As DoinTime said, the President of the Association has many expenses that the average person doesn't, including the requirement to live in DC away from his home, expensive dinners with politicians, a car in DC, etc... But besides that, the average employee in America receives anywhere from 20%-40% of his salary in benefits. I haven't heard anyone ever include this amount when telling someone what they make, but the DOL requires ALPA and all other unions to report it as "compensation." The ALPA President is actually woefully underpaid. The job basically amounts to giving up your entire life for your term of office. For eight years in office, not mentioning his previous positions that had similar workloads, Duane was working about 330 days a year. His average day had him busy from sun-up to sun-down. Prater's schedule is the same, Babbit's was the same, and so on. The job of the President of the Association is non-stop. Would you give up your entire life for the next eight years just for $350k? I wouldn't. Very few people will. If you drop it to $200k, even fewer people will. You need to compensate people for the work that they do, and for the expertise that they provide. Very few pilots would be able to do the job that DW did. He almost single-handedly put us on the map on Capital Hill for the past decade. Other Presidents had certainly done the work, as do ALPA's lobbyists, but no one else had built the relationships and respect on the Hill that Duane was able to. Now, many of the congressmen and senators that Duane befriended are important committee chairmen that could make differences in our careers. Whereas ALPA wouldn't have been a second thought to them before, DW's work with them has changed that. That in and of itself is enough to earn his salary as far as I'm concerned.
