In a nine-page letter sent February 11, 2000 to the 51 current Executive Council Members, NLPC made the case for Trumka's removal. In 1997, when Trumka was first alleged to have wrongfully routed $100,000 and $50,000 in two different schemes to ex-Teamsters President Ron Carey's 1996 campaign, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney narrowly interpreted the AFL-CIO's 1957 policy on removal of union officers who invoke the Fifth Amendment to conceal corruption. Sweeney's loopholes: 1) Trumka denied wrongdoing and 2) Sweeney's internal investigation did not find wrongdoing.
"However, in light of United States v. Hamilton, these two convenient loopholes are no longer tenable," wrote NLPC Chairman Ken Boehm. "The facts that led a federal jury to convict [ex-Teamsters political director] William Hamilton on November 19, 1999 of six criminal counts of conspiracy, embezzlement, fraud and perjury call into question to truthfulness of Trumka's denial of wrongdoing as well as the credibility of Sweeney's internal investigation." The letter is available at: http://www.nlpc.org.
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In addition to the unions and organizations covered in this Union Corruption Update, readers can look forward to news and information on other corrupt and abusive unions in future editions.
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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.
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