[From article]
Former United Food and Commercial Workers executive vice president Bill McDonough was paid $544,137 last year despite leaving the union in October.
Working as the collective bargaining director at UFCW headquarters in Washington, D.C., McDonough received a gross salary of $378,606 plus $3,000 in “allowances,” $88,851 for official business and $73,680 in other disbursements, based on the union’s 2014 report to the U.S. Department of Labor.
UFCW classified 80 percent of McDonough’s time as representational activity, which means his pay came both from member dues and mandatory “agency fees” UFCW takes from nonmembers in states without right-to-work laws.
[. . .]
Mandatory union fees taken from nonmembers cannot legally be spent on political activity, but UFCW agency fee payers were forced to subsidize activist groups the union paid for “representational” activities.
[. . .]
Meanwhile, Catalist — a data consulting firm accused of illegal campaign coordination with hundreds of Democratic campaigns — received $706,600 in UFCW political expenditures.
According to The Center for Responsive Politics, UFCW spent over $10 million on political campaign contributions and independent campaign expenditures during the 2014 election cycle.
“We have long known that Big Labor is one of the largest political actors out there, so there is no real surprise in seeing where the money goes or how much is in the system,” Greg Lawson, a policy analyst for Ohio’s free-market Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, told Watchdog via email.
“It is unfortunate that all too much political rhetoric seems to point the finger only at ‘Big Business’ while ignoring Big Labor,” Lawson added.
[. . .]
The union demands government create “economic justice” by forcing wealthy corporate executives to pay low-skill workers a $15 minimum wage — but UFCW bosses’ salaries come directly from workers’ paychecks.
To the extent UFCW has increased pay and benefits for workers at grocery stores and retailers nationwide, higher costs are often passed on to wealthy and low-income customers alike.
http://watchdog.org/209173/retail-labor-union-boss/
Former retail labor union boss gets $544,000 for 10 months of work
By Jason Hart
March 31, 2015 /
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