Karen Heller at the Philadelphia Inquirer
comments on recent federal indictments of 10 Ironworkers Local 401 officials:
The
Ironworkers were such busy, industrious goons. They allegedly destroyed
sites and threatened developers who dared not hire them. Their
specialties were not iron and steel, according to the recent federal
indictment of 10 top Ironworker Local 401 officials, but extortion,
arson, intimidation. You know, the works. Nothing was immune from these
thugs' wrath, from a Quaker meeting house in Chestnut Hill to a toy
store in King of Prussia.
The Ironworkers actually called themselves goons, so give them credit
for candor, in an indictment that reads like lost pages from On the Waterfront. They were also self-described THUGs, as in "The Helpful Union Guys."
And, boy, were these Ironworkers helpful - at least to the union -
allegedly brandishing their favored implements of destruction: acetylene
torches, baseball bats, knives, crowbars, bolt cutters. In an act of
creative accounting, they appeared to sometimes bill the union for tools
and time. Members also used extortion to be hired for the
long-suspected specialty of, as the feds put it, "unwanted, unnecessary
and superfluous labor."
We might have thought the city was past this. The last big labor
indictment involved the Roofers in 1987. This catalog of thuggery reads
like a throwback to a seemingly bygone era, but several former federal
investigators shrugged at the activities.
Wow. You don't see that very much these days. Not exactly a good way for the union crowd to attract sympathy. I did think this note was interesting, in a confusing, Irish, labor, Democratic machine type of way:
Among
the indicted is Joseph Dougherty, 72, the 1,010-member local's grand
pooh-bah, its "business manager-financial secretary-treasurer,"
seemingly for life. (Joseph Dougherty is no relation to the electrical
workers leader and Democratic political player John Dougherty.)
Ok, now that that is cleared up...here is a
thought-provoking piece on the UAW's failure in the VW organizing drive.
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