Members of Local 383 out of Phoenix staged a protest outside of the Laborers International Union of North America meeting in front of the Elk's Lodge on Gates Avenue Monday afternoon.
"It's our state, it's our local union," they chanted.
Local 383 has been part of LIUNA since its inception in 1927, and has always had the entire state of Arizona as its territory, the suit says. The taking of Mohave County was punishment for an internal union squabble, it seems:
LIUNA has charged Local 383 with, among other things, failing to police Mojave County, and LIUNA now seeks to remove Mojave County from Local 383 as disciplinary action in response to the alleged failure to police the territory.
Local 383's members are entitled to a full and fair hearing before disciplinary action is taken against them.
LIUNA scheduled a hearing only after its General President had preliminarily decided to take disciplinary action.
We're not sure what the Local 383 means by the word "police" here -- we're imagining something along the lines of Gangs of New York, but that's probably not right....
Leadership of Laborers Local 91 here has become so fragmented that current kingpins Rob Connolly and Rico Liberale have been unable to put together a full ticket to run with them in the May elections.
And with 60 to 65 percent of the union's roughly 700 workers currently jobless, dissatisfaction among the rank-and-file has reached unprecedented proportions.
Late last week, and against that backdrop, Dick Paladino formally announced his intention to run for Connolly's job, telling the Niagara Falls Reporter that the once-powerful union local has slipped into near irrelevance under the current regime.
[snip]
Union investigators -- and FBI agents -- have been particularly interested in both union hiring practices and the complicity of union leaders in a fraud and embezzlement scheme involving Newfane dentist Scott Geise and Local 91 member Tony Fazzolari, both of whom have pleaded guilty to federal charges and are actively cooperating with the feds.
The American arrested in a sweep of al-Qaeda members worked as a laborer at five nuclear plants in South Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, federal officials said today.
Sharif Mobley had a "red badge" clearance, the highest level a laborer can obtain, while working on at the Salem-Hope Creek nuclear plants in Salem County, according to a spokesman from the local union of which he was a member.
Sharif was arrested last week with suspected al-Qaeda members in Yemen and officials said he then killed a guard while trying to escape from a hospital. He is under FBI investigation in Delaware. Law enforcement sources have said the investigation is terror-related.
[snip]
He was a contractor with the Local 222 chapter of the New Jersey Laborer's Union in Camden for projects in Salem County.
"He had full clearance to go where he needed to be," said chapter Business Manager Curt Jenkins. "You have no way of knowing what somebody's thinking. He went through the strenuous background checks that everybody else has to go through."
The NRC's Sheehan said, "A laborer typically would not have access to any security-related or sensitive information."
Background checks include criminal history, drug testing, employment verification and psychological assessments. The companies - not the NRC - carry out the background checks and are required to do ongoing behavioral observation.
PSEG spokesman Joe Delmar said Mobley worked as a contract laborer during refueling outages from 2002 to 2008 and satisfied federal security requirements.
Federal authorities told state Homeland Security officials that there was no security breach involving Mobley at the nuclear plants, according to Mike Drewniak, spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie.
Jenkins said Mobley, who worked on scaffolding at the nuclear plants and excavation projects in Camden County, would have been put through a repeated background check each time he worked on a new job. He said those checks are thorough, going as far back as childhood.
"If there's anything there they're going to find it," he said.
Mobley transferred from the Philadelphia Local 322 in 2003 and then suspended his union membership in 2008, telling Jenkins he was going to school. He didn't say where or what for. Jenkins assumed he was at a university in the region or "in the country at least." [Emphasis added.]
Just when you thought the union wars couldn't get any more complex, the battle of the union bosses just got a whole lot messier."Workers United and UNITE HERE are currently engaged in an effort to resolve our intraunion conflict over jurisdiction in a fair and equitable way.
"UNITE HERE represents the hotel workers in Washington D.C., and Workers United respects the work UNITE HERE has done in that city. Furthermore, we believe that it is in the best interest of the hotel workers in Washington D.C. that there be one hotel workers union in that city--UNITE HERE. That is why we are calling on the Laborers union to withdraw their petition and recognize UNITE-HERE's jurisdiction over these workers."
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