GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES (AFSCME)
Two Local 372 Bosses Sentenced; Hughes Gets 3 to 9
N.Y. Justice William Leibovitz June 5 sentenced Charles
Hughes, head of Am. Fed'n of State, County & Mun. Employees Local
372 for thirty years, to three to nine years in prison for stealing
over $2 million from the local of school cafeteria workers and crossing
guards. Hughes is the most senior boss to pled guilty in Manhattan D.A.
Robert M. Morgenthau's on-going union corruption probe of AFSCME Dist.
Council 37, in which more than thirty have been criminally charged and
more than twenty have pled guilty.
"What is clear is the defendant stole the union money relentlessly. His greed is breathtaking," said Leibovitz. He also lambasted Hughes' lavish lifestyle: "He stole this money knowingly and intentionally," adding that Hughes, financed his theft by charging his members high dues that "likely came out of their food and rent money." Local 372 represented the lowest-paid workers on N.Y.C.'s payroll, making $20,000 or less a year. Asst. D.A. Jane Tully said that despite the modest salaries, members paid "sky-high" monthly union dues of $56.11 ($673.32 annually).
Hughes took $340,000 for his personal credit card and $100,000 for a trip he and 14 relatives and friends took to Egypt, Israel, Prague, Paris and London. He spent $97,000 on no-show jobs for friends in Millen, Ga., and stole $1.29 million in unearned and unauthorized pay that went, in part, for his Ga. retirement mansion.
In an effort to keep the local afloat, Hughes at one point arranged to borrow $5 million from the Amalgamated Bank of N.Y. (which is owned by the Union of Needletrades, Indus. & Textile Employees (UNITE)) while his local was over $9 million in debt and promised bank officials to raise dues by $5 monthly to cover the loan.
Leibovitz dismissed a plea from Hughes' attorney Sarita Kedia that Hughes' medical diagnosis of Pick's Disease, a form of frontal lobe dementia, was an "extenuating circumstance."
Minutes after Hughes was led away, ex-Local 372 treasurer, Mildred Stephens, sentenced to 5 years probation for helping Hughes steal the money. Aside from taking union funded vacations, Stevens reportedly did not profit from her crimes. [N.Y. Times, Newsday, Daily News 6/7/00]
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