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United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (UBCJA)

UDR Story

  • Court officer's plan to clean up NYC Carpenters
    In December, in his report to the judge on the first six months of his court-appointed stewardship--70 pages loaded with a mountain of explanatory attachments--Review Officer Dennis Walsh makes a convincing case that he will really try to clean up the corruption-ravaged New York City Carpenters District Council. The effort has been a long time in coming. 
     
  • Florida Carpenters decry total disregard for democracy



  • New stage in super bureaucratization of labor

    Four locals in California, with a combined membership of 40,000 janitorial service workers, were ordered by SEIU President Andy Stern to join together in a new district council called United Service Workers-West. Here is something drastically new in the SEIU. Unlike the various mega locals created earlier by Stern by dissolving several locals into one, these four locals each retain a separate existence, but only as desiccated shells deprived of substance.

  • Book review: Two contrasting views on union corruption

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    By William Kornblum

    Like deadly parasites, gangsters and labor racketeers feast on the finances and pensions of union members. This is an old and painful story for AUD members, but two new books take a hard look at the causes and consequences of union corruption. Unfortunately, only one of these books offers a detailed and critical analysis of what strategies work best to rid the house of labor of its pernicious pests.

  • Focusing the AFL-CIO debate: Bureaucracy v. Democracy

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  • Will the DOL permit unions to evade secret ballot elections?

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    How to differentiate between a "local union" and an "intermediate" body? The U.S. Labor Department requests public comments on what might seem like an abstruse question "to determine whether additional rulemaking is necessary." But there is nothing airy or academic at stake.

  • Insurgents win in national Cinematographers local: Internet democracy triumphs over super centralization (plus Twelve tips for an internet election campaign)

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    UPDATED 9/19/04

    In April officer elections in Cinematographers Local 600, IATSE, the insurgent Coalition for a Democratic Union routed the incumbent slate, winning every contested position, including five of the seven national officers. Yes, national officers. Local 600 is a 5,600-member national local whose jurisdiction runs across the entire United States.

  • Divided appeals court denies Carpenters direct elections

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    (updated September 19, 2004)

    In June a federal appeals court rebuffed a suit by seven carpenters who sought to compel their New England Regional Council of Carpenters (NERCC) to elect its top officers by direct membership referendum vote. In a two-to-one decision the First Circuit appeals court in Massachusetts upheld a ruling of the U.S. Labor Department that the council could continue to elect officers by vote of local delegates.

Book Review

  • Labor’s “civil wars” ending inconclusively

    The “civil war” that Steve Early mentions in his new book is not about the class war between labor and capital, nor any war between a conservative right and a radical left in unions. It is the war that split labor’s progressive left (however you define it), a conflict that was triggered by the swift celebrity rise of Andy Stern as the new labor leader, touted, for a time, as the champion of a newly invigorated and enlightened union movement.

$100 Plus Story

  • New Independent Investigator Appointed as Former Leader Convicted in The New York Carpenters District Council

    Ace reporter Tom Robbins' Village Voice article (see next page) deftly sums up the sordid history of Michael Forde's corrupt career. While under the influence of cocaine, drugs, and booze, he brazenly avoided ouster as the top officer of the huge Carpenters union until he pled guilty in July 2010. Back in 1998 and again in 2002, Forde was fined for violating the union's job referral rules. Designed to give first priority to out of work members, Federal Judge Charles S. Haight wrote that Forde's conduct "was dishonorable and revealed his personal contempt" for the job referral system.

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