OPEN LETTER FROM ALEX CORNS TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE LABORERS UNION

Feb. 26, 1998

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Laborers' Union Vice President Max Warren is secretly trying to merge the health & welfare and pension plans of Hod Carriers Locals #270 and #36 into the District Council Health & Welfare and Pension Plan.

He has enlisted the help of Ryan O'Brian, the head of a double-breasted Masonry contractors association that has always opposed good wages and working conditions for Hod Carriers in California.

(1) Who is Max Warren? He is a CORPORATE UNION BOSS, a retired member of LIUNA, who draws a pension and collects a salary, together totaling more than $266,362.57 a year.

(2) Max Warren has been a Laborers' Union International Vice President since 1975. For 20 years, he never noticed anything wrong in LIUNA. He didn't notice any Mob connections.

This guy served as a Vice President with Sam Caivano and John Serpico, both of whom were removed from the GEB for associating with organized crime. But he didn't know any MOBSTERS.

(3) Max Warren has not lifted a finger to stop the District Council from signing one-job agreements. He has not ordered the District Council to collect the fringe benefits due working Laborers and Hod Carriers that his contractor friends forgot to pay. He has not stopped the hiring of relatives that makes LIUNA a home for the incompetent.

He has allowed Archie Thomas and other officers of the District Council to put their family members in high-paying jobs at the Laborers Training Center and the District Council. Max has made sure his own son, James M. Warren, has a high-paying job as Laborers- AGC Executive Director.

(4) Max Warren signed an agreement with the United States government to enforce the LIUNA Ethics Disciplinary Procedures. But he let Ray Duran take over as Business Manager of Local #270.

Duran was found to have authorized expenditures without approval and to have participated in the submission of false evidence to a GEB Hearings Panel, according to Robert Luskin, LIUNA GEB Attorney. That's a funny kind of Ethics.

(5) Do you, the rank & file members of Locals #270 and #36, want Max Warren to control your pension money?

Under Max Warren and Arthur Coia's watch,the New York Mason Tenders District Council pension fund lost $40 million dollars in fraudulent real estate transactions engineered by the Genovese crime family.

Max Warren wants to reduce the contractors' contribution to the Health & Welfare Plan for Local #270 by $2 and Local #36 by $1.25, and provide you and your family with the same benefits you have now.

And he is going to do this by putting you into a trust fund that took $25 million in 1994 from the Laborers' pension funds to stay afloat. Does this add up? Who gets the $2 or the $1.25? The members or the contractors?

What do you think this $266,000-a-year corporate union boss has in common with you, a working Hod Carrier?

When have you seen him on a jobsite?

Remember, the guy you never see on a jobsite, Max Warren, is the guy who wants to handle your money.

I am asking all rank & file Hod Carriers to support the fight against corruption.

Sincerely yours,
Alex Corns,

1601 Ocean Avenue, #346
San Francisco, CA
94112


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