The current UTU President Byron Boyd and past President Charlie Little were indicted today.
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txs/releases/September2003/030915-boyd.htm
Da De Um Dum, Da De Um Da Dummmmm!!! (Dragnet theme)
The BLE will be dancing at this news.
Ya, I thought the same thing>
Not if they’re as smart as they should be. Don’t forget, the BLE also has a Designated Legal Counsel program with a LOT of the same attorneys in it. It won’t be much of a jump for the Feds to go after them next. Its a cinch that if the lawyers were paying the UTU then they were paying others too. Dunno of BMWE has a DLC program, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I would think the BLE would keep a very low profile on this issue.
LC
Funny, I think I mentioned once that the UTU had stoped being a union a long time ago, and had become a insurance underwriter instead.
Seems Boyd, Little and company got caught with their hand in the cookie jar!
Lets see, they sell life and job insurance to the union members,(dont expect to much help from them in a railroad disipline investigation if you dont have UTU job insurance) and then accept and solicit bribes from the legal counsel they get to appoint to handle job releated injury suits.
Yup, sounds more like a insurance company than a union to me!
So the leaders at the BLE can do one of two things.
Make a big fuss about how honest they are,(dumb) or shut up and sit real still and quite (smart, like LC said).
Stay Frosty,
Ed
Limitedclear, there is nothing wrong with having a Designated Legal Counsel program, properly run it is just a way to recommend legal counsel to the membership. There is a problem with soliciting and accepting money from the lawyers.
This legal problem isn’t something that just popped up for the UTU. It entered the court system when large number of UTU DLC were indicted in 1998. It spilled over to the UTU when the UTU Texas Legislative Chairman Neil Francis Babineaux was indicted on 6/5/02. Babineaux was also the campaign manager for Little and Boyd. Babineaux has changed his plea to guilty and has been sentenced.
If the BLE hasn’t been mentioned in the last five years, I would suspect they don’t have a problem.
Sept. 15, 2003, 11:43PM
Rail union officials plead not guilty
Suspects accused of bribery plot
By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
The current and former presidents of the nation’s largest railroad operating union pleaded not guilty Monday in a federal court in Houston to accusations that they sought bribes from attorneys in return for access to union workers injured on the job.
Byron Alfred Boyd Jr., 57, of Seattle, Wash., international president of the United Transportation Union, and retired President Charles Leonard Little, 69, of Leander, were released on $100,000 bond after pleading before federal Magistrate Judge Marcia Crone.
John Russell Rookard, 57, of Olalla, Wash., Boyd’s assistant, also was released after pleading not guilty and posting a $100,000 bond. Ralph John Dennis, 51, of Boone, Iowa, former union director of insurance, is scheduled to appear before Crone today at 2 p.m.
The four were indicted last week by a federal grand jury on charges of racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and commercial bribery in connection with an alleged scheme to solicit bribes from attorneys who sought special access to union members.
The indictments follow a five-year investigation that began in Houston.
If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each racketeering charge and 10 years and a $250,000 fine for each of mail fraud charge.
Prosecutors also are seeking the seizure of at least $477,100 in cash proceeds from the alleged scheme. If the money has been disposed of, prosecutors intend to seize personal property of equal value, according to the indictment.
“We cannot and will not tolerate union officials who abuse their positions of trust for personal gain,” U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby said.
The union, with headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, has about 125,000 members nationwide in the railroad, bus
Ok - you yanked my chain. I’ll be brief!
And Martha Stewart had insider trading information. Enron officials have yet to really be scared of doing time. Former Vice President did little time in plush “prison”.
Watergate - who really ever went to prison - anyone besides a few henchmen? Do any of these white collar crimes ever really get punished or do they just all end up spending thousands of dollars and making lawyers very rich?
I am a simple thinker, but here is that out of focus picture again!
Jen
Mookie, you seem to have forgotten Martha’s buddy Sam Waksal Inclone’s CEO. He got a seven-year sentence for conspiracy, tax and securities fraud,
2 things - where is he serving it - ie - a real prison or a country club and 2nd - bet he will be out in 18 mos.!
I am sure that Sam is in a minimum security prison. Out in 18 months? I doubt it, a few years ago the Feds came under attack for unfair sentences based on race, as a result BOP does not lower sentences for good behavior appreciably. He is a link that will allow you to catch up on Enron.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/business/specials/energy/enron/
I can’t argue about Watergate because nearly everyone received a Presidential Pardon from Ford.
I think Ken Lay and company are definitely worried that their time will come.
Ex-Treasurer of Enron Ben F. Glisan Jr Pleads Guilty, Gets 5 Years.
Andrew Fastow, changed his plea to guilty on a single count of conspiracy in an appearance before U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt. The judge then sentenced him to five years in prison.
And remember, we are talking about union officials here, not politically apointed cabinet members or well connected stock brokers.
Bluntly put, these guys are hustlers in the first degree.
And yes, like the teamesters and the mafia, they make comfortable bedfellows.
From 1985 on, the UTU has been nothing more than a business.
You saw the dollar figures?
Thats the numbers they publish.
In reality, I am quite sure the amount is much larger.
Even if it wasnt, the amount reported is enough, and easily obtainable.
Greed isnt limited to politicans, TV stars or stockbrokers.
And the fact that unions have historicaly been linked to organized crime most likley kept the justice dept very interested in Mr Boyd and Mr Little.
If convicted, they will do the time!
When I hired out, before we even began training, the treasurer for my local union showed up in class, handed us a membership application, and informed us we “had” to buy job insurance “only through UTU” because the carrier wouldnt debit our paycheck to any other job insurance provider.
Along with the membership application was a application for UTU job insurance.
I questioned him about what the union was doing in regards to remote control,(even back then it was a issue) and was told he really didnt know!
Beyond that brief encounted, I have yet to have any conversation with any officer of my local in 7 years, with the exception of being approached once more three years ago, again being told I had to purchase job insurance through the union.
I pointed out that his inital speech to my training class was incorrect, possible illegal, and in fact I had purchased job insurance through another insurance provider years ago, and whom the railroad pays out of my check like clockwork, and you know what?
I havent seen hide nor hair of any union rep since!
Been to 2 investigations in 7 years, and have yet to be
Ed:
As usual, well said. There is a place for a union, but these guys clearly forgot about what that reason was. Have seen FELA cases where a guy got hurt and the union and the lawyer literally left the injured guy with nothing while they pushed their own agenda (and lost)…Hope the new leadership shows a little more concern for those that put them there…
-mc
Do you really want to have fair and honest people running your Union?? I would not! I have never been in a Union, but I have negotiated with them. The one’s with the criminal element to them, very hard to win against them.
TIM A
Yeah Tim,
Thats the rub.
Do you want Marlon Brando and Al Pachino on you side, or against your?
It still bothers me that the black hand has such a influence with the unions.
It rubs against the basic right and wrong deliminas I was taught to deal with as a young man.
But had these guys done anything to really protect the members hired after 1985, and the jobs of the engineers who will go back to ground work, I might, just might, be able to overlook their transgressions, or at least tolerate them as a know part of doing business.
For the most part, the protected men,(pre 85) will be gone in the next ten years, and that leaves all of us un protected guys with a worthless contract, and basicly holding the bag for these guys.
Look at this, 55% of the UTU members are pre 85, or protected men.
Over 10% of them are expected to retire or die within the next ten years.
In that position, wouldnt you vote to get as much money for yourself and your “brothers” as you could?
The 85 contract boiled down to the carriers saying, “look, we will let you keep all your perks, travel pay, air pay, heck, we will even pay you extra for working with new guys hired after this contract, but you have to gives us a brakemans job to do away with”.
Add to that the fact that anyone hired after 85 started out at 75% pay, with their pay increasing 5% per year till they reached 100%.
Anyone hired before 85 started at 100%.
Every time I work with a protected man, he get $5.00 just for working with me, its called shorthand pay.
Why would these guys allow such a un equal contract to pass?
Because it benifited them, they didnt lose anything, in fact, they got more money out of the deal, at the expense of anyone hired after 85.
When its all said and done, they get to retire with the money, we get to keep on working to pay off the cost of all of that.
The UTU negotatied a 60/30 clause into the last contract, meaning any one with 30 years service
There is an old railroad term to discribe this stuff: FEATHERBEDDER! These guys are feathering their own nests at the expense of the people they pretend to represent. [Note the similarity to what politicians do.] They all [BLE; UTU; Teamsters, etc. etc…] are in it for what they can get out of it; I mean what the “leadership” can get out of it, both at the national and local levels. The glorious “Union Era” reached its peak after WW II when most of the earth was in ashes;; we were the only nation that could supply just about anything anywhere. Demand for products was high; profits were high; Gov’t interventions and interference were minimal. It was easier for the companies to give the unions what they wanted; there was plenty to go around. Blue collar jobs have been heading east, as in Far EAst. China is now the industial powerhouse that Japan was a decade ago, that we were two decades ago. Look at the current " economic uptick"; demand for stuff has modestly increased, but unemployment is even going up. The few industrial jobs left here are up against it, with mere survival an iffy proposition, let alone profits. Is it any wonder so many firms are going off-shore. So an employee [I hate the term “worker”; it’s so Bolshevik.] is happy to have a job…phooey to the unions, if there’s a choice. And then the company moves its manufacturing to China, where the “workers” [over there, they ARE workers!] don’t get a fraction of what was made here, and other than paying local Party officials off, there is little Gov’t interference. The point of all this is, that the union officials here are well aware of all this. As a result, they are playing the string out as long as they can, feathering their own nests; robbing other unions of members, and pretending to look out for their constituents’ interests. They just hope it doesn’t come down on their watch. If they can retire to a fat pension before the collapse, they’ll be honored for their “service”. The last three sentences can apply to the political class; just subst
See it left a bad taste in someone else’s mouth too!
Stay Frosty,
Ed
I bookmarked this one and will read it on a lunch hour.
Thanx
Mookie
They all went to prison except Dean and Nixon. The only pardon handed out by Ford was to Nixon. The three top guys under Nixon got hammered - Mitchell, Haldemann and Ehrlichman. Dean ratted them out to save himself. What a bunch of wierdos they were…
No?