A 2-year-old federal investigation into wrongdoing in International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 134 and a venomous split in the union`s ruling hierarchy has opened the door for a possible rank-and-file takeover of one of the Chicago area`s largest and most politically influential unions.
In a special union election held late last month, a rank-and-file slate swept 12 delegate and 14 alternate-delegate slots to next month`s IBEW convention in St. Louis. The winning delegates handily defeated a slate put up by the union`s current leaders.
At the regular July union meeting, members overwhelmingly approved direct membership ratification of all future contracts, a longtime demand by dissident union members that had been opposed by the leadership.
While it`s too soon to announce candidates or slates, rank-and-file leaders already are thinking about next June`s election for business manager of Local 134, the union`s top spot. The post had been held for most of the past decade by Timothy Bresnahan, a confidant of former Gov. James Thompson.
The international union, headquartered in Washington, forced Bresnahan to resign from his post in May 1990 after his name surfaced in connection with the federal probe, and the local was put in trusteeship. Last April, the international union lifted the trusteeship and appointed William Husko, a longtime business agent and financial secretary, to the post.
”The membership wants more democracy in this union,” said Wes Weaver, a 49-year-old electrician who was elected chairman of ”United 134,” the name adopted by the rank-and-file insurgency that claims nearly 1,700 members in the 17,600-member union. ”We want a mechanism for throwing a man out of office who`s accused of malfeasance on the job.”
Ironically, Local 134`s current leaders were part of the union faction that in 1989 uncovered the alleged wrongdoing by Bresnahan and two of his closest associates in the union, financial secretary Ed Ryan and vice president Charles Dunne. During the trusteeship, the international banned Ryan from holding union office for three years, and Dunne was fired.
”United 134 wasn`t going to be political, but then it got political,”
said Husko, who defeated Ryan for financial secretary in 1989. ”They`re on a roll.”
The turmoil in the union can be traced to a number of schemes that internal union reports and court documents allege were hatched by Bresnahan, Ryan and Dunne during the middle and late 1980s. The schemes allegedly were designed to create a political slush fund and circumvent a federal court consent decree mandating increased minority and female participation in the union.
The alleged schemes included:
– The issuance of 1,000 to 1,500 ”temporary permit” credentials to previously non-union construction electricians and electrician apprentices, many of whom were paid less than union scale. Former union officials who investigated the scheme said many of the permits, which were later made permanent, were issued to friends and relatives of contractors.
The temporary permits, supposedly issued because non-union firms either were being organized or were merging with unionized firms, allowed contractors to hire union workers but avoid the Local 134`s hiring hall, which used the traditional seniority system, and the union`s apprenticeship program, which under a 1984 federal court order was required to make each apprentice class 40 percent black and 12 percent Hispanic.
In court documents filed earlier this month, plaintiffs in the original discrimination suit claimed the IBEW officials involved in the card scheme had dubbed it the ”beat Bua” program, after U.S. District Judge Nicholas Bua, who imposed the original consent decree in 1984. Of 1,228 temporary permits issued since Jan. 1, 1986, according to the court documents, only 44, or 3.6 percent, were to blacks and 20, or 1.6, percent were to Hispanics.
– The issuance by then-financial secretary Ed Ryan of $25,000 in bonus checks to the union`s 20 business agents, who then were asked to kick back over $10,000 for political campaigns.
– The payment in 1986 of $35,000 in additional membership dues to the international union in a botched effort to elect Bresnahan to higher office by inflating Local 134`s delegate count at the last international convention.
According to Husko and Ed Pierce, who was elected president of the union in 1989 over a Bresnahan-backed candidate and heads its apprenticeship program, Local 134 has cooperated fully with the federal government in the probe. The first subpoenas for union records were delivered in August 1989 and a union secretary was interviewed by a government investigator as recently as last week.
”There have been four separate U.S. attorneys assigned to this case,”
said Pierce. ”I`d like to see whatever happens happen.”
Bresnahan is represented by former Illinois Atty. Gen. Tyrone Fahner;
Ryan by former Assistant U.S. Atty. James Streicker; and Dunne by former Cook County State`s Atty. George Murtaugh.
U.S. Atty. Fred Foreman`s spokeswoman had no comment on the investigation.
The union`s inflated membership, meanwhile, will have to live with the results of their former leaders` actions for years to come, no matter what the outcome of the investigation. And with the construction industry heading into its first serious downturn in nearly a decade, those results will be harsh.
The union`s list of unemployed electricians stood at nearly 1,000 in April, the onset of this year`s construction season, and remained at 675 last Friday, at the height of the season. It`s the first time since the mid-1980s that electricians have been out of work during the summer months.
Veteran union members complain the former ”temporary workers” are getting work, while senior people languish on unemployment. ”They gave out over 1,000 cards, and those people are working,” said Barry O`Connor, a member of United 134 who protested the IBEW`s imposition of trusteeship on the local. ”I`ve got 35 years in this business, and I`ve only worked seven weeks this year.”
Rank-and-file anger at the international`s trusteeship, which was run by international vice president James Conway, can be traced in part to the terms of a new three-year contract reached with the 120-member Electrical Contractors Association in June 1990. The trustee imposed the agreement without the approval of the union`s leadership or membership. Conway was unavailable for comment last week.
While the agreement called for a 6.2 percent raise in the first year and 5.4 percent this year to $21.65 an hour-the best monetary agreement among all the building trades-it also called for abolishing Local 134`s cherished seniority system.
Under the seniority system, electricians who lost their jobs-a frequent occurrence in the world of construction contracting-were put on a list at the union hall. The ones with the highest seniority would be the first sent out when a contractor called for more workers.
Under the new system, called the book system, newly unemployed workers go to the bottom of the list. International union officials prefer the book system because they believe it makes it easier to bring unorganized electricians and contractors-a growing trend in the industry-into the union.
But changing to that system in the wake of the alleged fraudulent-card scheme provoked tremendous anger in the ranks. The anger escalated when the international ended its trusteeship last April by granting the ”temporary permit” holders journeymen status.
”(The fake cards) were a way for the contractors to avoid the union hiring hall,” said Joe Duffy, a longtime business agent who was elected to the union`s executive board in 1989 and was appointed to an internal committee investigating wrongdoing in the union. ”And over 95 percent weren`t minorities. That`s where the `beat Bua` program came in.”
The international fired 68-year-old Duffy from his business agent job during the trusteeship after he attempted to continue pursuing the internal investigation. The trustee also terminated Duffy`s private investigator, John Clarke, who in the 1960s and early 1970s served as Mayor Richard J. Daley`s
”eyes and ears” and in 1974 served a year in jail for income tax evasion after being successfully prosecuted by Fahner, then assistant U.S. attorney.
While Dunne, Ryan and Bresnahan allegedly were handing out fraudulent credentials, the apprenticeship program, the traditional route into the skilled craft, languished. Pierce, the current president of the union, ran the program.
The union, which took in 512 new apprentices in 1985, accepted only 270 in 1989, according to court documents. During the period, electrical industry employment in the three-county area grew from 13,900 to 16,100, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
”The number of apprentices dropped for two reasons: We had high unemployment and Dunne was giving out the bogus credentials,” said Pierce.
”I was told we had too many apprentices.”
