Many people believe that "You get what you pay for" is an entirely valid statement and that on this basis one major reason for labor's inability to organize more effectively as well as succeed in its political action can be traced to the relatively low incomes of national union presidents in the early twenty-first century. Granted, these people say, you never know what you don't have, and it is impossible to pinpoint exactly what labor has lost in this regard. But, they argue, the huge imbalances nowadays between the very low six-figure salaries of most top national union leaders and the seven-and eight-figure compensations of many corporate CEOs in the United States have undoubtedly deterred good men and women from pursuing careers as labor leaders even forgetting other negatives such as union politics and the growing complexities of the union president's job.

Therefore, at least one expert in this area has asserted, a more realistic salary scale-based on the actual membership of each union-should be established by the AFL-CIO for its member internationals, and individually by the internationals that have broken away from the AFL-CIO in independent action, at the rate of $1 for each union member, to be recalculated annually. Leaders of the four largest unions-the Service Employees, AFSCME, Teamsters, and Food and Commercial Workers-would in 2008 by this formula have received respectively: $1,900,000; $1,500,000; $1,400,000; and $1,300,000; and the heads of several other internationals (the Teachers, Automobile Workers, Laborers, Electrical Workers, Machinists, and Steelworkers) would have gotten between $640,000 and $850,000. The presidents of another nine unions would (also in 2008) have been paid more than $200,000, in five of these cases more than $300,000.

What do you think of this proposal?