UNION CORRUPTION CORNER

The following is from the blog at LaborUnionReport:

Union Corruption Corner:

• Sticky-Fingered Steelworker gets one year for swiping $48k.
• Where'd the Money Go? AFSCME Local 1324 is searching for $13k of its members' money…Apparently it just walked away.
• $13K Will Get You Six Months…If you happen to be former CWA
  President Belinda Woods.
• Machinists' Money Pit? And 27 months in federal prison was the sentence for former pension manager Harvey Keil for stealing $341,000.
• How Do You Plead? Apparently former SEIU boss Alejandro Stephens is set to plead guilty on two counts of mail fraud and one count of filing a false tax return.
• Just the usual: Union fraud in Detroit (even Kwame is involved)

For more, go here.

NJ Union Boss Gets Sentenced for Stealing $2 Million...

Union boss Carmelo Sito seems to have done okay for himself. In fact, according to press accounts, Mr. Sito helped himself to about $2 million to help pay for a boat, a house in Mountainside, NJ and a condo on the posh resort island of Martha's Vinyard.

The problem is, it wasn't his money--it was money that was belonged to the members of the Hudson County District Council of Laborers consists of Locals 21, 31, 202 and 325 of the Laborers International Union of North America.

According to NJ.com:

Carmelo J. Sita, 66, spent 22 years as executive manager of benefit funds for the Hudson County District Council of Laborers. He pleaded guilty in 2004, saying he took the money from funds belonging to union members.

“I do believe that Mr. Sita, for whatever reason, thought the union was his own little bank,” U.S. District Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh said.

Sita, who was arrested in 2001, took the money between 1995 and 1999.

For stealing about $500,000 a year for four years, Mr. Sita was sentenced to one year, nine months.