Union "Fat Cat" Bosses pay themselves more while Rank and File union members are forgotten
By Will Fine, Executive Director National Alliance for Worker and Employer
Rights
According to the latest financial disclosure figures contained in LM-2 forms
released by the Department of Labor (2004) as a union member your dues have
helped to build an average salary for the Biggest "Fat Cat" union
bosses averaging $239,106 a year up from $223,691 (2002) and 220,399 (2001).
The continuing upward trend where the richer Union Bosses are only getting
richer at the expense of the average worker is clear in these examples:
President Douglas Dority of the United Commercial and Foods of the Twenty
Largest unions waged a pernicious 141 day strike and lockout affecting 59,000
Safeway Employees in Southern California took a huge slice of members’
dues with a gross salary of $633,793. Union's Knock Dority's Gross Salary
down to $329,000 a year plus retirement benefits and accrued vacation still
this hardship comes off the backs hardworking union members.
President Terence O' Sullivan of the Laborers International union has the
largest Gross Salary of them all at $405,620 though this number only tells
half the story. Mr. O' Sullivan refuses to tell us what he really makes
preferring to hide behind”no comment" from his spokesman Richard
Greer. Ostensibly, M.R. Greer tells us in the same breath that Mr. Sullivan
role at Union Labor Insurance Co. is only "Ceremonial" and that
M.R. Sullivan is not being paid for any services at ULLICO. We could not
confirm this information through NAWER.
Rounding out the top five Union Bosses making themselves richer off the
largest unions in 2004 are President Douglas McCarron of Carpenters and
Joiners of America whose gross salary was $348,923 and AFSCME President
Gerald McEntee's $316,916. Lastly, John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO took from
union members $247,500.
It is an outrage that Union Presidents on average (2004) make 6 to 15X
what the average union worker made in that same year.
The union bosses think that average union rank and file members will not
notice the trend of more and more of their hard earned union dues going
into their own bank accounts taken out of helping working families. These
same union bosses thought they would never get caught that the rank and
file union member backlash would never come about but guess what union members
are watching you M.R. Sweeney and M.R. O'Sullivan! Kay Oshel, Acting Director
of DOL's Office of Labor Management Standards, confirms this " The
members are the ones that union officers ultimately are responsible to adding
that the DOL believes that many union members do access these reports (
LM-2) based on the number of times its LM-2 disclosure site on the internet
is viewed." Clearly the issue here is union bosses no longer representing
the American worker. Rank and file union members now know they can watch
the corruption of union Bosses more closely through the DOL LM-2 forms.
It is time especially when the union bosses get paid above $250,000-$300,000
a year and union members get less and less in compensation and benefits
that they begin to think twice about their union membership. Who is really
representing the average worker if union bosses are enriching themselves
every year while not representing worker's on employment issues? Who is
really representing the average worker if union Bosses sell these same workers
out to an ill-conceived liberal democratic platform of social and political
values that rank and file members would never agree to if the union bosses
really believed in worker freedom.
