Union bosses: Big Labor and big money

Even though union membership is falling, the salaries of labor bosses continues to go up. And the staff at union offices is increasing too.

The bosses are real one-percenters.

From the 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.

It's not just the Boilermakers Union--the bosses at the National Production Workers Union and the Laborers International Union of North America are also raking in the cash.

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