Re: Lies about Union Corruption
Nathan Newman wrote:
But let’s look in more detail at what counts as “labor racketeering” by readng the most recent “http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/semiannuals/54.pdfSemi-Annual Report to the Congress” by the Office. It’s a PDF so scroll down to page 33 where the Labor Racketeering part starts. Some of the problems are very real, including fighting crime influence on the east coast longshoremen union, but when you get to the money fines, suddenly the defendants largely stop being union officials, but instead are businesses that defrauded the unions– ie. the union leaders were the victims not the criminals. Here are a few examples:
Peter Wong, who controlled Pacific Group Medical Association (PGMA), pled guilty on June 14, 2005, to charges of insurance fraud and money laundering. In 1997, PGMA failed with more than $18 million in unpaid medical claims, making it one of the largest health plan failures in Hawaii’s history. PGMA had provided health coverage for 26,000 people, including members of the United Public Workers Union Local 646.
Not so quick, Nathan.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Jul/25/ln/ln21a.html
Almost half of the people whose medical insurance was provided by PGMA were members of the United Public Workers union and the Hawai’i Government Employees Association. In federal court last November, former UPW leader Gary Rodrigues was found guilty of mail fraud, money laundering and embezzling union funds. One of the charges against him noted that the contract he negotiated with PGMA to provide coverage for union members allowed the company to set aside a portion of premium payments to be transferred back to the union to hire a consultant to periodically analyze the medical plan. But Rodrigues never told the union’s 12,000 members or other union officials that he had selected his daughter, Robin Rodrigues Sabatini, a Kaua’i bookkeeper, to be the consultant and that Sabatini did little or no work in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars she was paid, federal prosecutors maintained during the trial. Rodrigues and Sabatini are scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 29. During their trial, their attorneys claimed it was Sabatini who “tipped off” her father that PGMA was on shaky financial ground and, as a result, Rodrigues ordered union office workers to stop making payments to the company and began negotiating with other healthcare insurance providers. Kubo declined to say yesterday what role the relationship between Rodrigues and PGMA played in the decision by the U.S. attorney’s office to bring charges against Wong. He said an investigation into PGMA’s operations is continuing. Assistant U.S. Attorney Florence Nakakuni, who prosecuted the case against Rodrigues, is also the lead prosecutor in the PGMA case. Ed Fischer, a special agent of the federal Labor Department inspector general’s office, was instrumental in the Rodrigues prosecution and also involved in the investigation that led to Wong’s indictment. Fischer said the indictment pertains only to the information Wong provided to state regulators and is not related to the consultant agreement Rodrigues had with PGMA.