Tasty hears that the fat cats at SEIU are jealously watching
as Dave
Regan stuffs fistfulls of workers’ dues money into his pockets. So... they're scheming up plans to get a piece of Regan’s lucrative pay action.
In September, top officials at SEIU Local 1000 – which represents
California government workers – introduced a proposal to triple the pay of the union’s president, Yvonne Walker. Apparently, SEIU officials somehow forgot that
thousands of the union’s rank-and-file members are getting hammered by wage freezes,
furloughs, and possible pay cuts amidst a giant state budget deficit.
Now… Tasty ain’t no genius, but even Tasty’s slobbering half-brained
dog coulda figured out it’s not real smart to triple the union president’s
paycheck while workers and their families are getting slammed by pay freezes
and furloughs.
After the Sacramento
Bee got ahold of SEIU’s proposal, the news quickly spread through the union’s
membership. In one
letter, members pointed out how the pay hike would undermine democracy
inside the union:
…there are probably no classifications represented by our union that pay $150,000 a year and few, if any that get to $125,000. The currently proposed pay scale for the officers, $125,000 to $150,000 would put them in a significantly higher income stratum than vast majority of Local 1000 members. From a political perspective that would put them as individuals in the position of being able to finance an entire election campaign on their own. Whereas over the last twenty years candidates have had to organize networks of members to raise money and volunteer help to win elections. That would not be good for our member-led union.
Good point! So… if
$150K undermines union democracy, then what does Regan’s $300,000 a year mean
for the future of SEIU-UHW? Not a pretty
picture, my friends.
Back at Local 1000, the outrage over the presidential pay
hike ultimately forced
SEIU to back down. Tasty hears that SEIU
officials started getting real nervous when workers began clamoring for more
petitions to decertify SEIU. Meanwhile, it looks like SEIU is simply waiting for things
to quiet down before they push the purple pay hikes once again. In one news article, SEIU quietly announced it “would
continue to study the issue.”
