IDI
DC’s Inspector General Says IDI President David Wilmot Overpaid
As we talked about in the post about the IDI victory last week, David Wilmot has been under considerable public scrutiny for his excessive salary while he pays his staff poverty wages. The Washington City Paper digs deeper into the issue in this week’s edition.
IDI may not have enough money to boost the weekly take-home salaries of its grunts, but it does have enough to give “excessive” pay to Wilmot and IDI’s chief executive officer, Ronald Raghunandan, according to a report from the city’s Office of Inspector General.
This summer, an IG report found that Wilmot’s $261,000 2008 salary was about $80,000 over industry standards. Wilmot’s more current salary data isn’t known, but tax records unearthed by a previous LL show that Wilmot’s annual IDI pay has gone as high $346,743, which he earned in 2003.
In addition to the excessive salary Wilmot collects from IDI, IDI loaned $55K to a member of its Board of Directors in 2002, with no signs of payment back as of 2008. If that wasn’t bad enough, IDI loaned Wilmot himself an additional 300k in 2001!
But wait, there’s more…..As a high powered corporate lobbyist for clients like Big PhRMA, he has been paid $203k in the first half of this year according to lobbyist disclosure records.
It is unconscionable how someone so flush with cash can cry poverty when his employees at IDI must use Medicaid for health coverage.
Odoms also complained to LL about IDI’s low pay for lower-level workers. She says that whenever workers approached management about raises, “they said they didn’t have any money.”
Armed with the truth about David Wilmot’s finances, the employees of IDI will begin negotiating a contract to improve their wages, benefits and training. Let’s hope David Wilmot begins treating the people on the other side of the table with the respect and dignity they deserve.
IDI Workers Who Support Individuals with Developmental Disabilities Vote ‘Yes’ for Union
IDI Employees Adebisi, Toni, Gerard and Eunice
In a union election covering 150 employees who provide services for people with developmental disabilities at Individual Development, Inc. (IDI), workers today voted overwhelmingly to join SEIU Local 500, a union of 18,000 human service, education and child care workers across Washington, DC and Maryland.
“I go to work every day because I believe in providing the best services possible to the individuals at IDI,” said Gerard Bradley, an active treatment specialist at IDI. “But at $10 an hour without affordable healthcare, I knew it was time to vote yes for SEIU so we can have hope for a better future.”
IDI President David Wilmot continues to pay his staff poverty wages despite considerable public scrutiny for his excessive salary at IDI which totals over $265,000 a year and his second job as DC lobbyist for which he receives yet another six-figure salary.
Wilmot sought to convince IDI employees not to form a union in a campaign of intimidation which included meetings with employees pleading for workers to give him another chance. SEIU Local 500 has filed an unfair labor practice charge against IDI for alleged illegal termination of an employee for union support.
Now that IDI employees have united in SEIU Local 500, Gerard Bradley is looking forward to a new day. “With our union, we’ll be able to make sure we are finally treated with respect and dignity on the job,” said Bradley.