CORRUPTION HAUNTS
LABORERS INTERNATIONAL UNION
The U.S. government is forcing the
Laborers International Union, long known to be Mafia influenced,
to kick out the mobsters and racketeers or, like the Teamsters,
submit to close government supervision.
Following a three-year investigation,
the Department of Justice has ordered sweeping changes in the
Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA).
An agreement signed in January between
the Laborers International organization and the U.S. Attorney
for Northern Illinois requires LIUNA to change its constitution
and appoint International officers to oversee the removal of all
Mob-associated officers.
If the government thinks the Laborers
haven1t gone far enough in ousting the racketeers, they can put
the International under federal supervision. At that point, the
700,000 rank-and-file members of the union would be able to vote
for their International officers for the first time in history.
This prospect has a great many Laborers
Union officials extremely nervous. It has been common knowlege
for years that many Laborers International Union locals, district councils and
International officers, were controlled by organized crime figures.
In many locals, there has not been an honest election in generations.
Instead, local Mafia crime families
appointed officers and business agents, and ran the local unions
as their private businesses. Many construction jobs would have
"ghost" employees who only showed up to collect their paychecks,
spending the rest of their time doing chores for the local godfather.
Pension and welfare funds were looted
by racketeers while union trustees looked the other way, in return
for a payoff. Non-union jobs were allowed to operate without union
interference in exchange for cash. Any local member who openly
opposed this setup was unable to get a job and could be in line
for a beating, or perhaps worse.
Now things may never be the same again.
In a statement to its members, the Laborers Union promises broad
reforms. Two international vice-presidents have been dismissed
from the General Executive Board. An Ethical Practices Code has
been added to the union's constitution. Four new international
officers have been hired to clean out the racketeers.
If the union does not move fast enough
or far enough in cleaning up the corruption, the government has
another card to play. It can implement a Contingent Consent Decree,
stepping in with even more reforms, including direct election
of international officers by the members, instead of convention
delegates, the current practice.
The Department of Justice can institute
the Contingent Consent Decree any time up to 1998. From now until
then, they will be watching the Laborers International Union very
closely for signs of corruption or wrong-doing.
Mafia Fights Back
These changes are not going down unopposed,
however. One of the sacked vice-presidents, John Serpico of Chicago,
is suing the union1s General Executive Board. He claims that other
members of the Executive Board, including President Arthur A. Coia,
are the corrupt parties. Buffalo Local #210 is suing to prevent
the reforms, claiming there is no Mafia influence in the union.
Before the agreement went into effect,
copies of the proposed document were mailed anonymously to union
officials across the country. An accompanying letter warned union
officers that "your General President Arthur Coia and the Executive
Board sold you down the river...Do not give up your union to another
Teamster agreement." (The Teamsters agreement with the government
allowed members to vote for their International Union officers.
They promptly voted for new officers who promised to cut officials1
pay and reform the union.)
On the other side, some union members
maintain that the changes ordered by the government do not go
far enough to weed out the corrupt influences.
According to leaflets circulated in
California, it is not just International Union officers who are
corrupt, but local and District Council officials, too. A New
York leaflet claims Laborers General President Arthur Coia is
"dirty." Many Laborers Union members want the Departments of Labor
and Justice to impose the Contingent Consent Decree immediately.
According to Chris White of the Laborers
for a Democratic Union (LDU), without fair hiring halls and the right to directly elect International
officers, reform in the Laborers will be temporary. As soon as
the gangsters find new front men to manage union affairs for them,
it will be back to "business as usual."
However, contacting the LIUNA Inspector
General, the man in charge of investigating the corruption, may
be hazardous (see Trust the Inspector General?).
Laborers Union members with information
on violations of free speech rights, fair election procedures
or hiring hall discrimination have another way to go.
Members can call the Association for
Union Democracy (AUD) and give them the information. They will
record the complaint for future action, possibly in court.
The AUD promises to keep Laborers
Union members' complaints confidential. They have a better record
than the Inspector General. If you have information about wrong-doing
in the Laborers Union, contact the Association for Union Democracy,
500 State St., Brooklyn, NY 11217. Phone (718) 855-6650.
The leading Laborers Union International
officer charged with rooting out organized crime is Douglas Gow,
the new Inspector General. He has an 800 phone number so Laborers
can call him any time with complaints of racketeering in their
locals. He has an article in the Laborers Magazine with his phone
number and the guarantee that, should a member call his office, any information will be kept
confidential. Sounds like a good system, doesn1t it?
But when one Laborer in California
called Inspector General Gow1s office in Washington, D.C. to complain
about his local1s officials, those very officials knew all about
the complaint within hours. Gow's office turned the complaint
over to the International Union office in Sacramento, which notified
the local officials, who then reprimanded the member at the very next union meeting.
The Laborers International Union is
supposed to get rid of corrupt influences. Yet their methods seem
better suited to getting rid of anyone with knowledge of those
corrupt influences. Hard Hat Magazine cannot, at this time, recommend
that anyone call the Laborers Union Inspector General1s
office with complaints, since to do so might put one's job, or
even life, in danger.
However, Laborers Union members who
wish to see their union reformed may consider anonymously calling
the U.S. Departments of Justice and Labor in order to speed up
the process.
This is not a game.
Reforming the Laborers Union is a
big job. The lives and jobs of Laborers Union members are at stake.
The Inspector General's office must
be straightened out, or there is little chance of straightening
out this large and long-corrupted labor organization.
The Department of Justice and the
Department of Labor must move swiftly to restore confidence in
the process of reform, or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for
change will be lost. The government1s intervention in the Laborers
Union provides a necessary window of opportunity, but the feds
alone cannot make a democratic union.Only the members of the union
can do that.
A series of Mafia-organized deals
has cost the Mason Tenders District Council of Greater New York
at least $30 million since 1989.
In September 1994, the U.S. Department
of Justice filed a civil racketeering suit in a Manhattan federal
court with the intent of imposing a court trusteeship on the Mason
Tenders. A brief look at that case shows how LIUNA's new agreement with the
Department of Justice may turn out.
The list of swindles in the Mason
Tenders reads like a fraud training manual for mob-dominated unions.
For many years, a Genovese crime family capo (captain), James
Massera, ran the 10,000-member union, a unit of the Laborers International
Union of North America (LIUNA), like his personal family business.
The Mason Tenders pension fund paid
$24 million for a Manhattan building that had been purchased nine
months before for $7.5 million. One of the hidden partners in
the deal was the managing director of the New York Building Contractors
Association. Additional millions were spent buying Brooklyn residential
properties.
Shortly after the union bought one
building and then tried to remodel it with non-union workers,
it collapsed. The Brooklyn deals brought huge profits to the sellers,
but not the union.
Massera's mother, under an alias,
sold the union's welfare fund a Miami Beach building for $600,000
more than its appraised value. The union's welfare benefit fund
paid more than $900 for each member's medical exam through a Bronx
chiropractor. The chiropractor billed the fund more than $4 million.
According to an FBI investigation,
James Massera is a capo in the Genovese crime family. His day
job, until he pleaded guilt to racketeering, was field representative
in one of the Mason Tenders unions, Local #104. But, in reality,
the FBI investigators found, he was the ruler of the Mason Tenders
District Council. The old leader of that union, Gaspar Lupo, held
office at Massera's command. Lupo's father had held the job before
him.
When Gaspar died, Massera handed the
job to the next Lupo in line, Gaspar's son Frank. When Frank Lupo
was indicted for defrauding the union, James Lupo, Frank's brother,
took over as District Council President. In 1990, Massera was
sentenced to 37 months in prison and barred from union activity
for life.
The ten locals in Mason Tenders District
Council of Greater New York are: Local 13 in Queens, Locals 23
and 104 in Manhattan, Locals 37, 46 and 47 in Brooklyn, Locals
33, 48 and 59 in the Bronx and Local 51 in Staten Island.
Mason tenders do some of the nastiest
work in construction: grunt work for bricklayers, mixing mortar
and concrete, humping bricks and blocks, and demolition with jackhammers and sledges,
often working with asbestos.
For this dirty and dangerous effort,
they face a hard time qualifying for their pensions and health
insurance. To have an army of mobster-parasites blocking democratic
union reform while sucking their union funds dry is, to say the
least, adding insult to injury.