[lbo-talk] OK, Nathan

[andie nachgeborenen]

I don't know the story behind the suprising strength
of the unions in Vegas, but I'd like to see evidence
that the mob's looting of the Central States Pension
fund to build the casinos via Hoffa, Dorfman, and
others contributed to that.  As I understand it the
timing is off: the mob build Vegas with stolen union
pension money in the late 50s and 60s, then (if
Pilaggi is right) got booted from Vegas in the 80s and
replaced ws key players in gaming by giant
corporations - MGM, Disney, and the like. It was in
this period, it's my understanding, that unionization
in Vegas took off. That was also the period in which
the Central States Pension Fund was freed from mob
control. 

I think that workers _should_ control their capital
and financial resources -- that was my point about
union democracy.  Given the top-down, undemocratic
structure of many unions -- most of them -- they
don't.  And indeed the pension fund trustees
themselves are a further remove in most cases. 

--- Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:


> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "andie nachgeborenen"
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> 
> 
> -Yeah, e.g., the Teamster's Southeastern, etc.
> States
> -Pension und was run by the mob and financed its
> -expansion into Vegas. (See, e.g., Nicholas
> Pilaggi's
> -Casino, the basis of a not-bad DeNiro/Psci/Sharon
> -Stone movie of the same name).
> 
> And gave the unions the influence to demand that the
> hotel casinos recognize 
> the unions in Las Vegas, one of the reasons
> right-to-work Nevada had one of 
> the most unionized core industries in the country.
> 
> Why shouldn't workers want to control their own
> capital and financial 
> resources?  Right now state Medicaid funds are often
> used to hire striker 
> replacements when nurses go out on strike.
> 
> People talk about corruption of union control of
> pension funds but they 
> don't talk about the power they give unions in many
> organizing situations. 
> Taft-Hartley began that attack on union control of
> benefit funds not because 
> of supposed corruption but because they wanted to
> undercut John Lewis's 
> economic and political power he was beginning to
> exercise through control of 
> pension and health funds.
> 
> My god-- of course someone like Fitch can fill a
> book with corruption 
> stories.  He can also do the same and far more with
> stories of government 
> corruption.   And more books on corporate corruption
> when they control large 
> sums of money.   So what?   Money means there will
> be corruption, but the 
> question is whether unions have any more than
> parallel institutions.   I've 
> never seen any compelling evidence that they do.
> 
> In fact, despite all the scandals of the go-go stock
> market in the 1990s, 
> when the dust settled, almost no union pension funds
> had any serious 
> problems.  The Ullico "scandal" was the biggest one
> they came up with, but 
> the money involved was pretty damn small and was
> pocket change compared to 
> serious government and corporate scandals.
> 
> You can make union corruption sound bad by long
> lists of stories but add up 
> the dollars and unions look clean and honest
> compared to comparable 
> corporate and government officials.
> 
> Nathan Newman
> 
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