Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW)

If workers are free to join a union, presumably they ought to be free to leave one.  At least that’s what a number of employees at a Butte, Montana supermarket believe.  It appears they’ve got a sympathetic audience in the National Labor Relations Board.  This past spring, two Safeway employees, Gerald Rasmussen and Carla Crandall, filed separate charges with the NLRB against their union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 4.  They and other workers charged that the local, illegally, had deducted dues from paychecks without employee consent and threatened to persuade Safeway management to fire them.  In response, the employees voted to decertify the local as their collective-bargaining agent, an action that the union has tried to block.  Now the NLRB tentatively has sided with the workers, agreeing to take action against the union.

John T. Daley for four years embezzled nearly $1.2 million from the New York State Nurses Association, the 34,000-member union of which he had been chief financial officer.  Now he’s going to pay a price.  On March 30, Daley received a prison sentence in Albany County Court of three-and-a-third years to 10 years.  He also will have to make restitution.  Daley pleaded guilty in January to second-degree grand larceny, after initially claiming innocence due to impaired judgment from overuse of prescription drugs.  The sentencing follows an investigation by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and the police department of the Town of Colonie, located north of Albany.  (OLMS, 4/23/07). 

Business Manager of Texas Local Indicted for Embezzlement

On March 6, Cindy Wright, formerly president of Local 1298 of the American Federation of Government Employees, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to 24 months in prison and was ordered to pay approximately $32,000 in restitution to the Ft. Worth-based union.  She had pleaded guilty in October to one count of making false statements of material fact.  The guilty plea and sentencing follow an investigation by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General.  (OLMS, 4/4/06).  

Former Oklahoma Local Boss Pleads Guilty to Embezzlement

Joseph DiFlumera must have forgotten who was paying his dues.  As president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1445 in Dedham, Mass., he was supposed to be negotiating on behalf of supermarket workers.  What he negotiated instead, over the course of 1989 to 2003, was a sweet deal worth $1.56 million to himself.  He’s set to enter federal prison on January 17 to serve a 46-month sentence for mail and wire fraud.  But it’s not likely that he’ll be able to make any restitution because it was the casinos who were the biggest winners of all.