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'Dear Uncle Bob' June 3, 2004; Page A14 Where's Eliot Spitzer when you really need him? New York's Attorney General considers himself the scourge of corporate bad behavior. And if a new report from the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs is right, one of the worst examples of corporate self-dealing and abuse of power still awaits his untender mercies: Ullico. The closely held union insurance company gained some small notoriety in 2002 when it came out that its board -- an A-list of American labor leaders -- had profited from a stock-selling scheme. Insiders were able to buy Ullico shares...

<p>The House Education and the Workforce Committee has determined that executives of Ullico, a union-owned insurance company and pension fund, "may well have violated federal labor and pension laws" when they set up "sweetheart" stock deals for themselves.</p> <p>The committee yesterday sent its final report on what Republicans call "Big Labor's Enron" to the Department of Labor, which is conducting its own investigation into the illegal stock-selling scheme in which Ullico executives — all current or former heads of unions — used inside information to reap millions of dollars in profits.</p>

<p>Incorruptible labor legends Samuel Gompers and George Meany must be spinning in their graves. After becoming the first president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, Mr. Gompers founded the Union Labor Life Insurance Co. (now the major subsidiary of the ULLICO holding company) in 1925 in order to provide affordable insurance and other financial services to union members. Mr. Meany, who became the first president of the merged AFL-CIO in 1955 and served in that capacity for a quarter-century, worked inexhaustibly to eliminate corruption within the labor movement &#8212; which included expelling the Teamsters from the AFL-CIO in 1957. That same year, the AFL-CIO adopted a rule mandating the expulsion of any union official invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid scrutiny in a corruption case.</p>

Former Ullico exec refuses to testify to lawmakers (GLOBAL CROSSING, TERRY MCAULIFFE) Tue June 17, 2003 05:08 PM ET WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) - The former top executive of union-owned insurer Ullico Inc. refused to testify to lawmakers on Tuesday about a sweetheart stock deal that netted board members some $5.6 million and caused his replacement last month. Former Ullico Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Georgine invoked his constitutional right not to testify at a hearing by the House Education and Workforce Committee on the scandal, which is also being probed by regulators and prosecutors. Rep John Boehner, the Ohio...

<p>The House of Representatives will hold hearings in the coming weeks to investigate a stock-selling scheme Republicans are calling Big Labor's Enron scandal.</p> <p>Rep. John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, will lead the hearings on accusations that members of ULLICO, a labor-owned insurance company and pension fund, took part in an illegal scheme in which shares in ULLICO were bought and sold based on inside information gleaned by the board's chief executive officer, Robert A. Georgine.</p>

National Legal and Policy Center -- Organized Labor Accountability Project   UNION CORRUPTION UPDATE   March 3, 2003 -- Vol. 6, Issue 5 For Influential Leaders & Important Decision Makers: Information on America's most corrupt & aggressive unions   AFL-CIO / PLUMBERS / ULLICOExec. Council Meets in Hotel Boondoggle Fed with Union PensionsWhat a tangled web they weave -- the AFL-CIO's Executive Council met the last week of Feb. in a Florida hotel that has become a boondoggle funded with union pensions.  And this boondoggle was made possible by the union-pension-owned insurance company now under criminal investigation for insider stock...

<p>Who says the war on terror isn't going well?</p> <p>To read the media reports, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao visited the AFL-CIO's winter meeting last week and raised hell. But what really happened is that she told America's labor leaders the truth about union corruption and they just thought it was hell.</p>

December 3, 2002 Union Head Cites Secret Report in Quitting InsurerBy STEVEN GREENHOUSE he A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s president, John J. Sweeney, resigned yesterday from the board of Ullico, an embattled union-owned insurer, because of concerns that an outside counsel's report into accusations of insider trading at the insurer might never be made public. Mr. Sweeney resigned on the day that Ullico's board met in Washington to consider an investigative report by James R. Thompson, a former governor of Illinois, into highly profitable stock trades by members of Ullico's board, which is made up primarily of former and current union presidents. Mr. Thompson...

<p>"AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney is having a high old time with business scandals, condemning 'corporate greed' and capitalist 'thieves.' Yet his acute moral antennae have somehow missed the shenanigans at Union Labor Life Insurance Co., or Ullico, a labor-owned insurance company that looks like Big Labor's Enron," the Wall Street Journal says.</p>

<p>How some union insiders made a dubious killing in the telecom bubble.</p> <p>AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney is having a high old time with business scandals, condemning "corporate greed" and capitalist "thieves." Yet his acute moral antennae have somehow missed the shenanigans at Union Labor Life Insurance Co., or Ullico, a labor-owned insurance company that looks like Big Labor's Enron.</p>

Like A Bridge Over Global Crossings – We Will Bring Them Down! By William A. Mayer Having gone largely unreported by the captive press, lies a little fable of incestuous relationships between DNC operatives Terry McAuliffe, Michael Steed, organized criminal labor unions and various Democrat spin-monkeys. The story gets more complicated the deeper and deeper one goes but a few facts stand out. Way back when, ULLICO was a staid insurance company. It was set up in the mid 1920’s, purportedly to help the relatively unsophisticated union employees of the time get the insurance products they needed, but often had...

Union Leaders Accused of Profiting From Insider TradingJeff Johnson, CNSNews.comThursday, Aug. 15, 2002 WASHINGTON – A non-profit group that fights forced unionization and illegal political uses of union dues filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint this week against a company that provides life and health insurance products to union members. National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW) alleges that Union Labor Life Insurance Co. Inc. (ULLICO) allowed top union leaders to profit from insider information through a "scheme" NRTW compared to the questionable accounting practices recently exposed at a number of U.S. corporations. The complaint was filed with the National...

At the same time that AFL-CIO president John Sweeney is telling the public that unions are the best protector of workers amidst the "corporate crime wave sweeping the country," "big labor" may well have a similar problem in-house to cope with.Today National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund (NRWLDF) attorneys are filing an administrative complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against ULLICO, a financial-services company run by union bosses that primarily invests money from union pension funds.The suit claims that ULLICO lined the pockets of some of the members of its board of directors — all current...

he board of Ullico, a union-owned insurance company, has named James R. Thompson, the former Illinois governor, to investigate the private sale of company stock that resulted in big profits for its directors. After a stormy meeting that ended late Monday in Washington, the directors unanimously voted to have Mr. Thompson review the sales, which have badly embarrassed the labor movement and the presidents of several prominent unions. A federal grand jury in Washington is investigating whether Ullico's sale and subsequent repurchase of its stock enabled several union presidents on its board to enrich themselves improperly at the expense of...