Long Island Newsday
February 4, 1999
By William Murphy, STAFF WRITER
The janitors' union local that gave ousted leader Gus Bevona a $1.5-million golden parachute has also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars over a 13-year period to its former president, John Sweeney, now the head of the AFL-CIO, according to records obtained by Newsday. Sweeney stepped down as president of the local, which represents building maintenance workers in New York City and Long Island, in 1981 when he was elected president of the parent union, the Service Employees International Union.
But he continued to draw a salary from Local 32B-32J of the building service union from the time he left, an AFL-CIO spokeswoman confirmed. The amounts were not available, but records filed with the U.S. Labor Department show that eight years later, in 1989, the local was paying Sweeney more than $80,000 a year. That dropped off to just under $70,000 in the ensuing three years, jumped back to almost $80,000 in 1993 and tapered off to just over $10,000 in 1994, the year before he was elected head of the AFL-CIO.
A spokeswoman for Sweeney, Denise Mitchell, said he continued to take payments from the local after leaving because he went back periodically to help with local business, including contracts.
The payments to Sweeney highlight how commonplace it is for labor leaders to double-dip, collecting large payments from both a local and parent union under the assumption they are working for both at the same time, even if the parent and local are headquartered in different cities and working on different issues.
Officials of the SEIU and the AFL-CIO defended the payments, averaging more than $70,000 a year, arguing Sweeney was doing important work for the local even while running the international.
Aides to Bevona, who was ousted this week as president of SEIU Local 32B-32J, had defended his combined salary of almost $500,000 on grounds that he worked hard for the local. Bevona, 58, of Babylon, headed a local representing 52,000 building maintenance workers in New York City and Long Island and an affiliated local representing 20,000 home health-care workers in the city.
At the same time Sweeney was being paid by the local, Bevona was drawing a salary of more than $70,000 a year from the parent SEIU parent union for his work on behalf of the international.
"It is double-dipping, plain and simple," said Ken Boehm, director of the National Legal and Policy Center, a Virginia-based advocacy group that monitors the federal government and unions on ethics matters.
"I think it is an ethical abuse, and the proof of that is you rarely find it elsewhere," Boehm said. "I don't know of any government worker anywhere who draws two salaries."
The Brooklyn-based Association for Union Democracy, a watchdog group, said such double payments were common in large labor unions, and usually were reserved for high-ranking leaders.
Bevona's gross salary of almost $500,000 annually was paid by his local, a second affiliated local, a regional union council and the parent SEIU.
The multiple payments mean that the more the money is spread around, the harder it is for an outsider to track it down," said Carl Biers, executive director of the association.
The whole thing is that it is legal, but disgusting nonetheless," Biers said. "You usually find that union leaders who take outrageously high salaries are usually insulated from the membership through intimidation or stolen elections."
Bevona resigned this week amid allegations dissidents made in federal lawsuits that he had rigged a union election, hired private detectives to spy on union insurgents and improperly used union funds to defend himself in a lawsuit by the insurgents.
In return for the resignation, insurgents Dominick Bentivegna and Carlos Guzman agreed to drop their claim against Bevona for monetary damages.
Copyright 1999, Newsday Inc. </pre>