Posted on 02/27/2009 5:34:25 AM PST by reaganaut1
After two fatal tower crane accidents last year, New York City instituted a series of reforms to increase safety and oversight in the construction industry, including requiring a 30-hour class for crane operators and other workers on the safest way to raise and lower a tower crane.
But some sessions of the city-mandated class are being taught by a union official who has admitted that he helped unqualified people, including organized crime figures, get into his union, according to sworn testimony and investigative reports. He and other union officials helped some of those men secure licenses to operate smaller cranes at construction sites across the city, the testimony and the reports say.
The official, James P. Conway, teaches the classes for Local 14-14B of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which has signed a consent decree to operate under the oversight of a court-approved corruption monitor.
...
Mr. Conway’s admissions, and similar allegations against him by other union officials, seem at odds with the image of safety and integrity the city seeks to present as part of its overhaul of construction oversight.
Mr. Conway, 44, made the statements about his conduct in a 2003 interview with federal and state prosecutors and investigators who were preparing two racketeering cases against Local 14-14B and a related union, according to a report summarizing his statements. By 2004, after prosecutors and investigators had won the cooperation of half a dozen other union officials, the cases in federal court in Manhattan and Brooklyn had resulted in the convictions of more than 45 union officials, union members and crime figures.
In the interview, Mr. Conway said that at the behest of another union official, he solicited dancers at a strip club they frequented to join the union’s apprenticeship program.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How much of the "stimulus" infrastructure money will find its way to corrupt unions?
More union criminals.
Organized Crime and Unions is an oxymoron.
Evidence that the Democrat party is a criminal enterprise
Union Strippers...look for the union label.
Yeah, look for the union label as it comes crashing through your apartment.
Once the stripper completed the act of stripping, where do you find the union label?
As to the article, I don't find anything "newsworthy", seems to be more "dog bites man", SSDD. Just a recycle of what could have been written in the 50s, just different names.
Crane Safety is a joke when your job is protected by Union Thugs
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