Working In These Times
High Officials’ Salaries Open California Nurses Union Up to GOP Attacks
Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman waves to supporters at the Universal Hilton Hotel on June 8, 2010, in Los Angeles, Calif. (Photo by Michal Czerwonka/Getty Images)
Editor's note: This article has been updated with corrections (see below)
The California Nurses 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/National Nurses Organizing Committee Executive Director 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. (The average Cailfornia RN salary in 2009 was $85,080, according to the Labor Department.)
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 86,000 members decided to pay their leaders high salaries, by doing so they open themselves up to right-wing attacks.
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. 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. Of course, CNA is growing and calling strikes to defend its members' interests. But it's also true that when union leaders make such high salaries, they lead lives 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 protecting labor from attacks from the likes of Meg Whitman. 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.”
CORRECTIONS: The original version of this post stated that CNA has 125,000 members. In fact, the CNA/NNOC has 86,000 members, and National Nurses United, of which CNA/NNOC is a founding member, has 155,000 members. The piece also stated that Rose Ann DeMoro is the president of CNA/NNOC. In fact, she is the executive director of the organization.
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Comments
I hope I’m not someone you consider who “privately attacks” you on this, but $100k isn’t really a valid argument.
You knew someone was going to point this out to you: http://unro.be/dgcDxB
I’d say $142k is reasonable for 60hrs/week in California. if an RN in California with the above link worked 60 hours a week they’d make(assuming its 1.5x for the last 20 hours) $154,275.5 and that’s WITHOUT additional pension/benefits from working OT. So ya, you are supporting a republican talking point. An invalid one. Do I assume they work 60/hours a week? yes, but I’d be willing to bet so does their contract.
Is $292k alot? Ya, but once again, you assume that if his salary is cut they’d hire people and if you look at 990’s(I’ve only looked at my area) alot of unions have been saving than re-investing. I’m sure we both agree that’s not the way to go.
The hater’s are gonna hate. We open ourselves up to attacks by existing. That’s not gonna change. People like Meg Whitman are disgusted that we control the means of production.
You can live a comfy life on $56k in Pittsburgh. I know, I’ve lived on about $5400 the past 5 months. If I did that in California I’d probably be living in a box.
On one level I feel like I ought to just ignore this absurd piece of tripe, but I really need to add a little reality here. It’s one thing to fight off this sort of argument from the bosses, but I would have hoped to better from this site.
This is speaking as a working nurse and one of the elected directors of CNA/NNOC who votes to approve that salary.
I’d wholeheartedly agree that many of the union leaders in America are overpaid, but many of them would be overpaid if they worked for free. In well under 20 years under Rose Ann’s leadership our union has gone from a struggling regional union almost entirely confined to the SF Bay Area to a national powerhouse over 4 times as large, not counting the amalgamation that built the NNU - another of her accomplishments. The CEO at the modest sized rural hospital where I work makes about 3 times her salary. The hospital chain CEOs she negotiates with make many times more. Those salaries are in fact absurd, but this one is richly deserved. Should a top quality person who wants to work for the betterment of others have to live a monastic life to do it? Any time a trade unionist is getting his talking points from the boss, that person is a fool. This parallels the attacks on public employees for having decent pensions and health benefits - divide and conquer - take away from one group of workers then make those workers envy those who still have something.
And one final note on average salaries: Note that difference between the salaries of California nurses and the national average. The difference is largely due to what CNA has accomplished during the tenure of our leaders. That national average reflects the vast mass of non-union nurses - nurses whom, under Rose Ann’s inspiring leadership, will be unionized in the near future.
Certainly some union staff are overpaid. But it would be a mistake to tie the salaries of labor professionals to those of the workers they represent. When we bargain wages in contracts, we argue that certain factors should be considered—wage comparables, education, experience, the skill or effort demanded by the work. There is nothing inherently wrong with paying the director of a large union $200,000 a year or more, or paying certain staff in excess of $100,000 per year. The question is (a) are they good enough at what they do to justify the salary and (b) what are the private sector comparables. As a union lawer I can tell you that even though I make more than most of the union members whom I represent, I take a considerable pay cut simply by working for a union. I could make tens of thousands of dollars more each year working for management. I also spent seven years obtaining higher education and took on over $80,000 in debt to gain my degrees, which with interest will take me 30 years to repay at $500 per month. But I work for a union because I believe in the labor movement. I think union members want staff members who are good, so that the members are well represented. You can pay union staff less, but they already make much less than their management or private sector counterparts. Doing so will decrease the quality of representation and ultimately hurt union members. All that being said, union staff need to earn the salaries they are paid, which means effectively representing the interests of the union membership. If they don’t do that they should be demoted, let go, or have their salaries cut. One thing I do think hurts the labor movement is partonage hires. Some unions, rather than getting the most qualified employee they can for the money, insist on hiring union members with minimal labor relations experience and paying them as if they have considerable expertise. I understand the principle behind this hiring practice, but ultimately the principle hurts members because unions are not spending members’ money in a cost effective manner. The members should run the union and set salaries. But professionals should be hired to handle labor relations. Otherwise generally you are outmatched by management. If a union member needs medical treatment the member will want the nurse who is best at providing treatment, not a less skilled nurse who is a union member. The same applies to union representation. Sure we could set the pay for union lawyers at $25,000 per year if they represent low paid service workers, but we will never be able to find a competent attorney willing or able to work for so little. So in exchange for the abstract principle of minimizing salary disparity between union members and union staff the union members will receive terrible representation and have their interests undermined by an attorney who is incompetent and cannot effectively counter management. The lesser salary disparity will be little solace for the worker who is terminated and loses an arbitration and thus his/her job due to bad representation from the union, or to the bargaining unit members who end up with a poor collective bargaining agreement.
To clarify the previous post I was in no way implying that union nurses are less qualified than non-union nurses. In fact I strongly believe the opposite is true. I would much rather have a union nurse tend to me. My point was merely that members want and deserve the best service for the money. So someone needing medical attention would be focused on the quality of the medical attention, and would probably not be willing to receive lower quality attention simply because one professional was a union member and the other was not. This was meant to illsutrate the point about patronage hires by unions, but probably was not the best example. The basic point, though, is that unions have an obligation to all their members to ensure that the people hired to represent them are the best that the union can afford, and have not been hired primarily because they were active in the union. We object to this type of practice when management engages in it by picking favorites for promotions. I think we should be consistent on this point when it comes to our organizations.