National Legal and Policy Center -- Organized Labor Accountability
Project
UNION CORRUPTION UPDATE
April 28, 2003 -- Vol. 6, Issue 9
For Influential Leaders & Important Decision Makers:
Information on America's most corrupt & aggressive unions
GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES (AFSCME)
DC 37 Exec. Director Accused of Nepotism in Contract
The executive board of District Council 37 in New York City, on April
21, ordered a reconsideration of a union contract awarded to the nephew
of DC 37's executive director Lillian Roberts. Three days later, the
nephew, Ivan Smith, gave up the contract in which his law firm -- Vladeck,
Waldman, Elias & Engelhard -- would represent the council's employee
benefits fund.
Roberts was elected to head the huge NYC affiliate of the Amer. Fedtn.
of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in Feb. 2002. Roberts
replaced the disgraced Stanley Hill, who presided over a board in which
more than half the directors were convicted of various crimes and the council's
assets plummeted by more than 80%.
Officials with the benefit fund's three-member board, incl. Roberts,
awarded the $180,000 contract late last year to the law firm where Roberts'
nephew was a partner. Roberts did not deny the allegation, but argued
that nephews are not considered family members under the union's ethics
guidline. However, an ethics officer appointed during a trusteeship
by the union's Washington, DC HQ, Barbara Deinhardt, noted that Smith had
lived with Roberts, and that she had paid his college bills. One of
the original dissenters against the corrupt DC 37 hierarchy in the 1990s,
Mark Rosenthal, now the council's treasurer, supported Deinhardt, the ethics
officer.
This is not the first time that Roberts has been under suspicion of influence
peddling. She had been a frmr. associate director of DC 37 when she
joined an HMO called Total Health Systems in 1987. During an insurance
enrollment period in early 1988, Roberts admitted that Total Health paid
about $40,000 to about 150 city workers, incl. local union bosses, while they
recruited new members for Total Health. The payments were made despite
a city guideline prohibiting any payments of city workers for promotional
activities. The NY Dept. of Investigation, however, found no violation
of NY penal law. [Newsday, 4/22/03: New York Times, 4/25/03]
Union Corruption Update is made possible by the generous contributions
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you. Union Corruption Update is part of NLPC's Organized Labor Accountability
Project which is investigating and exposing corruption 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.
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. All back issues of the
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