"The working class can kiss my arse,

  I've got the union job at last.."

Wage inflation: Len McCluskey, Les Bayliss and Gail Cartmail

Today we publish the salaries paid to the three employees of the union who are candidates for the position of General Secretary.

Although they are only Assistant General Secretaries, their packages rival those of the bosses of other major unions, e.g. the GMB General Sec's salary is only £87,000, NUT boss gets £94,374, Unison GS's basic is £97,327.

Unite has 9 Assistant General Secretaries!

Source - Unite TGWU and Amicus sections

Should we be unfortunate enough to elect any one of them General Secretary in November they will likely be receiving a package costing in excess of current General Secretary Simpson's  £196,497
cost to members (see page 12 Unite 2009 Annual Return)

Ask yourself how can the leader of our union even think that he or she represents ordinary members let alone stay in touch with them and their problems when they're paid nearly 8 times the average workers salary and 40% more than the UK's Prime Minister!

Only one candidate for General secretary, Jerry Hicks, has promised to take the UK average salary (male and female) , currently £26,470 plus £3,000 London Weighting (2009 figures).  Also, unlike all the other candidates:

• He stands for election of union officials.
• He is not a employee of the union.
• He was an elected unpaid shop steward at Rolls Royce.  
• He has been an unpaid member of the union's Executive and General Purposes and Finance Comittee.

To date the union have delayed disclosing to us the amount of expenses paid to the three Assistant General Secretaries standing for election (McCluskey, Bayliss and Cartmail). New! We now have them and have published them here.

You might notice Bayliss's car allowance is rather high at £9,433.50.  Well Simpson gets £24,550 for 'car and other allowances'.  Plus £31,552 'Housing benefit'. A year.  Oh and we currently have the honour of having two General Secretaries.  GS Woodley's cost to members is £135,330 (see page 12 Unite 2009 Annual Return).

Note these figures all relate to the 2009/10 tax year, i.e. to April 2010.  We won't see the 20010/11 figures for at least a year but since pension payments depend upon final salaries it is quite possible that Woodley's and Simpson's salaries will suddenly rise some more.