MELTING POT Two little decimal places

Oct 26, 2007 | 10:34 AM |

It's no surprise that the United Steelworkers union and the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal rarely see eye to eye, but the bad blood got even worse recently when the newspaper blasted Senate Democrats for voting to cut the budget of the Office of Labor Management Standards, which monitors union corruption.

The part of the opinion piece that really ruffled the union's feathers was a passage claiming that union leaders are not members of the working class, citing $825,262 in union compensation to USW member Jimmy Warren. "These are fellows who think CEOs are overpaid," the editorial said. One small problem, or maybe a giant whopper for a newspaper that claims the U.S. financial reporting crown Warren actually received $8,252.62. The Journal ran a correction in a subsequent issue, but the USW wants an apology for the "mean-spirited" editorial. "The troubling fact remains that one of the world's most widely read financial journals has displayed irresponsibility with regard to fact-checking that insults its readers, to say nothing of the paper's obvious contempt for working men and women," the USW said. The odds of the USW getting an apology, however, are about as likely as Journal columnist Peggy Noonan being invited to speak....