uncharted.ca

Michigan's biggest unions represented 60,000 fewer workers in 2006 compared with 2002. While membership plummeted 14 percent, jobs at union halls remained safe, dropping less than 1 percent.

This is not sustainable. American unions might implode.

Powerful UAW pays its leader far less than a West Michigan grocery local pays its boss. As president of one union hall of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Potter had a much lower profile. He led a membership one-twentieth the size of the UAW, located in one state instead of 50, with the average member earning less than half as much as the typical UAW worker. Yet in 2005 Potter was paid about twice as much as Gettelfinger. The UAW president earned just more than $156,000 in total compensation that year; Potter, in his last full year as president of UFCW Local 951, made $305,000.

Potter believes Gettelfinger is underpaid for the work he does. He argues that comparing the UFCW with the UAW is misleading because different unions have different philosophies about compensating their leaders. He said he had to pay his staff at Local 951 well because "they get recruited" for other jobs, Potter said. "There was about a half dozen times when I was recruited for jobs that paid twice as much. You try to keep good people."

Two of those good people were Potter's son, Michael Potter, who earned $95,673 in total compensation in 2006 as communications director, and Tamara Vander Ark, who earned $121,467 in total compensation as an executive board member and representative. Vander Ark and the elder Potter live at the same address in Grand Haven, according to public records. Vander Ark declined to describe the nature of their relationship.