Originally Posted by
Naviator
People who doggedly and blindly defend unions certainly do get their panties in a wad pretty quickly. The first few replies seemed to have actually understood the question, then suddenly the discussion turned to people defending the need for our union and then quickly onto defending the idea of unions in general and how horrible the world would be without them.
Restated, the original question is, the important stuff is done by local volunteers, the lobbying stuff is done by a PAC not funded by dues, so what do the dues pay for? The question is not questioning the existence, need, or benefit of the union. The question is where does the money go? Is their a budget we can view? Is there an audit? Or do we give them millions of dollars each year and have no idea how it is spent?
You actually can go onto their website and find much of that.
It’s badically office space for every MEC, ALPA staff and lawyers, ALPA National HQ, contract services, and a host of materials and publications. I think the salaries are a bit high in many cases, but overall not too much out of line. The exceptions are the office staff who’s union is better at negotiating than the pilots... which is why the ENY MEC office secretary makes about $87k a year not including overtime. She routinely used to end up over $100k. The ENY ALPA senior attorney reported $199k in salary last year.
It was a tight budget then, even before it shrank to under 2000 pilots.