last Sunday New Yorkers woke to a full-page ad in the New York Times, sponsored by Change to Win, a group of unions that broke away from the AFL-CIO in 2005. The ad said, “Members of the 110th Congress—we’re doing our part, America needs you to do yours.”

The election may be over, but union spending of members’ hard-earned dollars for dubious purposes clearly is not.

This past election cycle, the AFL-CIO budgeted $40 million on get-out-the-vote operations, $5 million more than in 2004. In addition, spending on political action committees by the top 10 unions totaled over $16 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Political spending by the top 10 union “527 committees,”issue advocacy groups with looser spending limits, exceeded $38 million.

There’s nothing wrong with spending money on politics. Americans spend more money on potato chips than on politics, and politics has more far-reaching consequences. What is troubling is that union dues paid by Americans for collective bargaining, benefits, and administrative overhead are being siphoned off into politics.

And politics isn’t the only area where some unions are frittering away union dues. A close examination of the new union financial disclosure forms reveals unusual expenditures by certain unions on golf outings, restaurants, and clothing. These forms are known as LM-2 forms, and are available electronically for all to see on the U.S. Department of Labor Web site, http://erds.dolesa.gov/query/query.do.

Take the Food and Commercial Workers Local Union 1, headquartered in Oriskany, N.Y. In 2005 the union spent over $26,000 on golf outings. Officials made trips to the Dutch Hollow Country Club in Owasco, N.Y., and to the Terry Hills Golf Course in Batavia, N.Y. The expenditure was listed as “general overhead,” but it’s a good bet that most union members, whose dues funded these trips, didn’t tee up.

The Service Employees Local 1199, headquartered in New York, listed substantial expenditures for clothing, food, hotels, and entertainment. The union spent $462,671 on what it terms clothing sales, although no receipts from the sales appear on the forms. It spent $343,185 on entertainers and $520,580 on food services, and its hotel bills in locations ranging from New York to South Carolina and Puerto Rico totaled over $3 million.

UNITE HERE was formed in 2004 as a merger of apparel and hotel and restaurant unions. It lists $20,990 for the “Spin Project,” paid to the Independent Media Institute in San Francisco. It’s not every organization that has the honesty to label its message “spin.” The question is why food workers, some of the lowest paid in the workforce, should be paying for it.

More intriguingly, UNITE HERE lists an $18,000 donation to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition, which it terms a “charitable organization.” In reality, Rainbow/Push extorts corporations by calling for mass boycotts of their products, boycotts that are not lifted until firms see the light and contribute to Rainbow/Push.

Politics, restaurants, golf, and entertainment aren’t all. Another way that some unions waste members’ funds is by paying officers and employees extravagant salaries. The unions that have the highest spending on entertainment don’t necessarily have the highest salaries. The LM-2 forms list not only gross salary but also a higher level of total disbursements that reflect expenses and some benefits.

The Transportation Communications Union in Briarwood, N.Y., paid Edward Byrne, its secretary treasurer, and Peter DeVito Sr., its executive vice president, $453,000 in gross salary. The president, Lori Ames, received $240,000, just over 50% of the sums disbursed to her male colleagues, an amount that seems ripe for a wage discrimination suit. Ten other employees were paid above $200,000.

The Longshoremen, who enjoy fine dining and last year spent $17,765 at the Atrium Restaurant on Washington Street, paid their secretary treasurer, Robert Gleason, $430,000. Their president, John Bowers, made $414,000, and nine officers and employees each received total disbursements exceeding $200,000.

In comparison, the president of UNITE HERE, John Wilhelm, brings in a relatively modest salary of $248,000, although with disbursements it comes to $390,000.

These officials are getting paid more than will Governor-elect Spitzer, whose annual salary will be $179,000, plus, however, a governor’s mansion, and more than Senator Clinton and other members of the New York congressional delegation, who are paid $165,200 without housing.

The salaries for union bosses and employees are a dramatic contrast with those of unionized workers. New York auto technicians are paid on average $35,000 annually, and heavy truck and tractor-trailer drivers are paid $39,000. Food preparation and serving-related occupations are paid between $16,000 for waiters and fast-food cooks and $44,000 for chefs and head cooks.

Naturally, American workers object to their dues being spent on hefty salaries to union officials. That explains why the percent of private-sector workers who are unionized declined to 8% in 2005 from 24% in 1973.

Although federal law gives union members the right to a refund of that portion of their dues used for political activity, no laws allow union members to demand the return of dues used for golf, entertainment, hotels, and inflated salaries for union officers. Fortunately, union members can use the new online LM-2 financial disclosure forms to look up their union and see how their dues are spent.

Now that the unions have succeeded in their goal of a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and Senate, it remains to be seen whether congressional support for transparent union financial disclosure laws — and their enforcement — will continue. After all, Congress may wish to make it easier to hide the millions of dollars in union dues spent on political campaigning for primarily Democratic candidates.

This would be a disservice to dues-paying union workers. Corporations have to reveal their finances to shareholders and to the Securities and Exchange Commission and nonprofits are accountable to the Internal Revenue Service. Unions safeguard billions of dollars in assets on behalf of their millions of members and should be held to similar standards.

If transparency and enforcement were to be reduced, this would show that Congress stands with the elite, highly paid union officials rather than with working Americans. In large letters, the New York Times ad said, “We expect Congress to do its part.” Congress’s part is to make sure that union workers can find out where their money is going.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of Hudson’s Center for Employment Policy. From 2003 to 2005, she was chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor.