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September 4, 2000
John Sweeney's Labor Day
Peter Flaherty
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney likes to style himself as the architect of a new and resurgent labor movement. Unfortunately for his membership, this year he is instead beholden to Al Gore.
During Mr. Sweeney's five-minute speech to the Democratic Convention, he was just another willing actor in the Democratic infomercial in Los Angeles, giving an unapologetic endorsement of Mr. Gore. Out in the streets, demonstrators decried Mr. Gore's support for free trade and globalization, but inside Mr. Sweeney only made the most fleeting reference to what is supposedly organized labor's biggest difference with Mr. Gore.
In the wake of the anti-WTO protests earlier this year in Seattle, much was made of greens and hard hats manning the barricades side-by-side. For the AFL-CIO leadership, it appears, coalition building goes only so far.
Mr. Sweeney's first instinct is survival. A Justice Department under an attorney general appointed by Al Gore is critically important to his continuance in office. Justice is monitoring clean-ups of major unions like the laborers (LIUNA) and hotel and restaurant employees (HERE). Under Janet Reno, these efforts have been half-hearted and even counterproductive. Things might be different under a Bush Justice Department. One only has to look at the Teamsters to see the havoc that can be wrought when a corrupt union is challenged internally by reformers and must have real elections.
Teamster President Ron Carey's demise was a defeat for Mr. Sweeney, but the damage may not be over. The Teamsters money-laundering scandal still lingers. Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan has won convictions of underlings like William Hamilton, the Teamsters' political director, but so far bigger fish have gone free. Those bigger fish include Richard Trumka, the loud bully who serves as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, and Gerald McEntee, the president of the large and growing American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCSME). Both played key roles in illegally laundering money into Mr. Carey's campaign and could still face criminal indictment. Both were also instrumental in securing the AFL-CIO endorsement for Al Gore.
Another underling nailed by Mary Jo White is Michael Ansara, a Boston-based political consultant. Even while he awaited sentencing for a felony conviction, the Gore campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the last year paid Mr. Ansara's phone bank hundreds of thousands of dollars. ABC-TV ran story on night two of the Democratic Convention on the Ansara connection during which an annoyed Trumka turned his back to ABC's cameras. The next day, the Gore campaign and the Democratic National Committee severed ties with the phone bank.
Ralph Nader is making the case that the AFL-CIO is selling out its members by selling its soul to globalist Al Gore. But even if one believes that free trade helps American workers rather than harms them, it is easy to make the case that Mr. Sweeney and his cohorts are hopelessly out of touch with their membership. No issue stirs the anger of rank and file union members more than union corruption. And organized labor is in the grips of what the New York Times last year termed a "wave of union corruption."
Even unions considered to be historically corruption-free like the United Auto Workers (UAW) have caught the disease. Twenty-one General Motors employees are suing the union and GM, claiming that UAW local bosses demanded jobs for relatives and improper overtime payments for ending a costly 1997 strike at GM's Pontiac truck plants. The allegations also are being probed by the FBI and Department of Labor.
When Mr. Sweeney was elected AFL-CIO president in 1995, he was generally considered to be clean. In the course of a widely-publicized scandal involving his old local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in New York, it was reported that Mr. Sweeney had double-dipped on salary for 13 years. Honoring a time-honored tradition of corrupt labor bosses, he continued to collect a salary from the local after he became head of the national union. The New York scandal involved the plundering of the local by Gus Bevona, Mr. Sweeney's hand-picked successor. Mr. Bevona paid himself $500,000 per year.
The Sweeneys, Trumkas and McEntees may brag about a new labor movement, but on this Labor Day it is looking a lot like the old.
Peter Flaherty is president of the National Legal and Policy Center.
.
. ******** See John Fund's editorial in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ------->>
QUOTABLE QUOTE
"It is hard to exaggerate just how removed John Sweeney's AFL-CIO
is from labor unions of yore. Today four in 10 union members work
for government; indeed, the AFL-CIO's largest members is AFSCME, the 1.4
million-member strong union of...state and local workers. Given this
constituency, instead of focusing on an economic growth that would create
jobs for more union workers, organized labor needs a growing government
and their membership rolls. For all his talk about the invention
of the Internet, Mr. Gore's core constituency really has no binding stake
in the new economy."
- Review & Outlook, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 16, 2000.
More "Hubble" Hush $$$:
August 17, 2000
Inside PoliticsGreg Pierce
News and political dispatches from around the nation.
No embarrassment
A sure sign that Al Gore feels no
embarrassment over the 1996 fund-raising scandals: Gerald McEntee, president
of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was
among the scheduled speakers at the party convention
Tuesday.
"He played a key role in the
Teamster money laundering scandal, and faces possible indictment," notes
Peter Flaherty of the National Legal and Policy
Center.
AFL-CIO's RICH TRUMPKA Under Federal Investigation
Old Labor tries to establish a role in the New Economy
Big Labor and Its Global Socialist Agenda
Background:
.
.
That such character, such integrity is found in the union's support of clinton gore administration is dumbfounding.
Shades of John H. Lewis.
Trumka was on the tube yesterday looking rather weary. Reno will indict her mother before the money-washer goes to trial.
AFL propaganda minister Steve Rosenthal should share byline credit with NY Times' Greenhousegas:
.
.
Teacup ~ Thank you so much - for thinking of me when you came upon this lovely sentiment:
.
Thanks, #; these hoodlums are unbelievable.
Click on the 'cover girl' and go to Kelly Patricia O'Meara' story Blind Justice on Reno's MiniMe in TWT's Insight Magazine :
April 2-9, 2001, Cover Date
March 9, 2001, Publication Date
Free Republic thread --------->> HERE
.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
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