GMB - FAT CATS RULE OK?
GMB members in Scotland will be amazed to hear (not that their own union will tell them) that the recently installed General Secretary - Paul Kenny - is to be paid a Fat Cat salary of £200,000 a year - a handsome package which includes a top of the range car and final year's salary pension scheme!
The GMB is, of course, fond of complaining about the high salaries and dividends paid to captains of industry - so this takes the biscuit for hypocrisy and union double speak. What must low-paid GMB members think of their organisation and its leaders?
Now a labourer is worthy of his (or her) hire, of course. And, quite sensibly, some unions have introduced a link between the pay of their own full-time officials and the ordinary members the union represents.
The EIS (teachers union in Scotland) - for example - links the pay of their most senior official to the highest paid secondary school teacher in Scotland - not a bad arrangement and one that most members can at least understand and support.
But unless the GMB have recruited Donald Trump recently - to the GMB's Midtown Manhattan Branch - there's no way that any ordinary GMB member earns anything remotely approaching £200,000 a year!
Now Paul Kenny is a nice enough chap - a kind of cheeky chappy, London barrow boy type - but Paul and the GMB have shot themselves in both feet with this 'high on the hog' behaviour.
Remember this is the same organisation whose officials on the ground have been telling low paid GMB members not to rock the boat - and not to be 'greedy' - when it comes to equal pay.
Truth is stranger than fiction - as they say - and this tale is one that even the GMB's worst enemies couldn't make up.
The GMB is, of course, fond of complaining about the high salaries and dividends paid to captains of industry - so this takes the biscuit for hypocrisy and union double speak. What must low-paid GMB members think of their organisation and its leaders?
Now a labourer is worthy of his (or her) hire, of course. And, quite sensibly, some unions have introduced a link between the pay of their own full-time officials and the ordinary members the union represents.
The EIS (teachers union in Scotland) - for example - links the pay of their most senior official to the highest paid secondary school teacher in Scotland - not a bad arrangement and one that most members can at least understand and support.
But unless the GMB have recruited Donald Trump recently - to the GMB's Midtown Manhattan Branch - there's no way that any ordinary GMB member earns anything remotely approaching £200,000 a year!
Now Paul Kenny is a nice enough chap - a kind of cheeky chappy, London barrow boy type - but Paul and the GMB have shot themselves in both feet with this 'high on the hog' behaviour.
Remember this is the same organisation whose officials on the ground have been telling low paid GMB members not to rock the boat - and not to be 'greedy' - when it comes to equal pay.
Truth is stranger than fiction - as they say - and this tale is one that even the GMB's worst enemies couldn't make up.
