There's a 1999 article on corruption by Bob Fitch at a Laborers Union dissident site <http://www.laborers.org/Fitch_Corruption_10-21-99.html>. Here's an excerpt:
>The second objection I hear is that indictments of union leaders are
>really just punishments for their militant actions. Charlie Hughes a
>militant? In 1994, Charlie was the first trade union leader in New
>York City to endorse the Mayor. Charlie hugged the Mayor so often,
>we used to call him the 'serial Giuliani hugger.' Who was the
>second?. Turkey Joe DeCanio, chief of DC 37's ballot stuffing
>division. In exchange, for DeCanio's cash, Rudy Mastro took 200
>workers from one DC 37 local and put them in Turkey Joe's local
>
>"Laborers President Arthur Coia has been an acknowledged leader in
>fighting for change, for a stronger labor movement, and for cleaning
>up corruption wherever he could find it." That's why he was being
>attacked. So testified John Sweeney before a House Committee.
>Actually, there's more to it than that. In 1994, Coia Jr., was the
>target of a 212 page Justice Department complaint alleging he and
>his father were long time associates of the Patriarca crime family.
>In the early 80's-- Father and son were indicted with the
>Patriarca's for ripping off a LIUNA dental plan. They escaped
>conviction on a technicality. Coia Jr. even admitted he became
>Secretary Treasurer of LIUNA only with the approval of the Chicago
>Outfit.
>
>Yes, that's all in the past. But if you want an example of how far
>Coia's clean-up has gotten in LIUNA, download the audio tape of Vice
>President Steven Manos being beaten last year at a meeting of Local
>230 for protesting a union expenditure. It's at
><http://www.laborers.org>. You can hear Charlie LeConche, the head
>of Connecticut LIUNA district council saying to Manos at an
>executive board meeting, "I'm about ready to tear your fucking
>throat out." You can hear Manos' cries. And LeConche saying, "We own
>you." as Steve is thrown down the stairs. Afterwards,the guy that
>beat him, the sergeant at arms, Frank Freeman, was promoted to Vice
>President of the local. International LIUNA VP President Vere Haynes
>was in the room, watching the beating. He never said a word. Later,
>LIUNA's GEB attorney issued a reprimand for this Hobbs act
>violation. Some clean-up.
>
>But what about Ron Carey? Wasn't he punished for his militant role
>in the UPS strike? Alexander Cockburn wrote in the Nation that the
>charges against Carey were being driven by a Larouchean conspiracy
>in the service of big business. "Harass Carey...Harass the AFL-CIO
>leaders to whose project Carey is vital," he wrote," Now probe
>anyone trying to build a combative even radical labor movement. Get
>them on the run. Get them in front of a grand jury. Get everyone
>frightened and persuaded that trying to build a radical, combative
>labor movement is against the law."
>
>A strong statement of the case. But not an altogether unfamiliar
>one. More than a dozen years ago, similar words were spoken by an
>even more prominent Leftist. "Bust unions, discredit union leaders;
>now take over unions. Teamsters, you are the starting point."
>
>These were the words of Jesse Jackson at a 1986 Cincinnati
>Convention Center rally in support of Jackie Presser, who'd just
>been indicted. The truth was that Presser was both a mob puppet and
>a FBI snitch. But this didn't prevent him from getting the
>traditional leftist defense: a combination of flat denials; and
>broad claims about plots to destroy the labor movement.
>
>Let's look at the Carey case: As the federal election officer who
>ordered the '96 Teamsters election rerun, Barbara Zack Quindel would
>have to have been in on the plot. But according to Quindel, she made
>the decision before the strike. But she didn't reveal her decision
>so as not to affect the strike's outcome. There's evidence to back
>her claim. But in any case, why would Barbara Zack Quindel, want to
>expose a money laundering scandal that implicated her husband and
>forced her own resignation? Quindel was making nearly a $1,000,000 a
>year when she stepped down.
>
>So far, we've examined the claim that corruption charges are just a
>punishment for trade union militancy; the efforts to deny the scope
>and seriousness of union corruption; the argument that the
>participation of businessmen in trade union corruption somehow
>renders it less objectionable. None of these contentions seems very
>convincing. A more effective argument doesn't impugn people's
>motives or deny the facts or try to make corruption go away by the
>method of moral equivalency. Instead it talks about the consequences
>of corruption stories: they help the boss and demoralize trade
>unionists fighting the good fight inside the union.
>
>I heard this a lot after the Voice series on UNITE. "What you don't
>see," I was told," is that there are honest people in UNITE. They're
>doing real organizing. It's them you're hurting.".The general
>concern was well put in a pamphlet put out by the National
>Interfaith Committee on Worker Justice," As wrong as union
>corruption is, it is unfortunate that union corruption receives so
>much front page media attention, compared to the important justice
>work done by unions to raise wages, benefits and working conditions
>for low-wage workers." (Newsday, 9/5/99) As we've seen, the DOL
>estimates that 75% of UNITE shops in New York City are sweatshops by
>the union's own definition. Some members make as little as a dollar
>an hour while the contract calls for over $9.00 an hour. There's
>even a system whereby the workers buy their checks to make it appear
>that they're getting the federal minimum wage. What's "unfortunate"
>is not what's in the media but what's in the shops; not the exposure
>of the conditions but the refusal of the union to fight them. Maybe
>if the ministers spent more time in the shops talking to workers
>instead of on the dias dialoging with labor leaders, they'd be more
>effective apostles of justice they seek.
>
>There remain the concerns of honest leaders of the trade union
>movement who sincerely believe that corruption stories weaken them.
>Your stories," I've been told by people I respect," strengthen the
>cynics who think all trade union leaders are corrupt." But why don't
>these honest leaders themselves rebel against the dishonest ones?
>Why run the church sale out of a crack house? Would corruption
>stories create cynicism if AFL-CIO leaders themselves drew the line
>against the dishonest leaders? They rarely do anymore.
>
>After the McClellan hearings in 1957, George Meany proclaimed how
>surprised he was to discover corruption in the Teamsters and the
>Longshoreman. But he kicked them and their per capita's out of the
>Federation. He also established an ethical practices committee.
>Which last met in 1959.
>
>But can anyone imagine Sweeney-- doing anything similar? Meany
>established the principle that if you took the Fifth on corruption
>charges you were out. Sweeney supported Rich Trumka, the Fed's no.2,
>who took the Fifth three times in connection with charges he
>illegally funneled $150,000 in AFL-CIO cash into Ron Carey's 1996
>campaign.
>
>Sweeney never uttered a negative word about Gus Bevona -- the
>highest paid union leader on the planet; who illegally hired a
>gumshoe to harass a union dissident and then billed his members for
>his private legal expenses when he sued. And you can understand
>Sweeney's silence: until 1995, Sweeney was getting upwards of
>$90,000 a year from Bevona. Even more directly, Sweeney participated
>in violating the dissident members' rights.
>
>"But if you didn't write about corruption, no-one would know, "I can
>hear people say,". And at the end of the day, the labor movement
>would be better off." In the end, I can't refute the claim that
>corruption stories undermine unions. Not because it's true, but
>because we can never know for what the consequences of any political
>action will be.
>
>Writing stories about corruption can be a form of political action.
>I try to shape them into that form bydenying what defenders of the
>trade union status quo affirm: that unions have only one side -- and
>it is represented exclusively by union leaders. Even when the
>leaders obtain office by fraud and use office to sellout the members
>to the boss. In my experience the union can have two sides.
>
>On one side are Luxembourg's "friends of labor" -- who produce
>"unlimited praise and boundless optimism" on demand for the
>leadership; and on the other are the members who believe in unions
>must have a horizon higher than "where's mine?" and broader than
>"what's the deal?". I'm on their side. Without them I could hardly
>write a word. Because where do stories about corruption from? Not
>from the bosses. I didn't get the DC 37 story from the Giuliani
>Administration but from the reformers, from Mark Rosenthal, Robyn
>Little. Ray Markey, Tom Dawes, Roy Comer. Not from the owner of the
>sweatshop on 446 Broadway but from Chinese Staff and Workers
>association, from Wing Lam and Joanne Lum. In the laborers, not from
>the contractors, but from Gary Wall; Barney Scanlon; Pete DiNuzzo
>and Louise Furio. In SEIU-- from Paul Pamias and Carlos Guzman- not
>the cleaning company bosses. They got on quite well with Greedy Gus
>Bevona.
>
>The point is to show in these unions there really are two sides. A
>corrupt side and the reformers side. The labor establishment insists
>that the voices of Hill, Bevona and Coia are the authentic voices of
>American trade unionists. Who is promoting cynicism? Who is
>providing hope?