Union Corruption Outpaces Watchdogs

February 13, 2008 | Filed Under Business, Crime, Democrats/Leftists, History, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Society/Culture, Unions, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

On Feb. 10th, the New York Times had an article pointing out that union corruption in the Big Apple grows faster than Federal officials can keep up with prosecuting it. To we in the anti-union thug movement this is not news. It does, however, conform to our own mantra that unionism means corruption by its very nature.

For more than a decade, federal officials and court-appointed monitors have strained to clean up two New York-area unions, representing cement truck drivers and construction laborers, that prosecutors say were long under Mafia control.

Indeed, prosecutors once described the cement truck drivers’ union, Local 282 of the Teamsters, as a “candy store” for the mob that they say funneled $1.2 million a year to John Gotti, the longtime Gambino crime family boss who died in prison in 2002.

Well, more indictments have been handed down on the truck drivers union and business owners. This time over the embezzling of large sums of money from the union’s health care and pension finds by a trucking company owner, and another involving the business manager of local 325 who took bribes for favors.

As former prosecutor Robert Luskin said to the Times:

“For as long as we’re around, we’re going to have to fight a ground war in New York and New Jersey,” Mr. Luskin said. “It’s like World War I. We take some ground and then we have to fight to take it back again.”

Well, a really, really good solution might be to get rid of the unions, wouldn’t it?

In any case, unionism brings a constant stream of corruption, theft, graft and criminality and we will continue to monitor it for you here.

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston