Labor leader in a glass house

Talk about throwing stones from a glass house.

Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO played the predictable, tired class envy card in response to the recent report by the Boston Foundation and Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation on the “gilded” health plans enjoyed by municipal workers.

Haynes didn’t dispute or even address any of the statistics in the report, which showed municipal workers receive health coverage averaging 37 percent sweeter than those in the private sector.

He couldn’t challenge the report on the merits. So instead he went on about how much money the heads of the report’s two sponsoring groups, Paul Grogan at the Boston Foundation and Michael Widmer at MTF, were making.

This would be the same Robert Haynes, by the way, who until recently was collecting $72,700 a year for attending a few meetings as a board member of Blue Cross Blue Shield. He defended it a month ago by saying the $1 million paid to board members was not significant because it was such a small percentage of a $13 billion operation.

That would be the board, by the way, that approved an $11 million severance for departing CEO Cleve Killingworth.

This would also be the same Robert Haynes who, when asked about the gilded buyout for Killingworth said he was uncomfortable with it, but was only one member of the board. Then, asked if he had voted for it, he fled to a “meeting.”

Haynes also griped that the report had been done in behalf of “one-sided interests” of business groups.

This from the man representing the one-sided interests of labor.

Don’t let the door shatter on your way out, Bob.