This is the Union Jerry Wurf once headed - beating Arnold Zander whom I
had the pleasure to meet. Wurf then joined the CFR and had no doubt
always been part of it, fo rmy old boss told me he had fought him before
in New York, and the guy was a communist.
He had expensive tastes, however but he sure knew how to turn the blacks
in the sanitation departments into line - for Martin Luther King, did
not die for Civil Rights - he was invited to his death to walk in a
march for Dues Check Off, for AFSCME-AFL CIO by Jerry Wurf.....CFR.
this is what Jimmy Hoffa meant by Sweetheart Unions.....where labor and
political parties get into bed together while they rip off the workers.
You see there is such a thing as Civil Serivce and this stupid lot in
our area didn't know that the Ohio Constitution set up the Civil Service
and the State Legislature in their labor act said this Union Contract
supersedes all laws, blah blah blah.....
But too late - for the Union got all the affirmative action people in
without testing, and as a result have to hire "contract workers" who are
loathed by union people, to do their work for them.
So much for AFSCME-AFL-CIO, once headed by Jerry Wurf, of the Council on
Foreign Relations, known comunist who left a few body bags in the area.
(Joe Gilfhalen and his wife and one son - but one got away - only in
this case no proof who did what, only threats were given to Joe and the
usual line "hey got kids, got family"....he one son still lives today
and does well))
OSaba
March 22, 2002
Main Page
Center Commentary
Subscribe
>From the Editor
Feedback
Join the Center
527s/Issue Ad Watch
Subscribe > Enter your e-mail address and click 'Go' to subscribe to
The Public i and receive brief overview of each issue. It's FREE!
Search
Advanced Search
Issue Ad Watch 2000
The Center will be reporting on groups conducting issue ad campaigns
throughout the election cycle to increase media and voter knowledge of
these oftentimes shadowy groups and their interests
Investigative Report
Cloud of Corruption
Around Democrats' Union Patron
AFSCME and Its President, Gerald McEntee*,
Have Given Party More Than $3.6 million
As the Democratic National Convention gets under way in Los Angeles, the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is once
again leading the way in soft money donations to the Democratic Party,
pouring in just less than $2 million to the party over the 2000 election
cycle, according to numbers compiled by the nonpartisan Center for
Responsive Politics. AFSCME's unparalleled support of the party (it is
the largest soft money donor this cycle to the Democratic National
Committee and related committees) continues the Democrats' tradition of
keeping close ties to the labor movement. But while the news media focus
on the union's financial generosity, little attention has been given to
AFSCME's checkered history.
By Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity
(Washington, August 9) By 1996, there had been much mutual
back-scratching between the Teamsters, the White House, and the
Democratic Party. And so a deal was struck, a complicated scheme that
happens to have been illegal:
RELATED LINKS
- AFSCME
Printer-friendly versionThe Teamsters would continue to pour
unprecedented sums into the Clinton-Gore campaign and Democratic Party
committees, and in exchange, the Democrats would help to finance
Teamster President Ron Carey's own re-election campaign. They couldn't
do that directly, of course, so the money was laundered through a
liberal public-interest organization, Citizen Action, and through other
groups, including the National Council of Senior Citizens and Project
Vote.
Federal law prohibits employers from contributing to any union election.
More than $4 million in Democratic National Committee money moved to
Citizen Action and other groups, and at least $885,000 in union funds
was illegally diverted into Carey's re-election campaign.
Today, the carnage from this scandal casts a pall over the entire labor
movement.
Three individuals pleaded guilty to embezzlement, mail fraud, and
conspiracy and cooperated with the federal prosecutors. (One of them,
Michael Ansara, continued to do major consulting business with the DNC
via his company, the Share Group .) A fourth, William Hamilton, a former
political director of the Teamsters union, was found guilty in November
1999 and sentenced to three years in prison. The AFL-CIO's No. 2
official, Richard Trumka, who as secretary-treasurer signed some of the
checks, has asserted his Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination – to federal prosecutors, to a court-appointed
labor investigator, to a congressional committee, and even to AFL-CIO
president John Sweeney.
It's difficult for many labor insiders to accept that Trumka hatched
such a plan. No one seems to know for sure how the high-level labor
conversations exactly went with respect to the illegal scheme involving
the Democratic Party and the Teamsters, but Gerald McEntee, the
president of AFSCME and the chairman of the AFL-CIO's political
committee (a position he assumed in 1995), certainly was involved.
He has had a close personal friendship with Carey. McEntee retained an
attorney, paid for by AFSCME, to represent him in the Teamsters matter
and admitted to federal prosecutors that he sought a campaign donation
of $20,000 to the Carey campaign from the owners of a company that does
major business with AFSCME. Kelly Press, Inc., is barred by federal law
from contributing to a union campaign, and McEntee apparently broke
government-imposed rules for union elections by soliciting an AFSCME
supplier. Paul Booth, an aide to McEntee who's married to Heather Booth,
a former DNC official and a founder of Citizen Action, also has said
that he raised tens of thousands of dollars for Carey.
"What we did, according to our attorneys, was nothing illegal," McEntee
told the Center for Public Integrity. "We cooperated fully and
completely with the people who were investigating this case, and that's
about the size of it."
But there is, as they say, much more to the story.
McEntee has been the president of the nation's largest union of public
employees since 1981, after the death of Jerry Wurf. Wurf, who boosted
the union's membership from 200,000 to roughly one million –
organizing police officers, firefighters, sanitation and hospital
workers and other government employees from coast to coast – was
enormously respected for his honesty and his independence. A case in
point: He opposed the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, to the
consternation of George Meany, then the president of the AFL-CIO.
Under Wurf, AFSCME became known as a pioneer in aggressively recruiting
women and blacks. It is a forgotten footnote of history that it was the
mostly black, striking garbage workers who in April 1968 drew the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, where he was assassinated, were
AFSCME members.
In McEntee's two decades of stewardship, AFSCME's membership has grown
only modestly, and no one seems to know the exact number. The union's
annual reports to the Labor Department have suspiciously listed the same
membership figure for the past five years: 1.3 million. As in many
unions today, secrecy reigns. It is not well known that the progressive
union respected for its commitment to civil rights and diversity -- it
once brought Nelson Mandela to speak to its national convention -- was
sued by 10 employees for race discrimination. AFSCME settled all the
cases out of court.
"McEntee was made aware of the situation and he did not take steps to
deal with it," a union insider told the Center. "If you set a permissive
environment, if people get a sense that discrimination doesn't matter,
then it will reverberate throughout the organization."
Long considered one of the "clean" unions, a cloud of corruption has now
begun to surround AFSCME. Besides the Teamsters scandal that's swirling
around McEntee and his aide Paul Booth, in recent years no fewer than
six AFSCME international vice-presidents have been forced to resign.
Consider the following:
In New York City, Stanley Hill, the executive director of AFSCME
District Council 37, retired after spending several months on unpaid
leave pending investigation. Two of his top aides resigned following
their admissions that they had helped to rig the vote on the local's
1996 contract ratification. Also in New York City, Albert Diop was
removed in 1999 as the president of an AFSCME clerical workers local.
Diop and three others charged more than $1 million in personal expenses
on their union credit cards and spent nearly $1.2 million on
undocumented "hospitality" payments when traveling. Diop spent more than
$600,000 to rent a penthouse apartment and ran up $162,431 in hotel
charges in New York City for 446 nights, including 128 on weekends, even
though he has a residence in the city. He also spent nearly $135,000
over three years to lease a Lincoln Town Car even though he already had
a $665-a-month automobile allowance.
In Connecticut, Dominic Badolato was expelled from AFSCME for using
illegal strong-arm tactics against his political opponents. In Boston,
Joseph Bonavita had to leave his union after an audit revealed he had
been paid $82,416 in unauthorized bonuses and undocumented
reimbursements. In Iowa, Don McKee was convicted of helping himself to
$43,000 in union money. And in Pennsylvania, Earl Stout was convicted of
racketeering, embezzlement, and mail fraud.
"Wherever we have found this [corruption], we have rooted it out, and we
have either suspended or dismissed the union leaders that were
involved," McEntee told the Center. "We are a good union, we are a clean
union."
Perks have increased
When Wurf died, he was making about $108,000 a year in salary and
allowances and had refused a raise. By 1998, McEntee was making $375,000
a year, and he also got his friendly board to adopt a deferred
compensation plan so that when he retires he will receive nearly 100
percent of his salary. "I think you ought to get decent pay, a decent
pension, decent benefits," McEntee told the Center.
AFSCME also provides McEntee with a car and a chauffeur as well as an
$1,800-a-month automobile expense allowance. Sources told the Center
that McEntee spends more than $100,000 a year in AFSCME funds to travel
around the United States on charter jets and stay in the finest hotel
suites, and he is a fixture at such "power lunch" expense-account
restaurants in Washington as The Palm, where his caricature is on the
wall. None of this information, of course, is in AFSCME's annual reports
to the Labor Department .
Referring to McEntee and, in general, the unseemly extravagances of
today's union leaders, a veteran AFSCME member who asked that his name
not be used told the Center, "They think they're becoming the captains
of industry, for chrissakes! . . . I guess they forgot what they're
supposed to be doing."
Benefited from vendors
The Center has learned that McEntee personally benefited from the
generosity of certain AFSCME vendors, a violation of union rules.
Consider the case of Kelly Press, which contributed $20,000 to the
Teamster election at McEntee's urging. Over the years, the company has
gotten millions of dollars in printing business from AFSCME . McEntee
and Paul Kelly, a co-owner of the company, frequently play tennis at
Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., where Kelly is a member,
and sources told the Center that McEntee has been an occasional guest on
the Kellys' fishing boat. The relationship goes back at least a decade:
When McEntee was remarried, Kelly arranged for the wedding reception to
be at Congressional.
"The only way that you can have a wedding there is that a member has to
sponsor you," McEntee told the Center. "So the Kellys sponsored us."
Close to President Clinton
No union president is closer to Bill Clinton today than McEntee; the two
men have assiduously courted each other for nearly a decade now. AFSCME
was the first national union to back Clinton, even before the 1992 New
Hampshire primary, when he was still a dark horse. Clinton had spoken to
the AFSCME board, and he brought along a letter of support from 840
AFSCME members in Arkansas. He even showed them his own AFSCME
membership card. Days later, McEntee assigned three staff members to
work for Clinton in New Hampshire. And so it began.
Since 1993, McEntee has reveled in his personal access to the president.
>From the private St. Patrick's Day party at the White House and various
Rose Garden events, to trips on Air Force One and Friday night bull
sessions at the White House mess, McEntee, to quote a veteran union
insider, "got lost in space over that stuff." ("I've only been on Air
Force One maybe six times – that's six times in eight years – so
it's not like I take a trip every three weeks," McEntee told the
Center.)
At McEntee's 60th birthday celebration a few years ago at Washington's
Capital Hilton hotel, Clinton spoke warmly about how McEntee had always
been there for him. McEntee and AFSCME have certainly been there
financially for Clinton and his party, more than anyone else in America,
to the tune of more than $3.6 million.
The union has an elaborate get-out-the-vote operation, a voter
registration effort and an extensive phone bank system, in addition to
the contributions to politicians that it has made at all levels of
government. McEntee led the AFL-CIO's highly publicized $35 million ad
campaign in 1996. And McEntee, the Center has learned, called a meeting
to personally urge higher-ups at AFSCME to make contributions to the
president's legal-expense fund.
Unfortunately, such access comes at a steep price. On policy issues of
greatest concern to AFSCME's members, in public McEntee has been largely
silent. McEntee doesn't criticize Clinton by name, and if he feels
obligated politically to criticize the administration, which is rare, he
has sometimes called the White House in advance to explain it and
quietly warn Clinton and his staff.
Ralph Nader vs. McEntee
Take, for example, the subject of national health care insurance. For
years, AFSCME had advocated the liberal "single payer" plan with the
greatest government role – not surprising for a union whose largest
contingent is 325,000 health and hospital workers. But under the
Clinton-McEntee spell, the union muted its public advocacy for this
policy and fell in line behind the White House. As the Center described
in its 1994 study, "Well-Healed: Inside Lobbying for Health Care
Reform," just weeks before Clinton's inauguration in January 1993, there
was a high-level, unusual confrontation at AFSCME headquarters between
Ralph Nader and McEntee.
Nader invoked the example of Franklin Roosevelt, after he had been
elected president, telling his supporters, "You elected me, now go out
there and make me do it." Nader argued that advocates of a single-payer
approach could not squander the opportunity and had a moral obligation
to speak out forcefully. By contrast, McEntee stressed the extraordinary
access they all now had after 12 years of being completely shut out. The
basic response was, "We're going to handle this our way, behind the
scenes."
AFSCME chose not to wage a postcard campaign, or to support a very
public bus caravan to Little Rock, Ark., to promote the single-payer
option. And in early 1993, at a meeting of the AFL-CIO health care
committee, McEntee and AFSCME voted in favor of managed competition,
abandoning its long-held single-payer position. AFSCME also poured money
into television "issue ads" in support of the Clinton health care plan
– ads that were intended to counter the highly effective "Harry and
Louise" commercials paid for by the insurance companies. In addition,
the Center has learned that when the president and the first lady
embarked on a bus tour "to the heartland" to garner public support for
the administration's ill-fated plan, McEntee's union agreed to help pay
for it.
The bottom line, however, is that during the 1993-94 struggle over
health care reform, organized labor, including AFSCME, was politically
ineffective and ultimately unsuccessful.
McEntee remains unbowed
McEntee remains unbowed about his inside approach, however. In the
spring of 1996, he met with Clinton, urging that the White House address
the public concern over managed health care, and months later the
president named McEntee to a commission on health care quality.
The "reinventing government" mantra of the Clinton-Gore administration
has presented McEntee with an interesting problem, as AFSCME faces
initiatives nationwide to privatize many traditional state and local
government functions – which, on its face, is a direct affront to the
union's membership. McEntee's public position is to support the idea of
making government more efficient and responsive by eliminating red tape
and redundant management, and to decry privatization when it cheats
citizens by failing to provide adequate services by trained employees.
AFSCME forged an innovative privatization agreement with the Republican
mayor of Indianapolis, Stephen Goldsmith, in which the local union
avoided mass layoffs. McEntee has testified before Congress that AFSCME
regularly wins back 80 percent of privatized contracts, by bidding
successfully or working with management to redesign the system in lieu
of privatization.
Back-door concessions
McEntee was not directly critical of the president when he proposed
welfare reform, which union leaders have estimated could cost more than
200,000 jobs, and got it enacted. But he and other union leaders
successfully lobbied the administration – over Republican opposition
on Capitol Hill – to rule that people who must work for their welfare
benefits are protected by federal labor law and entitled to the minimum
wage.
McEntee and others were able to gain another back-door concession. In a
March 28, 1997, meeting with the president, McEntee, Sweeney, and two
other union presidents urged Clinton to reject a request by Texas Gov.
George W. Bush, a Republican, for federal permission to allow private
companies to manage several Texas welfare programs, which could have
meant the loss of 5,000 public jobs. Weeks later, Clinton sided with
McEntee and labor, which Bush complained would cost the state $10
million a month.
* In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that The Center
for Public Integrity accepted contributions from labor unions including
AFSCME (and corporations) from 1990 to 1995, totaling $197,500. McEntee
served on the Center's board of advisors from 1990 to 1992.
Anya Richards of the Center for Public Integrity contributed to this
report, excerpted from The Buying of the President 2000 (Avon Books),
by Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity.
Related Report:
Turning to a second legal loophole after another was closed, AFSCME
quietly creates a group that is televising an advertisement harshly
critical of Gov. George W. Bush. (New York Times, Aug. 11) (Free
registration required)
© Copyright 2000, The Center for Public Integrity. All rights
reserved.
Main Page News Reports Center Commentary Subscribe From the
Editor Feedback Join the Center for Public Integrity
Suggest-a-Story
© Copyright 2000, The Center for Public Integrity. All rights
reserved
IMPORTANT: Read the Copyright & Disclaimer statement for more
information.
--- Begin Message ---
http://www.public-i.org/story_01_080900.htm
--- End Message ---
