Friday, December 11, 2009

Ousted grocery-union execs get big parting gifts - The Denver Post

"The family members who run one of Colorado's most powerful labor unions are being forced out of power, but not before they receive parting gifts paid for with union dues.

Ernie Duran Jr., the longtime president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, will receive his union vehicle, a Ford F-350 pickup, as a retirement gift.

Outgoing union secretary-treasurer Stan Kania will drive away in a union-purchased Ford Five Hundred.

Both gifts were approved by Local 7's executive board, in what 7th vice president Will Joseph called a long-standing tradition.

'If every other president got the vehicle on departure, I don't see changing the trend,' Joseph said.

Several UFCW Local 7 presidents who served in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s said they did not receive vehicles as retirement gifts and had never heard of that being done.

Duran and Kania declined interviews through a union spokeswoman."

I won't discuss the union here as I received some advice not to. Click on the link to lean more about Ernie and company. All I will say is that it makes my blood boil.

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