Wall Street Journal reports “The Service Employees International Union has filed charges of financial misconduct against the New York-based head of its garment workers affiliate. SEIU spokeswoman Inga Skippings said Wednesday that the charges against Bruce Raynor would be handled “in a fair and just manner” by the union’s internal procedures. Raynor heads Workers United. The union of 100,000 workers affiliated with SEIU two years ago.
On April 2, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
On March 9, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
A New York District Attorney is on a mission to clean out 50 years of mob influence in the LIUNA union (NY Daily News):
Fresh from a record mob takedown, the feds have targeted one of the city’s most important construction unions for some Mafia housecleaning, sources said.
Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch’s investigators have begun plotting strategies to break the Gambino crime family’s 50-year stranglehold on the Pavers and Road Builders District Council, the sources said.
Sources said prosecutors have been meeting with the union’s international – the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) – to find a way to force its long-entrenched mob controllers out the door. “They are trying to find a way to participate more actively,” one LIUNA investigator said. “They understand what the stakes are.”
The move comes on the heels of the FBI’s January arrest of 127 reputed mobsters, including officials in unions representing longshoremen and concrete workers.
For the past 15 years, LIUNA has tried to boot Gambino gangsters who control the workers who pave the region’s roads.
The mob, the FBI says, has controlled the pavers since the early ’60s. Year after year, LIUNA has shuttered corrupt locals and fired mobbed-up officials. The mob always seems to bounce back.
“When we started trying to clean things up in 1996, we naively thought we were fighting the Six-Day War,” said Robert Luskin, LIUNA’s corruption buster. “It turns out to be the Thirty Years’ War, and we haven’t won it yet.”
The mob has pocketed kickbacks from contractors trying to ignore safety standards, use nonunion labor and dodge payments into welfare plans, Luskin said.
LIUNA thought it made real progress 1998, when it booted Pavers District Council boss Salvatore Franco. Mob snitch Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano identified Franco, who also ran Pavers Local 1018 in Flushing, as a Gambino member since the 1970s.Gravano testified that one Christmas, Franco handed mob boss John Gotti a $30,000 “present” – kickbacks he had extorted from contractors.
Franco’s departure from the union barely made a dent. His son Anthony, a reputed mob associate and vice president of his dad’s local since he was 19, simply stepped up.
Most important was Anthony Franco’s job as administrator of the district council’s benefit plans – a position that controls millions of rank-and-file dollars.
“When you control the benefit funds … you [can] give pensions to people who aren’t entitled to them and provide no-show jobs. … We have seen this with the pavers,” Luskin said.
In 2003, LIUNA revoked Anthony Franco’s union membership after accusing him of extorting $25,000 from a contractor. It cited his mob ties and a “suspiciously large accumulation of wealth,” said to include two $1 million houses on Long Island.
LIUNA couldn’t immediately bounce him from the pension fund because the plans are controlled by a board with Franco loyalists.
When LIUNA demanded Franco’s removal, trustees loyal to him instead gave him a six-year contract starting at $144,572.
In 2006, Franco was eventually pried from the benefit funds. Kicked out of his union, Franco shifted gears.
He joined with Fred Clemenza, who had been bounced from another mobbed-up union after being accused of moving union money into his personal accounts, to create United Plant & Production Workers Local 175.In this new local, which is not subject to LIUNA scrutiny, Franco runs the benefits plan and Clemenza is an organizer.
As LIUNA tried to take over corrupt Local 1018, its top brass resigned, moved to Franco’s new union and persuaded more than 100 of the local’s rank and file to join them.
Franco did not respond to requests for comment.
On January 11, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
The Daily News is reporting that Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal probe of allegations that union bosses conspired to paralyze the New York City in last week’s blizzard.
On January 10, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
Americans overwhelming choose Right To Work freedom when they are given the choice. As Diana Furchtgott-Roth points out in her Real Clear Politics article, people prefer the choice to job or not a join a union:
The American people have been voting with their feet, the Census Bureau announced on Tuesday, leaving states with heavy union influence and choosing to live in “right to work” states with higher job growth where they cannot be forced to join a union as a condition of employment.
But the National Labor Relations Board, now dominated by Obama appointees, is deaf to the preferences of voting Americans. It wants to do everything in its administrative power to tilt the playing field towards unionization-even if it means higher unemployment and lost jobs.
As a result of geographic shifts in population uncovered by the 2010 Census, nine congressional seats will move to right-to-work states from forced unionization states. Some winners are Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and South Carolina, while losers include New York, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and New Jersey. Over the past 25 years job growth in right-to-work states has been over twice as high as in unionized states.
On January 6, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
Public Sector Employee Monopoly Bargaining Running Amok!
Taxpayer funded federal, state, and municipal no-show jobs exist throughout the country. In 2002, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union Local 12 had 9 such full-time union time jobs at the United States Department of Labor. These 9 union officials were working full-time on union activities as union employees and officers and never spent any time working as federal employees. Yet, they were paid by the federal government (taxpayers).
In 2003, the NY-NJ Port Authority Police Department union was allowed to have four union officers/”police officers” spend their entire time working on union activity, and none for the Port Authority. Yet, the Port Authority paid their salaries and benefits.
Now, during the NY City Big Snow Slowdown controversy, it comes to light that New York City taxpayers pay six (6) SEIU sanitation officers to work full time on union business, not city business. BigGovernment .com has the report:
[Additional supporting information (to download complete supporting documentation packet, click here)]
Big Labor and politicians across the United States have transferred union costs to taxpayers. For example, SEIU Local 444 (The Sanitation Officers Association, see related snow slowdown stories) has six full-time union officials who are paid full-time city benefits and salary, yet work 0.00% of the time for New York City. These Sanitation Officers are working on everything but New York City business – including political activities and golf outings – all on the taxpayers’ dime.
SEIU Local 444 – NY City Contract Language (pertinent part) (more…)
On November 9, 2010, By NRTW Committee Staff
The publisher of Virginia Business, Bernie Niemeier, reminds readers among the natural advantages of states such as California, New York and Virginia it is often the “legal advantages” ”like being the northernmost Right To Work state and having reasonable tort laws and a relatively low corporate income tax rate” that separates Virginia from the pack.
Excerpts from Niemeier’s editorial, Job creation is fueled by existing business expansion:
Over the past few years, Virginia’s economic development news has been full of big marquee names: Volkswagen, Altria, Hilton, SAIC, Northrop Grumman and others. The commonwealth has held a winning hand in the high-profile game of attracting corporate headquarters from California, New York and other states.
Natural advantages such as the Port of Virginia, Dulles Airport and proximity to Washington, D.C., are important parts of our success. Legal advantages — like being the northernmost right-to-work state and having reasonable tort laws and a relatively low corporate income tax rate — also make Virginia an attractive place to do business.
When high-profile new business announcements are made, many take credit and rightfully so. Major out-of-state and international relocations involve the governor’s office, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP), regional economic development alliances and local-level economic development offices.
We’ve been a little less than humble in continually reminding ourselves and others of our reputation as the best-managed state, one of the best states in which to do business and the most business-friendly state, among other accolades.
But perhaps Virginia’s existing businesses have been too humble in taking credit for the jobs their expansion and growth have created, especially during difficult economic times. In fact, existing businesses have led the commonwealth in job creation over the past several years. (more…)
On April 28, 2010, By NRTW Committee Staff
The New York State teacher union spent an incredible $5 million in lobbying and campaign contributions in New York last year and their political spending helped secured a lucrative retirement deal that is an enormous hit on taxpayers. From the New York Post:
The teachers unions ranked among the state’s biggest-spending special interests last year, unloading nearly $5 million on lobbying and campaign donations to help score a series of legislative wins in Albany.
New York State United Teachers and its huge city-centric subsidiary, the United Federation of Teachers, spent a combined $4.8 million on lobbying and political donations in 2009, according to data the government-reform group NYPIRG expects to release today in its annual “Fat Cat Factor” report on Albany influence pushing.
While the number represents a decline from the staggering $6.6 million the two unions spent in 2008, it remains a hefty sum for a non-election year.
The spending came as NYSUT secured a lucrative early-retirement deal for its members.
And the two unions, which represent some 600,000 teachers and education professionals, successfully beat back two rounds of proposed school cuts and an effort to expand the state’s charter-school program.