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. 

 

The council had been under Federal court monitorship for over 20 years; the government initiated its civil RICO suit back in 1990. So far, a failure. In all that time, racketeers and crooks remained entrenched. In June last year, noting “"It is something of a disgrace"” the presiding judge armed Walsh with new extraordinary responsibilities and power to make another stab at getting the intractable job done.

 

Walsh has already outlined a far-reaching administrative plan for the reorganization of the council, with its many affiliated locals and 23,000 members, and its benefit funds.

 

But to propose is not necessarily to dispose. 

 

It'’s a tough job; and, from his report, we gather that he is also likely to face resistance from International President Douglas McCarron. 

 

Walsh'’s report makes clear that he knows how difficult a task he faces. This is a union with $35 million in assets and $3.5 billion in benefit funds, with 80 on the union's full time payroll and 90 on the fund payrolls. He glosses over nothing. "“For decades,"” he writes, "“the District Council has been a fiefdom for brutes, thieves, con men and other species of racketeers who have  subjugated and robbed its members and vitiated its democratic and benevolent purpose...[conduct] committed by union members, various gangsters and contractors going back to the 1970s."” Despite the consent decree of 1994 in which the union agreed to act against corruption, "“the nature of the beast has not really changed."” 

                                                                         

Using the new "“powerful tools"” provided by the court, Walsh has already cut at least 17 suspect council employees off the payroll, pointed to violations of the job referral rules, uncovered theft and financial abuses, and investigated continued attempts by the Cosa Nostra to infiltrate the council. Some council employees, he says, are under organized crime influence; one mob figure has represented a contractor as a benefit fund trustee. Contractors have been allowed to skip payments into the funds; the back log has amounted to at least $3 million. He estimates the damage to the funds by racketeers at a  conservative figure of $18 million. On and on its goes. Walsh comes up with 17 pages of drastic changes in personnel and administrative structure to get at these evils.  (In his eagerness to create new forms of enforcement, he seems to have one agency tripping over another: an Inspector General and staff will investigate corruption in the council; a Chief Compliance Officer will oversee compliance with an ethics program.)
 

So far, Walsh has only peripherally confronted what could be the most formidable obstacle to any reform agenda: relations with International President Douglas McCarron and the Carpenters international office. The international is already a complicating factor. Within days after Michael Forde, council executive secretary treasurer, was sent to jail on corruption charges in November, McCarron trusteed the council and sent in his own representative, Frank Spencer, to take over, so that the council is now under a dual, and potentially conflicting, authority: Spencer for McCarron; Walsh for the U.S. Government.

 

In New York City,  as in the rest of the country, International President McCarron has imposed a rigid authoritarian structure on the union. The council executive secretary treasurer [EST] is armed with near-dictatorial power. No one, not the elected local officers, not the business representatives, not the council delegates, not the council executive board members--no one--can hold a paid union staff position without the approval of the all-mighty executive secretary treasurer. 

 

Outside of New York City,  the EST is elected by delegates from the locals not by the membership, an odd system when you remember that the delegates themselves are beholden to the EST for any paid union staff job. Everywhere  in the Carpenters international, McCarron has rejected direct election of council officers. In this respect, New York City is an exception. Here, McCarron’'s authority is superseded by the Federal judge who has ruled that council officers, including the EST, must be elected by the membership. To a  power-jealous ruler like McCarron, that limitation must be a canker that gnaws. And now comes a potential threat of additional limitations from Walsh.

 

McCarron would like to get rid of direct elections. In hearings before presiding Judge Richard Berman, the union is pressing strongly for him to replace membership voting by a return to the delegate system. The problem is that neither Walsh nor the government calls clearly for retaining the present system.   

 

Walsh must be aware that, with New York'’s festering record of  corruption, the Carpenters  authoritarian system will be an enormous obstacle to reform.  He approaches the subject, but only very cautiously, in gingerly, roundabout, tentative fashion here in his first report:

 

"“The executive committee should be strengthened as a hedge against a potentially abusive, racketeer-influenced EST.  The vital oversight and involvement of DC affairs by the delegate body should be strengthened.”" And a few paragraphs later: "“There should be some limitation on the number of delegates who may be employed by the DC or, alternatively, delegates who are employed by the DC should be afforded some protection against dismissal from DC employment for political reasons.”" 

 

These words are obviously intended to free the elected delegates and executive committee members from the dominant hand of the EST who, under the prevailing system, decides who shall and who shall not get paid.  Here, Walsh only brushes lightly on the problem of democracy, buried in a few short sentences. Taken seriously, these few words would challenge  McCarron’'s fundamental conception on how to run this union; he is not likely to overlook that challenge.  

 

Shift the scene to a session of the benefit fund trustees on September 16 where representatives of the union and the employers meet to take up what would presumably be routine business. Walsh was there to  keep his hand in. But without prior notice, International President Douglas McCarron shows up to announce that he is now one of the union trustees. McCarron breaks into insist that the meeting go in to executive session, stating that Walsh was not needed. But Walsh refuses to leave. McCarron thereupon proposes that the trustees  dismiss the two legal firms that represent the union and the contractors respectively. He announces that right out in the lobby he has a representative from the single law firm that he proposes as a replacement. After a hassle, the employer trustees agree only to interview McCarron'’s man after which McCarron and the other union trustees walk out of the meeting. Walsh describes the meeting as "“tense, combative, and vitiated by brinkmanship."”

 

Later, Walsh goes over to the union hall, hoping for a discussion with McCarron to clarify the dispute that raged at the benefits meeting, but McCarron will have nothing of it. Instead he presses Walsh for an explanation of why he had dismissed some of the union staff reps.  Walsh reports that when he tried to return to the issue at hand, "McCarron “aggressively proclaimed that he would not negotiate with me regarding the funds."”

 

Walsh asserts more than the right to sit in on benefit fund meetings; he seeks to transform relationships in the whole union and even curb the authority of the EST. Could be rough days ahead for reform. Walsh'’s term as Review Officer expires in December 2012.  

 

Administratively and organizationally Walsh has come up with an impressive plan, but so far he lacks a plan--equally ambitious--that would encourage members to join the reform campaign. He does write of "“dozens of members who yearn for better days"” and obviously counts on their support, but his ideas on how to draw them into the arena are pretty thin. "“Dissent is perilous,"” he writes.  But he doesn't dwell on the need to protect dissenters against retaliation.  He would "“consider a gallery section of seating at delegates meetings for interested members to observe the proceedings.”" He intends to run fair trial proceedings where "“members...and the public can attend proceedings."”  All nice, but in this union, not quite enough!