Local union members stand by Coia
By JONATHAN SALTZMAN
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- "It's bull."
"It's a slight on the Italians."
"I think it's time to leave him alone."
Across Providence yesterday, that's how local members of the
Laborers' International Union of North America reacted to an accusation that Arthur A.
Coia, president of their union and a man many call a friend, had associated with mobsters
and received kickbacks from a union vendor.
From the Providence Place mall construction site
to the city public-works garage to City Hall offices, rank-and-file members came to the
defense of Coia, the Rhode Islander who rose to head the nation's biggest union, with
750,000 members.
Not one member expressed concern or chagrin over charges filed
Thursday by a former federal prosecutor hired by Coia in 1995 to clean up his corrupt
union. If Coia is found guilty in a secret union disciplinary proceeding, he would be
ousted from the Laborers'$254,000-a-year presidency.
In fact, rank-and-file members directed their
only rebukes at the news media, particularly the Journal-Bulletin, which has published
stories reporting that Coia, his father, and the union have ties to the
Mafia.
In the view of several union members, Coia is a decent, honest and
dedicated leader who has, directly or indirectly, made sure they can put bread on their
tables, don't get pushed around by management and have a good pension when they retire.
"I've been on the streets all my life,"
said Damian Costantino, a welder at the city Public Works Department, a Federal Hill
resident and member of Local 1033, which represents about 1,000 municipal employees.
"He's not connected with the mob. If they think the mob goes in and tells this guy
what to do, they're nuts."
Nuts or not, that's essentially what disciplinary charges filed in
Washington, D.C., by Robert D. Luskin, a former U.S. Justice Department lawyer, allege.
The charges against Coia, according to a union statement, assert
that between 1986 and 1993, he "knowingly associated with members of
organized crime, knowingly permitted organized-crime members to influence the affairs of
the LIUNA, breached his constitutional and fiduciary duties to the union and improperly
accepted benefits from a LIUNA service provider."
Coia, 54, of Barrington, has been a target of three federal
grand-jury investigations in Washington, Boston, and Rochester, N.Y., and denies the
latest allegations. The charges will be judged by a union hearing officer, Peter F. Vaira,
a former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia.
In recent years, Coia has hobnobbed with President Clinton and won accolades for helping to revive the American labor movement. But he has been dogged by allegations that he and
his now-deceased father, Arthur E. Coia, the
secretary treasurer of the Laborers' union, have consorted with mobsters.
In late 1994, the Justice Department delivered a thick draft
complaint to his office in Washington accusing Coia and his union of being mob-controlled.
Federal prosecutors called for a government takeover akin to the seizure of the Teamsters.
Coia countered by hiring Luskin and other leading Washington
lawyers to negotiate with the Justice Department. That led to an unprecedented agreement
in 1995 allowing Coia to remain at the helm while Luskin and other former prosecutors and the FBI cleaned up the union.
It was that cleanup that led to the latest accusation.
But from the vantage point of local union
members, Coia is a good guy who never lost the common touch, whose associations with
mobsters are, at worst, purely coincidental, and whose union has vigorously represented
them.
Wilbur W. Jennings Jr., the deputy superintendent of public works,
used the word "friend" to describe both Coia and his father.
Jennings first met the elder Coia in the late 1960s, when Jennings
was working at a Goodyear garage on Broad Street. Jennings would service Coia's new
General Motors cars. He did such a dandy job, he said, that whenever the
elegantly dressed union official would come by with his driver, he'd ask specifically for
Jennings.
"He was a nice fella," Jennings said. "He'd say,
`Mr. Jennings, take care of my car.' "
After Jennings began working for Public Works in 1975 and joined
the union, he said, the elder Coia introduced him to Coia's son as "our friend . . .
. He serviced our car."
Over the years, Jennings said, the younger Coia returned the
kindness. When Jennings was fired in 1989 -- in retribution, he maintains, for his
unsuccessful campaigns to unseat House Speaker Matthew J. Smith -- the union helped him
regain his job.
"He is a straight-up guy," Jennings,
53, said of the Laborers' president.
Sitting with Jennings in a drab dispatcher's
office at the Public Works garage on Ernest Street, Costantino said it's common knowledge
that the elder Coia was friendly with the late New England mob boss Raymond L.S.
Patriarca. But he found nothing sinister about that; Rhode Island is so small, powerful
men are bound to rub shoulders.
Such associations raise eyebrows, he said, because of prejudice
against Italians and exaggerated fears about the Mafia.
"Let's put it this way: If a Fortune 500 guy is talking to a wiseguy, do you think they'd make a big deal out of it?" said Costantino, a brother of state Rep. Steven M. Costantino.
"It's the Italian name."
What counted more, Costantino said, was how well the union
represents its members, and he gave Local 1033 high marks. Local members have an excellent
pension and get legal assistance if they need it.
In addition to blue-collar workers, the
Laborers' union represents office workers at City Hall. Several rank-and-file
members at the Board of Canvassers and Registration said they hadn't read news reports of
the latest accusuations against Coia and weren't inclined to.
Asked whether she was troubled that Coia allegedly has ties to
mobsters, one woman said: "Doesn't everybody in Rhode Island?"
A couple of miles away at the dirt-packed construction site of the
Providence Place mall, several burly men wearing hard hats expressed similar views.
Dick Mandarini, a union steward whose company,
New England Foundation, is laying concrete footings for the mall, dismissed the
allegations as "bull" and denounced Journal-Bulletin stories about Coia.
Mandarini, a Cranston resident who belongs to Local 271 of the
Laborers' union, contended that the accusations are a "set-up" -- perhaps by the
federal government -- to oust Coia because he has been such an effective union leader.
Like other union members, Mandarini had only good things to say about his embattled president.
"He's a nice guy," he said.
Copyright © 1997 The Providence Journal Company
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