Reverend Al Sharpton has something new to be angry about. Last Friday, April 23, Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed legislation known as "SB1070" requiring law enforcement authorities to ask all criminal suspects to provide evidence of legal U.S. residence. The law is set to take effect 90 days after signing. Sharpton is determined to prevent that from happening. He recently announced his intent to travel to Arizona to stage mass protests against what he says is an assault on Hispanic civil rights.
Staging this campaign will cost money. But "the Rev" doesn't have many worries on this score. His New York-based nonprofit group, National Action Network (NAN), continues to receive financial support from some of the nation's biggest and most well known corporations and unions. This was very much in evidence at NAN's four-day 12th annual conference, his biggest fundraising event of the year, held earlier this month in New York City.
Ever so quietly, America passed a milestone in 2009. For the first time in our history the number of employees in the public sector belonging to a labor union exceeded the number in the private sector. Proposed legislation in Congress would push this trend along further. The benignly-named 
Thomas Renkes didn't head the Alaska Nurses Association for very long. But he used that time to siphon funds from the labor organization to pay for personal expenses. In late April, Renkes 
It may have been a formality, but the executive board of the Service Employees International Union this past Saturday overwhelmingly named SEIU Executive Vice President Mary Kay Henry to succeed Andrew Stern as the labor organization's next president. The 73-member governing body met in Washington, D.C. to select Ms. Henry, who ran unopposed after Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger dropped out of the race a little over a week earlier. Henry, like Burger, is a Stern loyalist.
Like many crooked union office employees in recent years, 
It's getting hard to find an honest man at Communications Workers of America Local 14170. The union, which represents about 700 print shop and mailroom employees at several New York City-area daily newspapers, including the New York Times and the New York Post, now can count its former president and interim administrator as 
The successor to Andrew Stern as president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had come down to his two top aides. Now it's down to one. Late last week, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer 
Authorities in Pawtucket, Rhode Island aren't giving out any names, but they're fairly certain they have the right person. Local police confirmed a few days ago that a City Hall employee is at the center of 
On March 23, Sylvia Grooms, director of industrial relations for American Postal Workers Union (APWU) Local 199 in Richmond, Virginia, had all charges of larceny against her dropped and expunged from the public record by the Circuit Court for the City of Richmond. The decision read in part: "Whereas, it further appearing to the Court that the continued existence and possible dissemination of information relating to the four grand larceny charges and arrest of petitioner, Sylvia Yvonne Grooms, may cause circumstances that constitute a manifest injustice to said petitioner."
On April 6, Cory Carroll, secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen's Regional and Shortline Committee of Adjustment, was indicted in Minneapolis federal court for embezzlement. Prosecutors say that during February 2007-March 2009, Carroll, 39, a resident of Albert Lea, illegally diverted about $35,000 from the labor organization to his own use. The indictment follows an investigation by the Labor Department's Office of Labor-Management Standards.
