From The Chicago Tribune:

At least eight Chicago labor leaders who are eligible for inflated city pensions also stand to receive union pensions covering the same work period, thanks to a charitable interpretation of state law by officials representing two city pension funds, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found.

By double and even triple dipping on pensions, these union officials stand to reap millions more in retirement while thousands of rank-and-file union members face hard times and city pension funds stagger toward insolvency.

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Now this is the sort of corruption we are used to seeing in Illinois, eh? This week the Chicago Tribune and WGN TV have found up to 23 retired union operatives that are collecting millions in taxpayer dollars because they had pals in government tweak the state’s pensions laws to favor them.

These former government workers that were government union members got pliant politicians to alter the pensions laws to say that their pension remuneration would be calculated not on the lower pay they received when they retired from government, but from the much higher salary they received when they worked as union operatives. These folks worked as union bosses at the same time as working on the clock for government.

The “luck” of former union boss and Dept. of Streets and Sanitation worker Thomas Villanova is a typical example. Villanova last worked full-time for the city in 1989 and made $40,000-a-year. But he was also a union big wig making $198,000 annually upon his retirement in 2008 at age 56. His city pension, it appears, was calculated on the union salary of $198,000 instead of his real salary of $40,000 — itself obviously a no-show job in the first place.

Villanova stands to make millions off the taxpayers.

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Last week, while passing through Sin City (aka Washington, DC), I had the opportunity to attend a screening of Atlas Shrugged, Part One at the Heritage Foundation.

As one whose life took a remarkable turn nearly two decades ago, in part due to Atlas Shrugged, waiting for a movie version of Ayn Rand’s novel to hit the big screen has been an effort at exercising endless patience. However, that patience has paid off with this movie.

Despite the novel being published in 1957, in an era of looters seeking to devour producers—from the White House in Washington to the streets of L.A.—Atlas Shrugged is a movie that speaks to the issues of today. And, just as importantly, it is a faithful adaptation of the novel that Americans surveyed describe as the second most influential novel in their lives (after the Bible).

Following the screening, and in light of all that is going on in Madison and elsewhere, Harmon Kaslow (one of the producers) stated that he would release one of the scenes in which the heroine, Dagny Taggart, confronts the union boss.

Below, courtesy of “The Strike” Productions, Inc., is a first-look at the scene Dagny confronts the union*.

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Based on this data , I am thinking that the good life starts the day one gets a job as an employee of your local Labor Union and in fact those overpaid financial sector people might want to change jobs!

This table, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows  the changes in the wages in three sectors: the private sector, the Labor Union industry and the financial industry. According to the BLS, the Labor Union industry “comprises establishments primarily engaged in promoting the interests of organized labor and union employees.” That’s basically all the guys who work in a Union.  The financial industry is “The Finance and Insurance sector comprises establishments primarily engaged in financial transactions (transactions involving the creation, liquidation, or change in ownership of financial assets) and/or in facilitating financial transactions.” So the Goldman Sacks, AIG and others.

As one can see clearly here since the beginning of the recession, private sector employees have seen their wages grown by 3.3 percent (roughly the rate of inflation.) The financial sector employees have been slightly better off with wages growing at a 4.1 percent rate.

Meanwhile, wages in the labor unions have continued to increase. And not by 5 percent or 7 percent but by over 24.9 percent!!!

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Just when the Obama Administration eliminates union boss disclosure that exposed union officer perks and self-dealing, a union boss has to get busted for demanding bribes from a trial lawyer. His actions certainly do not argue for the Administration’s ongoing effort to roll back union disclosure. 

The Associate Press reports:

The president of a national railroad employees union was arrested at his Ohio home on Tuesday and charged with bribery.

Edward Rodzwicz, who heads the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, is accused of soliciting and accepting $20,000 in bribes from a St. Louis lawyer. In exchange, prosecutors say, Rodzwicz allowed the lawyer to remain on a list of attorneys approved to handle injury cases for union members.

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