Coia's rosy picture of reform is contradicted
by the congressional testimony of Ronald M. Fino, a former Buffalo
LIUNA Local 210 official and a key source of information in the
Laborers racketeering investigation.
Fino was an informant for the FBI
for 15 years and his testimony has already put mob-connected Laborers
Union officials in prison.
At a congressional hearing in July,
Fino testified that Coia "was controlled by the mob. That's how
he got his job." Fino verified the Justice Department's assertion,
in its 212-page draft complaint, that all four presidents in the Laborers' history,
including Coia, have associated with and been controlled by organized
crime. Asked why he thought so, he said, "Regarding Mr. Coia, because
he told me. And talks with his father and numbers of other talks
with the Cosa Nostra people."
Congressman James McCollum asked Fino,
"Are you telling us that Arthur A. Coia, the current General President
of the Laborers International Union of North America, told you that he answers
to the mob?" Fino replied,"Yes, he did."
Hard Hat asked Coia1s lawyer, Howard
Guttman, about Fino's testimony. Guttman answered that Fino had
misunderstood what Coia said to him.
It seems that Laborers President Arthur
Coia got everything he could want at the union's 21st Convention,
held in Las Vegas the last week in September. His slate, the Unity Team,
won all thirteen Vice Presidents' positions on the General Executive
Board (GEB), six of them unopposed.
Every resolution he and his Team supported
won, and every resolution they opposed lost. Coia himself was
nominated for General President by 1705 delegate votes out of
2069 votes cast. And, most important for Coia's future, the U.S. Justice Department
and the Election Officerappointed by the GEB with DOJ approvalblessed
the convention and election as clean and fair. He is likely to
be re-elected president in a rank-and-file, secret-ballot vote later this year.
But appearances can be deceiving in LIUNA.
LIUNA members see the election of
their president as the Mafia version of "Family Feud." Coia is
allegedly associated with New England's Patriarca crime family of La Cosa Nostra (LCN,
also known as the Mob).
Running against Coia is Bruno Caruso,
head of the Chicago District Council. It is alleged by sources
close to the Laborers-LCN investigation that Caruso is associated with the Chicago family
of the same LCN.
Upon closer examination, however,
neither "association" allegation has been proven, either in a
court of law or in public government documents. Coia seems to be the "Teflon Man of Labor,"
since no charge of criminal wrong-doing has "stuck" to him during
the on-going federal investigation of LIUNA. And Caruso told Hard
Hat, "No local or federal agency has ever said to my face that
I am a mobster."
Caruso is running, not only against
Coia, but against portions of the Agreement the Laborers Union
signed with the federal government. At the convention, he sponsored
resolutions that would, if passed, have reduced the power of the
Inspector General and the GEB Attorney and repudiated the Consent
Decree. His campaign material says, "It must be clear by now to every delegate and member that non-elected
officers are running our Union. Elect members of the GEB whom
you trust and let them run this Union in accordance with the Ethical
Practices Code"
On the subject of codes, Caruso told
the convention delegates that what with the Oversight Agreement
and Coia's leadership of LIUNA, when he called the union's Washington,
D.C. headquarters, he now has to speak in "code," whatever that
means.
There were seven candidates for international
union office to oppose Coia's Unity Team at the convention, and
no challenger won a GEB position.
Mike "Butch" Quarcini made a strong
challenge to the Unity Team candidate in the 7th District (Western
Upstate New York, Western Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina,
Virginia, and West Virginia), coming within four votes out of
170 delegate votes cast, of unseating the incumbent, Vice President
Jack Wilkinson. Independent challengers for two District Vice-President
positions, Jim MacKinnon and Frank Johnson, made poorer showings,
both failing to get even 20% of their district1s vote.
Three challengers for the At-Large
Vice-President positions (Alfred Hazel from Macon, Georgia; Robert
Brown from Rochester, New York; and, Alex Corns from San Francisco, California) picked
up votes from outside their home areas, but still finished far
behind Coia's slate. Only Hazel got more than 40%. All three vow
to continue working for meaningful reform in the Laborers Union.
Convention delegates voted in a hefty
pay raise for the international officers. They also passed a dues
increase and voted to end the union's Death Benefit for new members,
effective 1997. A resolution for Canadian autonomy was voted down.
The price tag for this convention,
though not yet revealed by LIUNA, was substantial, causing one
California member to ask, "Is there a link between the convention expense and the end
of the Death Benefit?"
Before the convention, Hard Hat obtained
a document that indicated LIUNA international headquarters staff
had been required to contribute to a fund for the re-election
of GEB officers. The existence of this fund was not reported in
The Laborer, the official magazine of LIUNA. Robert Luskin, LIUNA's GEB Attorney, assured Hard
Hat that the fund collected only $40,000 since 1993, all the money
was given back, none was spent for campaigning, it was all voluntary,
and it won't happen again. Still, there were a lot of expensive
Unity Team posters and buttons in Las Vegas that were paid for
somehow.
John L. Smith of the Las Vegas Review-Journal
described some of those present at the LIUNA convention: "three
dozen off-duty cops, mostly from Chicago, who have worked the room
as a private security force and bodyguard service for the union
officials" There to guard Coia and other GEB members, these policemen
and "officers from New York, Massachusetts and even San Diego,
applied for and received temporary permits to carry concealed
weapons." Smith also wrote, "The government accuses the union
bosses of being mob guys; the accused mob guys cut a deal with
the government to remain in the union by promising to root out
the mob guys in said union; the cops, whose job it
is to watch and arrest mob guys, instead are hired to serve and
protect the so-called mob guys."
Before the nomination and election
of officers, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney addressed the convention.
Sweeney gave Coia such a rousing endorsement speech that the LIUNA
Election Officer, Stephen Goldberg, felt compelled to award the
other two candidates for general president time at the podium.
Sweeney had been warned by the Election
Officer not to go too far in endorsing Coia. Goldberg even edited
Sweeney's speech to cut the most fawning references, but Sweeney
chose to ignore Goldberg and deliver his speech unedited. Goldberg had little
choice but to try to even the balance.
When the first of the two challengers,
Barney Scanlon (see "Stand-Up Guy" on page 17), began his speech,
more than half the delegates walked out of the hall as though on cue.
Along with electing a union president
in November and December, LIUNA members will have the chance to
change the way the rest of international officers on the GEB are
elected. The Rank-and-File Referendum poses this question:
"Beginning in 2001, how should District
Vice Presidents and Vice-Presidents-at-Large be elected:
___ by direct vote of the LIUNA
membership?
___ by vote of delegates to the
LIUNA convention?"
Contained within this simple choice
is a very large opportunity. If the direct vote wins, top LIUNA
officers will be directly elected by actual laborers, the people who pay the duessomething
no other building trades union does, except for the court-supervised
Teamsters.
LIUNA Election Officer Stephen Goldberg
has called this"the most important election I will supervise"
for the Laborers Union. Voting will be by walk-in or mail-in voting,
depending on location.
When Hard Hat asked Arthur Coia what
his position was on the Referendum, he answered, "I don't have
a position on the Referendum. We're letting each individual member exercise his own
free will and whatever he feels that he would like to be carried
out." When asked by Hard Hat if he favors the rank-and-file vote in the Referendum,
Bruno Caruso1s reply was, "Yes. I want the members to be involved
as much as they can." He also said he favors in-person voting
over mail-in.
Alex Corns, one of the challengers
for At-Large Vice President, has come out for expanding the Referendum
to include District Council officers. Corns, along with other
LIUNA members in California, has formed "Laborers for Justice
and Democracy" and publishes a newsletter, The Voice of the Rank
& File. They can be reached at:
Laborers for Justice and
Democracy,
Will the membership of this near-century-old
union at last get to have some real democracy? Only if the federal
government makes it safe for rank-and-file unionists to act openly,
without fearing loss of life, limb or livelihood.
Before the convention, Hard Hat asked
Coia, "Are you acting on any reports that you receive from the
field that there is intimidation and coercion?" Coia replied,
"I haven't received any reports from the field. If there were any reports,
they would go directly to the Inspector General and he is not
making me privy to that"
Will Arthur Coia face an indictment
whether he wins or not? he remains a subject of investigation
by both the federal government and the Inspector General. Keep
an eye on upstate New York Republican prosecutors for any sudden moves.
Will the government enforce the Consent
Decree if Bruno Caruso wins? It may, but the Justice Department
has not yet made any moves to implement the Consent Decree. It is a good bet that
Caruso, like Coia, is the subject of investigative activity.
Does the DOJ have any surprises in
store for the Laborers? Despite top-level Justice Department approval
of LIUNA's reform effort, among many career gang-busters at Justice, there
is increasing dissatisfaction with the way the LIUNA/Mafia situation
is being handled. Some say the Department is being made to look
ineffective in the face of slick mob maneuvering.
A working laborer, running on a shoestring
for the presidency of this powerful union, provided the class
act of LIUNA's expensive Las Vegas convention. Barney Scanlon,
a 70-year-old laborer from Local 66, Long
Island, New York, was the third candidate
for General President.
He got 39 delegate votes, not enough
to get on the rank-and-file election ballot for President, but
enough to put a real rank-and-file laborer on the convention podium.
With the odds so clearly against him,
why did Scanlon run? Scanlon told his local newspaper, Newsday,
"Why is a 70-year-old man running? Because no one else will do
it. The answer is the intimidation factor. If they run, they can
be penalized. A young man with a mortgage, car payments and children
cannot afford to put his livelihood in jeopardy."
Scanlon knows about intimidation.
As a member of Local 66 from 1953 to 1973, he often opposed his
local leaders. "They starved me out," Scanlon claims, by 1973.
At the urging of rank-and-filers, he rejoined the local 16 years
later.
Scanlon only got to Las Vegas because
Stephen Goldberg, the LIUNA Election Officer, declared three of
Local 66's convention delegates to be ineligible.
1601 Ocean Avenue #346,
San Francisco,
CA 94112.