Recently, a scandal has come to light about the misuse of taxpayer dollars involving some of Chicago’s political bosses and their allies running local unions.
In the 1990’s Chicago officials and their allies in the legislature cooked up a little bonanza for their political backers who ran the slew of unions that staffed city departments. If you took a leave from your city job, say, pushing a broom at city hall, after three or four years, to become an official with Local 10 of the International Brotherhood of Broom Pushers, you could still rack up credit towards your city pension. Not only that, but when you retired, your pension would be tied, not to your $15 per hour broom pusher salary, but your union boss salary, which often topped out over $200,000 per year.
So the people of Chicago ended up paying some union bosses nearly $160,000 a year in pension for a few years of actual city work where they earned sometimes less than $20,000 a year—all courtesy of the taxpayers.
Within t ...
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