Governement Union Bosses Pocketing Taxpayers’ Paychecks
Taxpayers are forking out $4.8 million for 35 union officials at the Department of Transportation. But the beneficiary here isn’t the taxpayer, it’s President Obama, who is raking campaign cash from these unions.
Unlike the average American, or even average DOT employee, these union officials draw an average $138,000 in salary and benefits from the federal government, not to give something of value to the taxpayers, but to work exclusively for their unions — the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (Natca), the AFL-CIO-affiliated Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (Pass) and two others.
Eight make more than $170,000. The lowest-paid gets $80,000. That means taxpayers are actually paying for union efforts to shake down taxpayers for ever higher salaries and benefits for government workers.
By contrast, the average American makes $50,000 and the average DOT employee makes $70,000.
It’s bad enough that taxpayers are on the hook for a union whose interests are in opposition to their own, but even the workers aren’t getting much of value from this taxpayer-paid union representation, either.
“At least 50% of the people you work with aren’t worth what they are paid either. … Incentive and recognition aren’t the strong points,” wrote one FAA employee, describing his work on the jobs bulletin board Glassdoor.com.
“The employees that don’t pull their own weight are not disciplined because of PASS (the union),” said another.
It underlines that value for the taxpayer isn’t the idea here. Political influence is.
“(W)e are one of the strongest and most influential labor unions in the federal sector,” bragged Natca President Paul Rinaldi, in a statement on the union’s website.