Laborers, U.S. Reach Pact On Cleanup
The plan includes the first rank-and-file elections but union
president, Rhode Islander Arthur A. Coia, is likely to keep control.
By DEAN STARKMAN and JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writers
WASHINGTON -- Atty. Gen. Janet Reno yesterday
stoutly defended the Justice Department's unique agreement to end mob corruption in the
Laborers International Union of North America, and top prosecutors said the union's
controversial general president, Rhode Islander Arthur A. Coia, is "under
scrutiny."
Reno also assured rank-and-file Laborers that Coia's political
relationship with President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has had no
effect on delicate negotiations between prosecutors and Laborers officials on how best to
reform the troubled union.
"I don't know anything about
relationships," Reno said. "But I know about the evidence and the law, and I'm
going to do everything I can based on the evidence and the law to see that people who
committed crimes are held accountable."
Reno called the press conference to announce what she described as
a breakthrough in the campaign to clean up the Laborers: an agreement to hold direct
rank-and-file elections for the first time in union history.
"Free and democratic elections are the best way to ensure
that unions will truly serve their members," Reno said.
"Nothing less is acceptable."
Still, prosecutors acknowledged that the reforms are only partial;
even under the new plan, Coia and his allies are likely to remain in power into the next
century.
Reno's appearance yesterday broke the government's year-long
official silence on the Laborers agreement. As late as last week when reporters asked
about it, her spokesman, Carl Stern, said: "That's like asking the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about a problem in a commissary."
But yesterday, Chicago's top federal prosecutor
came to Washington to attend Reno's press conference at the Justice Department's
Constitution Avenue headquarters - in the same wood-paneled conference room where one of
Reno's predecessors, Robert F. Kennedy, declared war on the Mafia's domination of major
American unions.
"Curbing the reach of organized crime is a central mission of
the Justice Department," Reno said.
Flanking Reno were two signers of the Laborers agreement, James B.
Burns, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, and Paul E. Coffey, chief of the
Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.
Burns said the agreement was not necessarily an endorsement of
Coia's leadership.
"I am not saying Mr. Coia should stay in
charge of the union," Burns said. "Mr. Coia and others are still under
scrutiny."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Oswald, in a telephone interview
from Chicago, said the union's in-house investigators have promised to
question Coia under oath about a number of issues, including a charge - laid out by the
government in a draft racketeering complaint - that Coia conspired with Buffalo mobsters
to pilfer benefit funds from upstate New York locals.
"At our insistence, and under our prodding,
they are going to be asking Mr. Coia about these racketeering charges," Oswald said.
"The union will put him under oath. We have a number of questions about him. That's
something that we're very interested in."
Under the election agreement announced yesterday,
Coia and the union's second-ranking officer, Rollin P. "Bud" Vinall, will be
required to run in a mail-ballot election to be held by the end of the year. All 750,000
union members will be eligible to vote.
Coia and Vinall will be nominated at a convention
to be held in September in Las Vegas. The rest of the powerful general executive board,
now expanded to 13 members, will run under the old rules. These officers will be elected
by delegates at the convention. The delegates themselves will be chosen in local elections
around the country this spring.
This old system, the Justice Department has said,
lent itself to abuse by a corrupt elite who allowed the mob to dominate the union for most
of this century.
In the past, Laborers conventions were booze-drenched affairs
attended by delegates hand-picked by mob-dominated locals. Burns noted that in the only
contested election in Laborers history, in 1981 in Miami, Dennis Ryan, a symbolic
candidate from Iowa, was "viciously beaten" on the convention floor. Coia's
father, Arthur E. Coia, the union's longtime general secretary- treasurer, presided that
day.
Burns conceded yesterday that any opponent would have trouble
mounting a nationwide campaign against the incumbent Coia and his allies. So the new
agreement virtually assures that Coia and the incumbent board members will stay in power until at least 2001.
Coia, Burns said, and "the powers that be in the union can
have a fair amount of say-so" over the vice president slots.
He said the agreement calls for a mail referendum, to be held this
year with election of the top two officers, that will decide whether the
rank and file gets to choose the entire slate of officers in 2001.
Burns said dissatisfied union members can use
the time to marshal their forces.
"They'll have a referendum they can vote on, and if they vote
it in, then that would give them five years to start pulling their forces together and
getting ready to go," he said.
But the Justice Department's agreement, which
allows it to take over the Laborers any time it is not satisfied with the union's
progress, expires in 1998. Oswald said the government will address that problem as the
1998 deadline approaches.
The election agreement is the result of months of closed-door
negotiations between prosecutors and lawyers for the union. Word of the give- and-take has
leaked out, and members of the Laborers' weak and fragmented opposition have flashed the
details around the country via phone, fax and e- mail.
Their reaction was largely negative.
Alex Corns, a hod carrier from Daly City,
Calif., said the new arrangement virtually assures that Coia and his
allies will remain in power past the point when all agreements with the Justice Department
expire.
"I think it's bull," Corns said. "The top two
officers you're not going to beat the top two. If you could run against the regional
people, then you could begin to take your regions back."
Chris White, a bus driver from Fairbanks, Alaska, who was among
the dissidents beaten at the Miami convention in 1981, called the new election arrangement
"token democracy."
"We want direct elections for all international officers not
just a little token," White said. "Do it right, and then it'll start to
straighten itself out."
White, however, said he intends to challenge Coia for the general
presidency with a campaign using e-mail, a Web page on the Internet and "Dump
Coia" buttons.
Reno's press conference marked a new chapter in the government's
efforts to root out Mafia influence in the Laborers union.
In November 1994, Coffey, the organized crime section chief,
presented Coia and the union with a 212-page draft racketeering complaint that said the
union was systemically corrupt and dominated "at all levels" by organized crime.
The document also accused Coia of conspiring with the Buffalo Mafia to pilfer union funds
from upstate New York locals, stealing from New England benefit funds and tolerating mob
influence.
The delivery of the document touched off three months of
negotiations that resulted in the government dropping two key demands - for Coia's ouster
and for a court-supervised takeover of the Laborers. Instead, the union was permitted to
launch its own in-house purge of corruption with former federal prosecutors and FBI
agents; the government reserved the right to implement a takeover if it is not satisfied
with the union's efforts.
Since becoming the union's general president in 1993, Coia has
cultivated a political relationship with President and Mrs. Clinton. The union has been a
major contributor to Democratic causes, and Coia and Mr. Clinton have socialized.
Coia has said that Mr. Clinton personally
designated deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes as Coia's contact with the
administration. Coia said that happened during a meeting at the White House in the fall of
1994. Yesterday, White House spokeswoman Ginny Terzano said Ickes would not make himself
available to answer questions about his dealings with Coia.
Reno said she was pleased with the results of the negotiations
between her department and the union.
"We can move immediately with an agreement
that provides for outside monitors who have been professional, skilled,
very able law enforcement officials to monitor it now, without delay, without having to go
to court," Reno said. But, she noted, "there is a consent decree that would
provide for that court supervision if this doesn't work."
Indeed, Burns said the Laborers-style in-house cleanup may become
the "wave of the future."
"The feeling here was it's the best of both worlds if you can
get them to do it themselves internally," Burns said.
"Corporate America is doing it. You're seeing a much greater push on internal
investigations, internal regulation, internal controls of their problems. . .
.Arbitration, dispute resolution - that's the way the legal system is
heading."
Officials at the Laborers International headquarters did not
return telephone calls seeking comment.
Copyright © 1997 The Providence Journal Company.
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