Not the Change in Transparency Obama Promised

James Sherk / September 24, 2009

In a stinging rebuke to corrupt special interests and the status quo the voters handed the President and his favored candidates an overwhelming defeat. Hope has arrived … at United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 in Colorado.

Ernie Duran, Jr. – President of Local 7 – lost his re-election bid to Kim Cordova, a rank and file union member who works at Safeway. Along with Cordova union members voted in a new Secretary Treasurer, a new recording Secretary, and 19 of 25 board candidates who campaigned as part of Cordova’s reform slate. Change has come to the labor movement in Colorado.

Why were union members so upset with their long serving President? Because he used their hard-earned union dues for his own personal gain. The President paid himself $162,000 a year, and put his son Ernie Duran III and his daughter Crisanta Duran on the union payroll for $134,000 a year each. The average Denver area grocery cashier, by contrast, earns only $24,000 a year and pays over $450 annually in mandatory dues to fund this largesse. (more…)