Gus & John

Rkmickey at aol.com Rkmickey at aol.com
Fri Feb 5 20:22:30 PST 1999


In the Newsday article Doug posted, a certain Ken Boehm is quoted as follows about the payments to union officers: "It is double-dipping, plain and simple," said Ken Boehm, director of the National Legal and Policy Center, a Virginia-based advocacy group that monitors the federal government and unions on ethics matters.

"I think it is an ethical abuse, and the proof of that is you rarely find it elsewhere," Boehm said. "I don't know of any government worker anywhere who draws two salaries."

We should note that Ken Boehm often writes about labor unions for The Weekly Standard and The Washington Times. Given those connections, it is not surprising that his indignation is a bit blinkered. Henry Hyde used to draw a director's fee from a savings & loan even while he drew his government paychecks, nor was he alone in this. While executive branch employees of the federal government probably can't get away with it as easily, some state government bigwigs know how to earn consultancy fees in addition to their salaries, how to accumulate huge amounts of "sick days" to cash in when they switch jobs, etc., etc. And in the private sector double dipping is pretty common--full-time CEOs often serve as directors of other corporations and draw handsome checks for their efforts. There is an article in the WSJ today about conflicts of interest of mutual fund directors. This doesn't make it attractive for labor bureaucrats to be so hugely rewarded but they hardly have a monopoly on this sort of behaviour. K.Mickey



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