Ironically, UAW officers and UAW staff in Michigan apparently earn a lot more per year than the average U.S. factory worker, the average U.S. office worker or the average U.S. grassroots anti-war/anti-corporate activist. According to an article by Ron French and Mike Wilkinson that appeared in the August 15, 2007 issue of the Detroit News:
“Nearly 700 UAW officers and staff in Michigan alone have a total compensation from the union that exceeds $100,000 according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That data doesn’t include other officials estimated in the hundreds, who are appointed to union jobs paid by the Big Three. They are benefit and safety representatives and low-level union officials who sometimes are paid for 12-hour days, seven days a week. Many make more than $100,000 a year.”
Perhaps that's why UAW President Ron Gettelfinger apparently hasn't been that eager to demand that the morally and economically bankrupt U.S. automobile industry be finally nationalized under democratic, automobile worker and working-class community control--before the Big Three begin another round of mass layoffs of UAW members in 2009 (in exchange for obtaining their recent corporate welfare grant from the Bush Administration's "U.S. Corporate Welfare State")?
James and the Twenty-Seven Bicycles
14 years ago
