For two weeks now, Freedom @ Work has covered the indictment of twelve union officials in Upstate New York for a laundry list of criminal activity that includes a stabbing and death threats. Nonunion employers and employees were targeted in an effort to push more workers into the union officials' forced dues-paying ranks.

A local paper even compared the acts depicted in the indictment to an episode of the HBO hit TV show The Sopranos.

The latest video added to the National Right to Work Foundation's YouTube video channel shows just how brutal these union officials' acts were by simply quoting word for word from the 62-page indictment.

Today, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorney Glenn Taubman filed official comments with the Department of Labor regarding a proposal to mandate public financial reporting for union trusts.

As yesterday's post on $25 million that was misused from five union pension funds makes clear, these trust funds can be used to funnel money to things ranging from the Democrat party to strip clubs and horse farms. Any increased disclosure would be a step (though perhaps only a small one) in the right direction.

One area that the Foundation's comments focus on is the loophole for so-called "sensitive information":

This "sensitive information" exception to full disclosure is simply a loophole allowing union and trust fund officials to unilaterally determine what disclosure must be made public, and then hide a vast array of questionable expenditures. Financial reports of trust fund operations and expenditures can never be considered "confidential" information, because this money is owned by the employees, not the union or trust fund officials. Fiduciary agents have no right to maintain secret record or engage in secret transactions that are purposefully hidden from principals - the employees who are the actual owners of the funds.

Expect Big Labor to fight tooth and nail any proposal that would give employees better access to information about the money they are being forced to hand over to union and trust fund officials.

The Chicago Sun Times reports that $25 million from five union pension funds have been misused by a Chicago firm that specializes in managing union pension funds. Such funds are funded from employees' paychecks and normally all employees under a union contract - even if they don't want to be - are forced to pay money in. Often the pension funds are then used as de facto slush funds for union officials.

According to reports, one million dollars were funneled into political organizations including "Citizens for a Greater Detroit" and the Michigan Democrats. Money was also used to buy a Detroit strip club, a Michigan horse farm, and millions were used for "travel and entertainment" for clients including private jets, Vegas nightclubs and Super Bowl tickets.

Since the firm specializes in managing union pension funds, the "clients" being entertained were likely union officials who were effectively ripping off the very employees they claim to represent. It is also unlikely that it is a coincidence that the political money went to the union's political allies.

The Department of Labor is suing the firm to try and recover the funds, but if unions didn't have the power to force employees to accept their "representation," employees would not have been compelled to fund these pension plans in the first place.

Here is a copy of the indictment of twelve Operating Engineers Local 17 union officials we first discussed last week.

The 62-page indictment details a brutal and sustained campaign by union officials to terrorize employees and employers, in an effort attack employers whose workers haven't chosen unionization, and to force employees into forced-union dues paying ranks. Included in the indictment is a 33 page list of 75 individual acts of thuggery that includes:

• A stabbing
• A broken windshield that cut an employee's face
• Hundreds of thousands of dollars in vandalized construction equipment
• Threats against nonunion workers
• Running the license plates of nonunion employees
• Slashed tires
• Threats against going to the police
• Locking employees in and out of their workplace
• Throwing coffee at employees and their vehicles
• Sabotaging construction equipment
• The use of "star nails" to flatten employees' tires
• Death threats

In Upstate New York non-union workers were targets of a campaign of violence and intimidation by Operating Engineers Union Local 17 thugs:

The indictment accuses Local 17 leaders and members of dozens of threats and instances of vandalism and harassment against non-union workers and contractors. At times, members of other unions were also targeted.

Much of the activity took place at major publicly funded construction projects, including the expansion of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and renovations at Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo State College and the Buffalo Sewer Authority’s treatment plant on Bird Island, prosecutors said.

One of the disturbing aspects to the case, in Flynn’s view, is that members of the local repeatedly used the Web site of the state Department of Motor Vehicles to find out the addresses of people they intended to harass.

Union members went to construction sites and took photos of the license plates of vehicles used by construction company executives or non-union workers, Flynn said.

“Then, they would use that information to find out where these people lived, and where their families lived,” Flynn said. “They would then make threats against people, mentioning their home addresses.”

At times the union officials' actions seem to be out a script for a Hollywood mafia movie:

According to prosecutor Charles B. Wydysh, [union organizer] Larson had a conversation in 2003 with an official of a construction firm, STS. The conversation took place about two months after a union member had stabbed the owner of STS in the neck in an Orchard Park bar.

The STS representative is quoted in court papers asking Larson what his company would gain by hiring members of the union.

“What are the positives?” the company official asked Larson. “You guys slash my tires, stab me in the neck, try to beat me up in a bar. What are the positives in signing? There are only negatives.”

“The positives,” Larson answered, “are that the negatives you are complaining about would go away.”

News of a 170-page federal indictment handed down over the weekend could've come straight out of The Sopranos. According to The Jersey Journal:

The business manager of a Jersey City labor local is among
more than 80 people charged by federal and New York
officials this week in a massive sweep they say also netted
key leaders of the Gambino crime family.

The indictment details how the union official helped "Fat Joe" Agate get fraudulent union credentials and access to a union job site. The indictment was part of a mob crackdown that reached as far away as Italy.

What a slap in the face to workers in New Jersey forced to pay union dues that they have to pay the salaries of union officials charged with such crimes.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit affirmed a district’s court ruling to sentence local union bosses Gwendolyn Hemphill and James Baxter to jail.

The court called their case a “seven-year orgy of greed.”

Between 1995 and 2002, the conspirators stole millions of dollars from Washington Teachers Union (an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers union). As a result, a federal judge convicted two union bosses of multiple counts, including embezzlement, money laundering, false pretenses, and conspiring to commit such crimes.

Here are some of the expensive goodies these union bosses bought using money from the union dues treasury:

• A $50,000 Tiffany silver set
• A wedding reception for Hemphill’s son
• $29,000 in dental work for Hemphill and her spouse
• $19,000 in Washington Wizards tickets
• Car insurance
• Art décor for their homes
• Personal checks to themselves ($18,805 for Hemphill and $31,000 for Baxter)

According to court documents, in 2001, these union bosses stole so much money (using union dues) that the WTU union paid $925,000 to cover the credit card bills. By 2002, the union went broke and could not pay its membership fees to the AFT union.

In the end, Hemphill was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Baxter 10 years. Barbara Bullock, WTU union’s president during this period, and her chauffeur, Leroy Holmes, both pled guilty before trial.

This astonishing example of union boss greed is exactly why forced association with unions breeds corruption. Unfortunately, heinous crimes like these are sure to continue until compulsory unionism ends.

A top official – Steven T. Thomas – at the Laborer’s International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 500 in Ohio was fired for spending thousands of dollars on personal entertainment using the union’s credit card.

Of course, the credit card debts are paid by forced dues-paying workers the union local supposedly “represents.” And according to this union boss, there’s apparently no better way to represent the working interests of those employees than to spend the money in multiple gentlemen’s clubs.

The Toledo Blade reports:

[Steven T. Thomas] charged the union $17,414 for 96 separate visits in 2004 to Scarlett’s in Toledo and Kahoots Gentlemen's Club in Columbus, according to report obtained by The Blade.

Thomas, the business manager of the union local, was removed in May 2007 for the misuse of funds.

But in an ironic twist, Judge Nadine S. Pettiford of the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Review Commission recently ruled that Thomas was not fired with just cause from his job and ordered that Thomas’ unemployment benefits be reinstated.

The outcome of this story is entirely amazing, as it highlights yet another reason why compulsory unionism and corruption go hand-in-hand and why labor bosses often barely receive a slap on the wrist when they misuse union dues.

A high-level Teamsters official from New York yesterday was indicted on federal embezzlement and extortion charges for demanding among other things:

"...that his employees mow his lawn, clean his gutters and chauffeur his family."

Sounds like quite the life. According to the article:

"The indictment said the employees complied with Rumore's demands because they feared they would suffer economic harm or even lose their jobs if they did not."

Rumore was released on $250,000 bond, I wonder where he got all that cash. He also faces up to 25 years in prison.

As noted by the late Senator John McClellan, "Compulsory unionism and corruption go hand-in-hand." These are the sorts of misdeeds union officials perpetrate at the expense of rank-and-file workers when the do not face the accountability instilled by a Right to Work law.

Last week’s New York Times report of another case of mobbed up union bosses is certainly nothing new, but it is a good example of how union corruption and compulsory unionism go hand in hand:

An independent counsel appointed to investigate the union representing 15,000 New York City school bus drivers has concluded that there is substantial evidence that “organized crime has infiltrated and controlled” it.

The counsel’s report, written in January and made public yesterday by dissident union members, said that top officers of the union, Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, were involved in what it called racketeering activity that included extortion, kickbacks and bribes.

Salvatore Battaglia, the local’s former president, is facing trial on federal charges accusing him of extortion, receiving bribes and hiding Mafia involvement in the union. He has pleaded not guilty. The local’s secretary-treasurer, Julius Bernstein, was forced to resign by federal prosecutors and has pleaded guilty to obstructing justice.

According to reports, employees in a group called “Members for Change” had been since calling for the ouster of the mobbed-up union bosses since 2005. Now with the former two top union officials on trial or having pleaded guilty, employees forced to pay dues as condition of their job are questioning the new union bosses installed by officials from the Transit Union’s International:

At a news conference yesterday, a dozen bus drivers complained that the two trustees whom the parent union had named to oversee the local had hired 11 of the local’s executive board members who had worked under Mr. Battaglia.

The drivers said those people had helped perpetuate an intimidating atmosphere that discourages criticism of union leaders. They also complained that not enough was being done to recoup the more than $2.7 million that federal officials say Mr. Battaglia obtained improperly.

“The international didn’t bring in any new faces,” said Simon Jean-Baptiste, who belongs to a dissident faction called Members for Change. “The same people are there who stopped people from talking. It’s a bad situation.”

Another bus driver, Clifford Magloire, said that in May, when he was distributing leaflets criticizing the local’s leaders, one union official pushed him against a fence and started screaming at him as others surrounded him.

Of course, if corrupt union bosses couldn’t depend on rank-and-file employees being forced to pay dues and associate with the union as a job condition, it would be far harder for them to get away with treating employees like patsies who can be taken for a ride.