A week in the life...
of a UFCW Local President:
Do union officials sometimes fritter away members' union dues on unnecessary expenses?
Let's have a look at some expenses charged up by UFCW Local 777 President Gib Whitlock while on a four-day junket with the International Foundation of Employee Benefits (an organization to which various UFCW benefit plan administrators belong) in the fall of 1992.
The first thing we noticed on the Invoice/Receipt for Gib's stay at Bermuda's luxurious Southampton Princess Resort was that the UFCW Local President stayed seven nights at the resort while he attended a four-day International Foundation of Employee Benefits junket. (If you would like to visit this sumptuous resort on the Web, please click here. Lovely place, isn't it?) All prices are in Bermuda dollars, which are identical in value to the US dollar.
We also noticed that many meals were charged to the President's room #374 although he also went on to charge a $100.00 per diem on each day of his trip for the cost of meals. On the page following the invoice/receipt, we see an Expense Report for the President covering the period of October 28 to November 11. In the "Amount" column, we see daily per diem amounts. Daily per diems are money given to Union employees on out-of-town trips so they can buy meals. Now, we might ask, "If the President ordered meals in his room and charged them to his room, why would he claim a $100 per diem each day for meals? He'd already had his meals provided!" We might also ask, "Why would the Union pay hotel charges and per diems for the Local President for seven days when the conference only lasts four days?"
But it gets even better: If we look further down the President's Expense Report, we notice that the President flies all the way from Bermuda back to Vancouver, BC, stays one day and flies to a UFCW Canadian Council meeting in Montreal. Budget-wise Presidents and other union officials who also were at the conference in Bermuda, flew directly to Montreal, stayed over and paid extra hotel costs in the neighborhood of a couple of hundred dollars rather than spend thousands of dollars on a business class plane ticket home and back.
So all things considered, Gib's tropical adventure to rub elbows with UFCW benefit administrators cost the members a few bucks more than it ought to have. That's assuming that he really needed to be there in the first place.