Ethical practices codes

UDR Story

• Resisting attack from the right; fighting the mob
  Facing the most outright attack since President Reagan broke the air traffic controllers association, unions are responding with an unusual display of labor power. Reagan destroyed the union, but he stopped short of challenging the fundamental right of unions to represent workers. The new assault goes further as the anti-union right seeks to end or drastically curb the very principle of collective bargaining itself.
   
• Moving slowly while opportunity knocks at IUOE L. 14

  It was back in July 2008 that the government settled its civil RICO lawsuit against International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14, the 1,600-member union of heavy construction equipment and crane operators in New York City. The government charged that Local 14 had been dominated by organized crime; the consent decree that settled the case provides for two court-appointed monitors armed with wide-ranging powers to eradicate corruption, establish a fair job referral system, require fair elections, and promote union democracy.

• “Clean up our union with democracy”

  Many unions, confronted by corruption, are talking about ethics. But what are they doing about it? The Operating Engineers union has just retained an ethical officer to implement an elaborate ethical practices code. The ILA has just doubled its ethical staff to two. The New York City AFL-CIO Central Trades Council, whose former president just went to jail for stealing piles of money, has amended its bylaws ethicswise. The AFL-CIO has had ethical practices codes in several versions for 50 years. Latest to mount the ethical bandwagon after some of its important officers stole over a million dollars, is the SEIU, whose ethical codes, among the most pretentious, are applied by an intricate combination of appeals and committees.

• More on labor’s lasting quest for ethical practices: from the Operating Engineers

  SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review!

• Can the AFL-CIO avoid a RICO suit in ATU L. 1181?

  SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review!

• The fall of RISE in the Teamsters union and A double miscalculation ended RISE

  Get all the news: SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review!

  The fall of RISE in the Teamsters union

  In a letter to the Teamsters' general secretary-treasurer on April 28, Edwin Stier, initiator and architect of RISE, the union's self-reform program, resigned from the project and announced its dissolution. His letter of resignation was no diplomatic mealy-mouthed evasion of the reality but a hard-hitting statement of his findings:

• Who will police the Longshoremen's Ethics Code?

  Longshore workers, get all the news: SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review!

  Scrambling to fend off a threatened federal racketeering suit, the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) has adopted a Code of Ethics and hired a former investigator of police corruption in New York City to enforce it.

• A sometime deterrent: The UAW Public Review Board

  Autoworkers, get all the news: SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review!

• The RISE program: trying to discuss the future of Teamster Reform at a Cornell University Forum

  Get all the union democracy news: SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review!

  In 1999 Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa Jr hired Edwin Stier, a former federal prosecutor credited with ridding NJ Teamster Local 560 of mob influence, to develop an internal ethics program that would convince the Justice Department to end its oversight of the union.

• AFSCME DC 37: reform fails the test

  Keep AUD on the job: SUBSCRIBE to Union Democracy Review! Call 718-564-1114.

  The whole structure of DC 37’s highly-touted self-reform process, erected to remedy years of scandals, has collapsed ignominiously in the face of its first major test.