Anchorage Daily News

This is the confession of a "union boss." My neck is as big around as one of my thighs, which are considerably large. I'm Italian, although I think my name means "the beautiful train," which probably doesn't make anyone shake in their boots. I'm in the neighborhood of 250 pounds, though I'm trying hard to move out of that neighborhood. I'm kind of mean looking. I've got a shaved head. But what really amazes me is how all the hair that used to be on my head receded and magically worked its way through my body and emerged out of my back. God can be cruel.

I am the typical stereotype of the image a union boss used to conjure up. I'm president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, considered by many to be the voice of organized labor in the state.

However, I do the dishes, clean the house and do my own laundry, as well as run my daughter all over town. My wife makes certain of it. I'm a UAA graduate. Go Seawolves! And I was a Girl Scout leader, though my daughter loves to tell the story about how I "acquired" my Girl Scout vest off a bully in a downtown Anchorage alley who messed with the wrong troop leader.

Dan Fagan calls my colleagues and me "Big Labor" and says we run the government. I wish! He says labor outspends oil companies in elections three to one. Huh? Obviously, with this considerable dominant position we should have three Democrats to every Republican in the Legislature. My fuzzy math still can't make that one work.

When I show up at meetings with oil executives and other business people in town I always marvel in the parking lot as I walk past the rows of Cadillacs, BMWs, Mercedes, and Lexus as I get out of my dented '99 Tahoe with a 135,000 miles on it. Man! A big union boss deserves better. Doesn't he?

The truth is every "union boss" I know is a regular working stiff who came out of the field, and stepped up to do the Lord's work for his brothers and sisters and the families we are all trying to support. Many of us have taken a cut in pay to do it. We're salaried now. No more overtime. Rats! At least the benefits are excellent.

If I hand a $1,000 check to a political candidate, it represents hard-earned voluntary contributions from hundreds of union members, instead of one of many checks written by your typical oil company executive. In fact corporations and their executives outspend unions in the neighborhood of 17 to 1 in elections.

Fagan always says we don't need unions anymore. He says there was a need for them long ago but not now. I couldn't disagree more. The time and place where Fagan acknowledges unions were needed is referred to as the Gilded Age, that period of time around the turn of the last century up to the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the mid 1930s when comprehensive social reform created the middle class, child labor laws, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, the eight-hour day and so much more.

Prior to the 1930s the robber barons ran rampant, our system of government did not represent the economic interests of the majority, there was no middle class, and conservative thought warned that helping the less fortunate was sure to bring about economic disaster. The country's wealth and control were squarely in the hands of the elite. Sound familiar?

Flash forward to today. Corporate profits are astronomical; corporate taxes a fraction of what they once were. The average corporate CEO makes more than 700 times what the average worker makes, the middle class is getting squeezed out of existence, bearing more of the brunt of taxes than ever before, and 40 million Americans are without health insurance.

The need for unions now has never been clearer, despite Fagan's ridiculous unsupported claims. Just ask me, because I am a THUG (That Helpful Union Guy).

Among his many other claims to fame, Vince Beltrami wrote obituaries for the Anchorage Times.

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