"Don White" wrote in message
...

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
Unfortunately, that effort did not succeed, and conditions have gotten
worse for them since. The corporations simply fired everyone, knowing
that the NLRB during the Bush misAdministration wouldn't uphold labor
law.
snip


That's really bad news.......and people wonder why some early unions were
forced to deal with organized crime. When you have both the employer and
gov't against you, an an indifferent public, you accept whatever helping
hand is offered.

"Helping hand" you say?
Lawsuit says corruption rampant in Jersey union
No-show jobs, nepotism, mob ties cited
Thursday, January 13, 2005
BY TED SHERMAN
Star-Ledger Staff
Some of the highest-paying jobs at Local 734 of the Laborers' International
Union of North America -- which represents thousands of workers in New
Jersey and Pennsylvania -- had little to do with digging ditches.

There was the wife of one former union official, who was hired after her
husband was convicted on federal labor law violations for attempting to
create a no-show job. She received $111,799 to come in twice a week to
listen to voice mail messages from members with benefits questions,
according to court records.



Then there was the accountant who paid his mother-in-law $650 a week for
part-time work as a bookkeeper while charging the local's pension and
welfare funds $182,000 a year for her services, an independent hearing
officer concluded.

And the business partner of another former official who was hired as the
office manager of a satellite office at the Jersey Shore and paid $123,500
to supervise two people.

The Laborers' union now is seeking a federal investigation into the New
Jersey local, claiming that members were defrauded of more than $2 million
in a scheme that saw the hiring of relatives and business cronies to perform
"non-essential, part-time and ruse jobs at grossly excessive salaries."

Trustees for the Washington, D.C.-based union -- who are seeking damages
from current and former officials, and want to remove the leadership of the
local -- also alleged that some officials of the local who controlled
millions in funds had ties to organized crime.

The Laborers' union, with more than 850,000 members across the United States
and Canada, represents mostly building or highway construction workers, but
its members also work in public employment, environmental remediation,
health care, food service and custodial services. Local 734, with business
offices in Rochelle Park, has 3,500 members in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Newark, the trustees
said Local 734 was riddled with no-show jobs and ill-defined, overpaid
positions -- many of them connected to former executive board member August
"Auggie" Vergalito, who left the local after he pleaded guilty in 1997 to
unlawfully concealing payments he made from the welfare and educational
fund.

Among those who benefited included his wife, a daughter, three sons-in-law,
a former son-in-law and two business associates, the lawsuit claimed.

Attorneys for some of the Local 734 officials named in the complaint
yesterday denied there were abuses within the pension and welfare funds.

"They are asserting that the funds hired people who were really not
essential, and paid them too much. We are asserting they all had a
particular function with the fund, and were paid a higher salary to keep
them," said David Grossman, an attorney for Peter Rizzo, the local's funds
administrator.

Grossman said the union's trustees were trying to take over the two funds,
which total more than $100 million, and merge them with other funds that are
not doing so well.

"That's what it's all about. It's a money grab," Grossman said.

Vincent M. Giblin, an attorney for the trustees, however, said it was all
about fraud. He said it was inconceivable that the officials of the local
did not know that inflated salaries were going to nonessential jobs.

"Nepotism is not a license to commit fraud," Giblin said.

In New Jersey, an independent hearing officer for the union, Peter F. Vaira,
the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, concluded
that most of the jobs held by Vergalito's family and friends were of little
value to the union's operation. He called it a scheme to defraud the funds
and Local 734.

For example, he noted that Jamie Dolan -- a daughter of Vergalito who was
married to Edward Dolan, a Local 734 official -- was hired as a confidential
officer for the local after her husband was convicted in 1995 on federal
embezzlement charges.

Jamie Dolan's job required her to be on call from Friday through Monday, and
listen to voice mail messages from members trying to resolve benefits
questions.

"In reality, she came into the office and took the messages off the voice
mail two days a week," Vaira found. In 2003, she responded to 109 calls --
earning a salary of $111,799.

"This averages to approximately two calls per week, at approximately $1,000
a call," Vaira said in his findings, which were filed with the federal
lawsuit.

According to Vaira, Vergalito's wife, Rhoda, was employed as a Local 734
confidential officer to replace her husband when he was forced to leave,
initially for a salary of $1,000 a week to work from 5:30 p.m. to midnight
Tuesday through Friday.

Vaira also cited the hiring of Isaac Barocus, a business partner of
Vergalito in a taxi and limousine service, to become the office manager of a
satellite office in Brick.

"Barocus was paid $123,500 to oversee two other persons whose duties were at
best minimal," Vaira said.

Two other women were employed as clerks for 10 hours a week at $47 per hour.

According to Vaira's finding, "grossly excessive salaries for nonessential
or part-time jobs" resulted in the local's welfare pension fund spending 40
cents of every dollar for administrative costs. The normal administrative
costs are between 7 percent and 10 percent, he said.

The hearing officer also raised questions about the local's connections to
organized crime. According to Vaira, Vergalito was observed by an FBI
surveillance team entering the Soho Grand Hotel in New York about the same
time as Dominick Cirillo, identified then as the acting boss of the Genovese
crime family. He said Vergalito was seen at the hotel on at least 13
separate occasions in 1999 -- often on Wednesdays -- and was seen in the
company of Cirillo at the hotel bar at least once.

"The facts disclosed in this record are a disgrace to the labor movement,"
said Vaira, who ordered his findings forwarded to the FBI and U.S. attorney
for New Jersey.

But Angelo R. Bisceglie Jr., another attorney representing Local 734
officials, said the trustees' case will be refuted when his clients get to
make their case in U.S. District Court next month.

"We're looking forward to the court hearing. That's when it will all come
out," he said.