April 9, 2010: One year ago the officers of Colorado Local 17 announced that they were all taking a 10 percent pay cut, in solidarity with the freight Teamsters who had just taken that cut. The Local 17 leaders supported those concessions, so they said they should share in the sacrifice.

But a funny thing happened on the road to sacrifice. The officers took a detour to a big raise instead.

According to the 2009 LM-2 financial report recently filed with the Department of Labor, principal officer Mike Simeone hiked his local salary from $107,642 to $122,946. Other officers and business reps got a similar increase. (The BAs made around $110,000 in 2009.) That’s no 10 percent cut, that’s a 14 percent raise!

This is what they posted a year ago: “We want all Local 17 members to know we share the benefits and sacrifices together with you.” TDU.org reprinted that comment last April, as an example of positive leadership.

What happened? We called Local 17 for an explanation, but they didn’t return the call.