On Tue, 14 Feb 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Under Sweeney, corruption was pervasive in the union - most notoriously,
> Gus Bevona's 32BJ local.
As you point out, this was one of Stern's biggest successes. Bevona was trusteed out, and replaced with Mike Fishman. And Fishman got one of the most remarkable tributes to his integrity of any union man, when, four years ago, a government informer taped a bunch of mooks sitting around moaning how bad things were now that Bevona was gone becuase this new bunch of guys refused to play ball, no matter what:
http://66.70.64.5/news/0239,robbins,38592,5.html
This Village Voice article is also interesting in the picture it portrays of how mobs get into unions. Here, it is portrayed as happening almost entirely at the instigation of bosses, driven by obvious market forces that never change: a sweetheart deal is worth a lot of money. And this makes it look like a constant corrosive force that is always lapping at the sides of any union, building by building in this case. And what seems to necessarily result from that is a patchwork quilt, where even a union with a totally clean leadership occupies a professional landscape pock marked by lots of made-up corrupt unions, which will be re-created as soon as they are put out of business. As well as single-building local deals that will happen if there is even one bribable individual that is clever.
What I take away from this is that even when you have a spectacularly clean gang, like Fishman and crew -- and you can't get better evidence than the exasperation of their would-be corrupters -- it would still be possible to give a plausible picture of widespread corruption in their industry. The corrupt unions would outnumber the clean union even here. And so the corrupt leaders would outnunber the clean leaders. But it would be a completely wrong picture.
It makes it seem like it's quite a tricky thing to get a clear picture of what's really going on, to make facts into narrative that portrays things justly. Especialy since the corrupt guys all lie, and the clean guys don't want to talk about it.
> Fitch credits Stern for having cleaned up SEIU, though faults him for not
> having mentioned that that was what he was doing.
Just out of curiosity, why does Fitch think that is a fault? Given how crippling the taint of mob association is, doesn't it seem reasonable that Stern woudn't want this to get a lot of publicity? Since he's afraid the headline would not be "union cleans up act" but rather "union has long history of mob influence?" Because in the landscape just described, a union leader knows anyone can find mobs in the industry if they look. And to an outsider, all unions are alike. So they'd rather beat them quietly trusting that the workers will see the difference.
It seems like a reasonable thing to want to play down if you're a union guy.
Michael