Union bosses’ salaries put ‘big’ in Big Labor

[Geee]

Washington Times:

There can be riches in standing up for the working class: The Boilermakers union president earned $506,000, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars more for travel expenses, while the Laborers union president made $441,000. The Transportation Communications Union leader made $300,000, bumped up to $750,000 with business expenses.

Patrick W. Flynn makes $435,000 a year in his capacity as treasurer of a 13,600-member Teamsters union local, and the $30,000 in business expenses he collects on top of costs associated with carrying out his duties around Mokena, Ill., approach that of a typical worker’s entire salary.

The average union member has no idea how much the leaders make, said Stanley Oubre, a retired Boilermaker in Louisiana — and can hardly relate.

“It sounds like we’re getting robbed,” Mr. Oubre said of the money earned by International Brotherhood of Boilermakers President Newton B. Jones. “I was a boilermaker for 35 years, and oh, my goodness, what we made was pennies” compared with that.

Over the past decade, top union officials’ compensation has risen even though membership has fallen, and the unions have added significantly more employees to their offices.

 

Enlarge Photo

Joseph V. Senese was paid $591,346 last year for his role in running the National Production Workers Union, based in the golf course-lined Chicago suburbs, which reported 600 members in 2006 and none in 2007, according to union disclosures.

Tax records confirm a pattern of high salaries, with base compensation of $583,000 in 2008, and show that Mr. Senese, in turn, issued hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash loans back to the union.