FOOD & COMMERCIAL WORKERS (UFCW)
Top Boss Goes to Prison for Union Embezzlement
"[H]e thought of himself first and the union members second. He and
other members of his family used the union as a personal asset," said U.S.
Labor Department's Joseph S. Wasik in discussing Joseph C. Talarico, the
now-former Int'l. Secretary-Treasurer (i.e. #2 post) of the United Food
& Commercial Workers Int'l. Union. Talarico was sentenced Jul. 28 in
U.S. District Court to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay $1.1 million
restitution to UFCW Local 1 in Utica, NY, for embezzling over $925,000
from union members. He was banned from union office for 13 years.
But the scheme that ran 1984-97 went beyond Joseph Talarico, who was the Local 1 president before he took his int'l. union post in 1995, to include his brother, son, daughter and brother-in-law. The Talaricos illegally used union funds for a wide range of personal purposes, including landscaping and lavish renovations to their homes. Joseph Talarico also had the hair on his head paid for with money stolen from Local 1. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, union funds paid for the boss' $10,000 hair transplant and a union airplane flew him from Washington to Saratoga Springs, NY, where the hair job was done. The embezzled funds were on top of the family's already lavish annual compensation from the union. The Talaricos made more than $1 million in union salaries and legitimate expenses in 1996. "It sounds like greed to me," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew T. Baxter.
The other family members face similar situations. This ended the Talaricos' grip on Local 1 that dates back to 1953 when Joseph Talarico's father Samuel J. Talarico, Sr., founded it. [Buffalo News 07/30/98, BNA Daily Labor Report 07/29/98 & Utica Observer-Dispatch 02/10/98]
In addition to the unions and organizations covered in this Union Corruption Update, readers can look forward to news and information on the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union, United Farmer Workers, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and other corrupt and abusive unions in future editions.
All back issues of the Union Corruption Update can be viewed at NLPC's website (www.nlpc.org). Also available is a union by union index of all Union Corruption Update articles.
If you have ideas or suggestions for future editions of Union Corruption Update, please email NLPC at nlpc@nlpc.org. Thank you.
Union Corruption Update is part of NLPC's Organized Labor Accountability
Project which is investigating and exposing corruption and extremism in
the Teamsters, LIUNA, AFL-CIO and many other union organizations. NLPC
is a nonpartisan, nonprofit foundation promoting ethics and accountability
in government through research, education and legal action.
Complete Edition Union Corruption Update (August 10, 1998 -- Vol.1 Issue 5)
Union Corruption Update Article Index