Union v. Union: IBEW calls out Cannibalistic Carpenters in St. Louis

Sometimes, cannibals get into fights over the same piece of meat.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is launching a sweeping campaign to convince St. Louis Carpenters Local 57 to stop performing electrical work that undercuts union standards of quality, safety and wages.


Billboards have been mounted in several locations, and the message can be seen and heard in radio and print ads this week. A unity rally June 15 drew more than 1,000 members from several craft unions to hear national leaders of the IBEW and other trades.

We posted on this fight back in April.

__________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

For more news and views on today’s unions, go to LaborUnionReport.com.

Union Boss Faces Up to 80 Years for Lap Dances and Embezzlement...

Six hours.  It really didn't take that long, did it?

A former carpenters union official from Somerset County was convicted in federal court in Trenton today of pocketing $85,000 from the organization to host hundreds of lunchtime drinking sprees at go-go bars.

After deliberating less than six hours, a jury found Shawn Clark, 45, guilty of embezzlement for using the union’s American Express card during more than 450 visits over seven years to watering holes that included Johnny A's Hitching Post in Paterson and Pure Go Go in Manville. He faces up to five years in prison for each of the 16 counts in the indictment.

“You treated that card as if it were your own – didn’t you?” Assistant U.S. Attorney V. Grady O’Malley asked Clark during a cross examination.

Clark, the ex-business manager for Local 455 of the International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, spent hours on the stand last week arguing he was conducting union meetings at the clubs. Part of his job, he said, was drumming up union business by entertaining contractors, tradesmen and the occasional politician who felt at ease around pulsing music and dancing women.

But prosecutors said Clark, who was fired from the union in 2008, ruled the local with an "iron fist." To help conceal his bar tabs, which occasionally exceeded $1,000, he installed a close friend as treasurer, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Romankow. The prosecutor said Clark traveled to strip clubs miles away from the union’s office in Somerville, buying untold number of beers, shots with Red Bull chasers and tiny bottles of Chardonnay for the women on stage.

Wow!  You mean 450 visits to go go bars, getting lap dances, and drinking on other people's dime isn't union business?  Who knew?

Well, at least he'll have some fond memories.
__________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

For more news and views on today’s unions, go to LaborUnionReport.com.

Two Rats Don't Make a Right: Carpenters' Covet IBEW's Work

Two brothers, one's a carpenter, the other is an electrician.

Both work in the same neighborhood and, over time, the carpenter notices that his brother, the electrician, seems to always have a smile on his face.

One day, as the carpenter is working on a house next to where the electrician is working, the carpenter looks out the window and sees the electrician's wife bringing her husband's lunch to the jobsite and he covets the electrician's wife:

A quiet, long-simmering feud between two prominent St. Louis labor organizations erupted openly this month in a torrent of insinuations, veiled threats and acts of vandalism.

Tension between the I nternational Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1 and the Carpenters' District Council of St. Louis is so intense that the two unions have been summoned to a meeting to air and perhaps resolve their differences.

The meeting, jointly called by the general president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and his counterpart in the Washington headquarters of the IBEW, will be May 3 at a hotel near Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

A resolution can't come quickly enough for Duke Northcutt, one of 200 contractors affiliated with Associated Electrical Contractors Local 57, the start-up chartered 18 months ago by the carpenters union to provide area construction clients with an alternative to the 4,000-member Local 1, the nation's first and oldest IBEW bargaining unit.

A longtime employee of Reinhold Electric, Northcutt arrived at work on April 7 and discovered the numbers "57" spray-painted, with a slash through the numerals, on the white facade of the electric parts distributorship Reinhold operates on Lemay Ferry Road in Affton.
St. Louis County police later noticed vandals had also tossed rocks through the $20,000 sign that Reinhold erected outside the business two months ago.

A county police spokesman said the department was actively investigating two acts of vandalism against Local 57 contractors.

Now that's 'brotherhood!'
__________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

For more news and views on today’s unions, go to LaborUnionReport.com.