[lbo-talk] Lies about Union Corruption

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org
Tue Feb 14 15:25:22 PST 2006


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>

Nathan Newman wrote:
>Of course there is corruption out there but most unions don't have these
>problems. Why harp on the handful that do?

-Handful? Laborers, Carpenters, Teamsters, the old SEIU, DC37 in New -York - it's a long list that goes back a century.

It wasn't even all of the Teamsters. There were clean locals throughout even the worst periods of international corruption. Unions are not monoliths. Which is part of my point. And when you add up all the unions and all the money they've controlled over the past decades, the amount of corruption is a very tiny percentage compared to the honest management of the overwhelming amount of those assets.


>Even the example you give is more complicated.

-Actually you gave the example, to make the point that the case was -being mischaracterized as union corruption when it was corporate. In -fact, it was a joint venture in corruption, a fine example of -labor-management cooperation in stealing workers' assets. It took -less than five minutes of Googling to find this out.

Except you were mixing two different legal investigations and crimes. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Jun/15/ln/ln07p.html "Wong's criminal case is separate from the federal prosecution that resulted in the conviction of former United Public Workers head Gary Rodrigues on charges of mail fraud, money laundering and embezzling union money."

The fraud cited in the DOL report was Peter Wong lying to the state about the solvency of his fund, a fraud which Rodrigues has no involvement in. There was no union involvement in that crime. Rodrigues' own embezzlement of $200,000 is enough of a crime. Why the obsession with tagging union leaders with additional crimes they didn't commit?

-- Nathan Newman



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