Lord have mercy

For their sake I hope he does, because you can count me the fuck out.

I really appreciate that the business pages of virtually any daily newspaper are not going to be union friendly.  My guess is most ordinary people flip through the business pages like I flip through the fashion pages--a quick glance on the way to the good stuff.  Business pages are written for businessmen, free market worshippers, and tea party members looking for some false validation of their sad little lives.  Still...this one is going just a bit far.  In what is ostensibly a nice business page mention for the UAW--membership rose 6% in 2010, the first increase in six years--the author decides to use four paragraphs to discuss the wages paid to the UAW's leadership.  Apparently, the top 25 officers were paid $3.4 million in 2010, which sounds like a lot of money...until you put some thought behind it.  It actually comes to about $136,000--yes, it's much more than I make, but it's not like these people have lotto type riches.  Further, there's 355,000 members in the UAW;  its leader, Bob King, makes $168,000.  The company I work for employs approximately 70,000 people--our CEO makes almost as much as the top 25 officers of the UAW (and much more with his stock options) combined.  The pay of our top 25 officers would completely dwarf the pay of the UAW's top leaders. 

My question is...why are their salaries even noted in the piece?  The money they are paid is completely irrelevant to the piece...unless it was discussed as part of a bonus they received for increasing membership 6%.  The CEO of the company I work for led us to a sales decrease last year--he still has a job.  And I can flat guarantee you he didn't do nearly as much to improve the lives of the people working for him as Bob King did for the people he leads.

It's another sop from the traditional media to corporations and the small minded, not particularly bright conservative readers who just can't believe their GED didn't get them a six figure job.

Peace,
emaycee