Football union chief gets pay package worth pounds 400,000

GORDON Taylor must be over the moon when he contemplates his pay as chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association - and the increase he received last year.

Latest figures show that Mr Taylor received a package worth almost pounds 420,000 - nearly 50 per cent up on the previous year, according to the annual report of the official Certification Officer for trade unions. His rise was 44 per cent higher than the rate of inflation over most of the year and puts him once more at the top of the league table for union leaders' pay.

The 1,500 members of the PFA, the players' trade union, contributed pounds 50 a year each in subscriptions, but the union's income is supplemented by a share of television rights and from its role as agent to some of the players.

Sick as a parrot however, must be the general secretaries of more than 100 unions which make returns to the Certification Officer who got nothing.

And Mr Taylor's pay - which presumably allows him to rub shoulders socially with at least some of his members in the Premier League - compares favourably with a number of other union "barons".

Apart from those who do it for love, a number of others receive a pittance. There is the leader of the Nelson & District Clothlookers and Warehouse Association on pounds 3,479, his colleague at the Society of Local Council Clerks, pounds 2,347; the general secretary of the Amalgamated Textile Warehousemen (Padiham Branch) pounds 1,020 and the senior official at the Skipton and District Power-Loom Overlookers' Association who receives pounds 600.

There are, however, some other "fat cats" in the union movement. Arthur Scargill's pay package as President of the National Union of Mine Workers remains at pounds 65,000 a year. This is particularly generous given that the union has finally acknowledged that its membership has slumped.

Whereas the NUM claimed a roll of 69,000 in 1995, the organisation puts its membership at 10,000 in the latest report. This has not been caused by a new bout of swingeing pit closures, but acceptance that retired colliers and miners' widows should not be included in the figures. Some of the coal industry's closest observers contend that the actual fully paid- up membership is nearer 7,000.

The annual report showed that more than a quarter of union general secretaries earned in excess of pounds 40,000; 20 per cent received pounds 20,000-pounds 40,000; 18 per cent got up to pounds 20,000, while the remaining 39 per cent of general secretaries did not receive a salary.

Apart from Mr Taylor the other top earners in the trade union movement were Dr Mac Armstrong, of the British Medical Association who received a total package of nearly pounds 109,000, and Paul Snowball, of bank union UNiFI, who was paid nearly pounds 99,000.