ALBANY — As state workers fight to stave off Gov. Paterson’s proposed pay freeze, one leading public-employee union boss is enjoying a 22 percent salary hike, The Post has learned.
Public Employees Federation President Kenneth Brynien has seen his salary rise to $137,622 this year, up from $112,440 in 2008, according to a Post review of federal tax and labor filings. Most of the raise came in 2009, when Brynien took home $136,315.
The bump, approved by the 59,000-member union’s executive board, increases the president’s salary to more than twice the $66,000 earned by the average PEF member.
It’s also far more than the $78,384 Brynien would have earned had he returned to his job as a Syracuse-area state psychologist.
PEF spokeswoman Darcy Wells said the union hiked the president’s salary, along with those of other executives, so that high-earning members would not have to accept pay cuts should they ever leave state service to take the union’s top jobs.
Even after the increase, Brynien’s salary is dwarfed by the $186,284 earned by Civil Service Employees Association President Danny Donohue, whose union represents about 300,000 members, including 75,000 blue-collar state workers.
Donohue’s compensation package is nearly five times the size of the $39,126-a-year salary he would get in his state job as “motor vehicle operator” at the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center.
Brynien’s raise came as the PEF and other public unions battle Paterson’s bid for $250 million in contract concessions.