Unions have been allowed to operate by a set of rules that if used by any other enterprise, would land the executives of those enterprises in prison. A common example is the immunity from violence allowed by unionistas during strikes, protests and other “protected concerted activities.” For the most part, unless you are a target for such violence, this disparity doesn’t affect you. However, perhaps a more dangerous rule immunity applies to the math that unions are allowed to use in managing (or mis-managing) their pension funds. Non-union private pension plans must use a government-prescribed and realistic interest rate when managing their funds. Unions are under no such restrictions and may use whatever interest rate assumptions they want when running their pension plans. As the recent Mine Workers of America pension debacle illustrates, this regulatory favoritism creates a fiscal train wreck, and a win-win for unions: the union delivered significant pension benefit promises for its members, and coal industry employers did not have to contribute enough to actually fund those promises. The UMWA now faces a devastating sinkhole of $5.6 billion in unfunded pension promises. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Senators from the coal-mining states are threatening to “use whatever means necessary” to lay the burden of union malfeasance at the feet of American taxpayers in the form of a government bailout – the first of its kind of a private pension fund. Should this occur, more than a thousand other private union pensions, with over $600 billion in unfunded liabilities, will be lining up to feed at the federal trough.