Mainiac Jon:
From ychangenow.com, more of the spin you couldn’t wait to see.
Jack on salaries
In a campaign Web site post on August 16, Jack Hearn and his AMO Membership Committee (AMC) whined that incumbent AMO officials make too much money.
“We pledge to reduce AMO executive board salaries to bring the AMO treasury one million dollars during our administration,” Jack and the AMC wrote. Jack and the AMC did not say how many terms in office they would need to reach the million-dollar mark. They did not say how long the pay cuts would apply, with or without their projected windfall to our union. Jack and the AMC did not say whether they would reconsider the salary reductions once they learned what the official jobs they seek actually require of them.
Citing data from the LM-2 financial disclosure reports our union files each year with the U.S. Department of Labor, Jack and the AMC said they had “compared the 2006 LM-2 reports to the 2010 reports.” But it was clear that Jack and the AMC simply skipped through the documents, scrolling down until they found what they saw as provocative, politically useful numbers – the salary of AMO National President Tom Bethel, for example.
Jack and the AMC put Bethel’s salary at $333,458, but the actual figure was $275,000 – less than what Jack Hearn would earn in a full year at sea. Bethel, whose salary is determined by the national executive board of AMO, received a three-percent salary increase in 2009.
Until Jack Hearn agrees to meet Tom Bethel face-to-face in debate, as Bethel has proposed, seagoing AMO members can consider this side-by-side look at these candidates.
Tom Bethel has logged more than 25 years of service to our union. He is thoroughly experienced at every administrative level of AMO.
By contrast, Jack Hearn for many years held down the highest-paying permanent seagoing job in AMO while actually working for six months or less each year, and he has admitted under oath that he has no understanding of even the fundamental aspects of AMO administration.
Tom Bethel sees the AMO national presidency as a full-time, all-the-time job if it is to be done effectively. Tom puts in the time and the talent required to do the job right. Tom is on call and accessible all day, every day, and he never fails to accept or return a phone call from a seagoing AMO member.
By contrast, Jack Hearn sees the AMO national presidency as a part-time, remote and largely ceremonial position. Even as a candidate, Jack is barely visible or audible, preferring to campaign through surrogates clicking away on an anonymous Internet forum thread. How often would seagoing AMO members see or hear from Jack if he is elected as national president of our union?
Jack and the AMC have already acknowledged as much. In an earlier campaign Web site statement, Jack and the AMC said – as they did in 2006 and 2008 – that they would transfer important administrative responsibilities (job development, contracts and legislative work) from AMO officials and AMO staff to unidentified consulting firms and lawyer-lobbyists retained at unknown expense for indefinite periods, all with no guarantee of results once these outside interests learn the subject matter.
Retainer fees that increase annually, billable hours and unforeseen miscellaneous expenses charged by these consultants and lawyer-lobbyists could drain millions of dollars from the AMO treasury in just one term of a Hearn-AMC administration.
In short, Jack and the AMC would accept less pay. But they would also accept less work and fewer responsibilities than incumbent AMO officials. Jack and the AMC would hand off the difficult tasks to consultants who would know no more than Jack and the AMC do about AMO. But Jack and the AMC would have no choice because they are not at all prepared to serve our union as elected officials.
But there are other relevant points to consider here:
AMO members continue to pay the lowest dues among the three merchant marine officers’ unions because the AMO treasury and other AMO assets are managed so well.
The Bethel administration has brought much more than $1 million into the AMO treasury since January 2007, much of it from initiation fees and dues paid by an increasing number of applicants drawn to our union by a steadily and significantly expanding employment base.
One of Tom Bethel’s first acts as national president of AMO in January 2007 was to clear the deadwood from the AMO payroll by canning longtime employees who had not earned their keep. These employees were dismissed without severance deals, and they were not replaced.
Bethel increased productivity and reduced expenses by re-assigning individuals to jobs better suited to their skills, by stating as policy that anyone who wanted to work for AMO would actually have to work for AMO, and by choosing not to replace three AMO executive board members who had resigned their jobs.
The decision not to replace these three executive board members resulted in an annual savings to the AMO treasury of more than $600,000 in wages, benefits and expenses.
Salaries Jack and the AMC propose for vice presidents of AMO are actually higher than the current average.
The issue here is competence, not compensation. AMO members are less interested in what Jack and the AMC would pay themselves as elected officials than in what Jack and the AMC would do with respect to policy and how they would do – and Jack and the AMC have said nothing specific about either.