Union chief clears $430k in 2007 for self, two children

Face The State Staff Report

Ernest Duran, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, paid himself and two of his children combined salaries of over $430,000 in 2007.

Duran collected a salary of $162,368 for 2007, according to records with the U.S. Department of Labor. Two of Duran's children also work for the UFCW Local 7. His daughter Crisanta Duran, an associate counsel, pulled in $133,410 in 2007. His son, Ernie Duran, III, earned $134,378 in 2007 as an executive staffer. According to Salary.com, a Denver-area grocery cashier can earn about $24,377 annually, an assistant manager at the same store earns approximately $48,950, and a store manager earns about $66,800 a year.

The Durans' salaries are funded by dues from the union's 20,000 members. Members include Dominic Brazzale, 18, who graduated high school earlier this year and got a summer job working at the Safeway at 80th and Wadsworth. He worked there for about just over four months before quitting. Two months into the job, Brazzale’s boss approached him with a union contract and told him he had to sign. “My boss told me they take money from him, too and it sucks, but you have to sign it.”

The UFCW and the elder Ernest Duran have been actively fighting Amendment 47, which would prohibit requiring mandatory union dues as a condition of employment. According to a May letter sent from Duran to his members, he claimed that if Amendment 47 were to pass, it would substantially cut membership.

“If this Amendment passes, we will enter all future negotiations divided,” he wrote. “In my opinion, we will enter with less than fifty percent (50%) of the workers as Union members.”

Brazzale was outraged when informed of the salaries pulled down by the Duran family. “That’s ludicrous for them to be making that much money when they aren’t actively fighting for the members paying their salary."

During his tenure at Safeway, Brazzale was making minimum wage, which is $7.02 per hour. While union dues were never withdrawn during the period that Brazzale worked at Safeway, he subsequently received a bill from UFCW for $250. “It came with this letter that said you have to pay because we gave you these benefits,” he said. “Then it listed a bunch of benefits that I never got.”

“If the UFCW’s mission is to funnel its members’ money to political candidates and causes and feather the nests of its executives and their families, then it’s doing a bang-up job," said Amendment 47 spokesman Kelley Harp. "If it’s supposed to advocate for better jobs and working conditions for its employees it’s failing. It’s no wonder Mr. Duran himself has said publicly that half of UFCW’s members would leave if they were not forced to join or pay the union to keep their jobs.”

Brazzale maintains that union reps failed to actively lobby on behalf of his requests to be hired on full-time, and said he is “definitely not” paying the $250 because the UFCW “did not work actively to get him more hours or better pay.”

“I quit because it wasn’t a good job,” said Brazzale. “Other employees who had been there longer than me by two years were only making 30 cents more per hour.”

Duran did not return Face The State’s request for an interview.