Tasty got ahold
of an interesting document that offers more details about the sky-high salaries
Dave Regan pays himself and his
buddies inside SEIU-UHW.
According to
the document (a 2017 pay scale for SEIU-UHW’s “Senior Staff”), the union has
installed no fewer than eight separate layers of highly paid
“senior staffers” with titles like “Senior Management-Level V,” “Chief of Staff,”
and “President.”
Their annual
salaries range from $120,000 to $227,000. A copy is below.
So much for “Fight
for $15.”
Apparently, SEIU-UHW managers favor the motto: “Sitting for $75.”
Just in case
SEIU-UHW wasn’t already larded up with beaucoup overpaid bureaucrats, in 2017 Regan decided
to add two more layers of phat managers atop the teetering, top-heavy union:
Senior Management-Levels III and IV.
SEIU-UHW’s
salaries are stunningly high: Regan
earns more than the Presidents of at least two international unions, the United Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers.
So… it’s obvious
why Regan pays himself so much money. But why is he lavishing six-figure
salaries on senior staffers?
A source
explains it this way: “It costs a lot of money to buy people’s loyalty.”
If staffers don’t
like the union’s leader or his vision, then how do you keep them on the job?
You bribe them by paying sky-high salaries. Golden handcuffs, as they say.
Other unions
have a radically different vision that's more democratic and egalitarian. For
example, at NUHW, the union’s constitution prohibits the president from earning
more than the highest-paid rank-and-file member.
Regan’s
salary structure recalls recent critiques of SEIU’s brand of “neoliberal
unionism.” Last September, the authors of one
piece in Jacobin Magazine called
on the labor movement to confront SEIU:
The proliferation of this model of unionism would spell disaster for the American labor movement. Our movement’s success depends on how widely and how militantly we can organize workers to fight corporate power and the 1 percent, not embrace them.
Union members and leaders must do everything in their power to halt the march of neoliberal unionism, before they march the labor movement straight into its grave.
SEIU-UHW Senior Staff Wage Scale: 2017 by tastysternburger on Scribd
