High Officials Salaries Open California Nurses Union Up to GOP Attacks

By Mike Elk

Tuesday, July 20 
In These Times

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6244/gop_attacks_california_nurse_association_over_fat_cat_union_salaries/

With more than 125,000 members, the California’s Nurse
Association (CNA) is known as one of the most
progressive unions in the country. It endorsed Ralph
Nader in 2000 and campaigned steadily for single-payer
healthcare when other unions were advocating for the
watered down public option. It created a powerful base
in California through democratic rank-and-file trade
unionism and refused to give into concessionary deals
when other nurses unions in California were.

And the CNA hasn't shied away from the state's November
gubernatorial election, spending about $300,000 since
last year to oppose GOP California Gubentorial
Candidate Meg Whitman and support Democratic candidate
Jerry Brown, the AP reports.

So perhaps we shouldn't surprised that Whitman has now
put the CNA on the defensive for alleged nepotism and
excessive union salaries. Last week Whitman sent out a
four-page flyer to all of California’s nearly 300,000
nurses blasting CNA President Rose Ann DeMoro for
earning more than $293,000 per year, nearly five times
more than the median salary of a nurse in the United
States. And DeMoro’s husband Robert, who heads the
union's research arm, is paid nearly $142,254 each
year. (You can find all these details at the Whitman
campaign's "Truth for Nurses" website.)

The flyer points to state records showing that there
are 99 staffers at the CNA who make more than $100,000
a year, while the average salary of nurses in the
United States is only $62,400.

Responding in the LA Times, DeMoro said: "It's again
this corporate boss telling the nurses how much they
should pay their executive director. She thinks that
she should be able to tell nurses what they should pay
their staff."

Regardless of why CNA's members decided to pay their
leaders high salaries, by doing so they not only waste
money, but open themselves up to right-wing attacks for
being corrupt.

As I've written on this blog before, if labor leaders
in all U.S. unions capped their salaries at $150,000 a
year, the country's labor movement could save $143
million a year—crucial money at a time when most unions
in the country are laying off organizers. Usually when
I mention this I am attacked in private by some labor
activists, who say I am reinforcing right-wing talking
points about unions. But the Whitman-CNA controversy
shows that if labor doesn’t address these issues
internally, then even a progressive militant union like
CNA can be attacked by right-wing forces for being out
of touch with its members.

Bloated union salaries epitomize the stereotype of
union officials doing little to help the workers they
represent. Indeed, it’s true that when union leaders
make such high salaries, they lead lives that are
drastically different than their members. It’s
important that labor leaders make something close to
the members they represent so they understand what it
is to have angst over paying the mortgage and paying
bills.

My father has been a union organizer for 33 years with
United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of
America (UE), which caps its union official’s salaries
at $56,000 a year. I grew up in a modest house in a
good neighborhood, went to public school, and struggled
to pay for college, like a lot of kids.

Growing up this way gave me a working-class sensibility
too often lacking in intellectual debates over policy
changes in Washington, D.C.  When I advocate for
changes to labor law, I’m not advocating for an idea
because I think it’s intellectually the right thing to
do. I’m literally advocating for my own family.

The point here is that closing the pay gap between
union officials and rank-and-file members isn't just
about saving money for organizing campaigns, or even
protecting labor from attacks from the likes of Meg
Whitman (although those are both important reasons).
The real problem with paying leaders salaries five to
six times more than members is that doing so puts union
leaders in a different social class, where it's easy to
feel out of touch with members' needs.

As veteran UE organizer Mel Womack used to say when
defending the union's pay practices, which are unusual
in the labor movement, “a fat dog simply can’t hunt.”

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