The Scandal of Con Scanlon...

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Friday March 05, 2004 19:25 by CWU member

...or how to become a millionaire by abusing your position as a trade union official.

General Secretary of the CWU, Con Scanlon, has been in the news in recent days. Over the past number of years Scanlon has overseen the scrapping of over 5000 jobs in Eircom. At the same time thousands of ordinary people were taken to the cleaners when Scanlon used the Employee Shares (ESOT) to hand Eircom over to Tony O'Reilly and a handful of international speculators. What has been his reward? As a result of Eircom being re-floated on the stock-market, Scanlon is to receive a bonus of €1million, Shares worth in excess of €1/2million. He will also receive large pension entitlements. All this is on top of an annual director's fee of over €100,000. He also received a similar sum as a director of ESOT and a similar sum again as General Secretary of the CWU. Is it any wonder that he is in the process of negotiating the scrapping of approx. 1500 post office jobs and trying to arrange the privatisation of An Post. I will leave people post their own opinions on this situation