JOHN J FLOOD - POLICE UNION LEADER - ORGANIZED CRIME EXPERT

Frank Flood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2011-04-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

Frank Flood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frank Pape, Celebrated Chicago Police Detective, Dies at 91 - Obituary; Biography - NYTimes.com

2011-03-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

Frank Pape, Celebrated Chicago Police Detective, Dies at 91 - Obituary; Biography - NYTimes.com

NEWS: (Suburban) 30 years later, Orland Park chief recalls taking a bullet for Reagan

2011-03-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

NEWS: (Suburban) 30 years later, Orland Park chief recalls taking a bullet for Reagan

Scrubbed Clean | Vegas Seven

2011-03-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

Scrubbed Clean | Vegas Seven

LAW SUIT THREATS - LEGAL MANEUVER GUNFIRE - DRIVE- BY ATTORNEY

2010-12-12T21:49:00.000-08:00

Well – how about this - on December 8th, 2010 - contacted by Carlos Panthera - formerly Oak Lawn P D and formerly an Arthur Loevy client - who sometimes uses the name Cliff.

Carlos sounded as tough and as rough as he could on his cell - stating he would sue as he did not like what was being put forth on this Blog.

One has to wonder if Arthur Loevy is in contact with Carlos- Cliff - as sometimes called - as to suit initiation.

Arthur Loevy has architected suit before to harass, embarrass and denigrate reputation of this writer - but did so surreptitiously - using surrogate counsel to keep his name sneakily hidden.

" THE CREW" with Wheeling P.D.'s Billy Stutzman taking the lead and Evergreen Park P.D.' s Michael Dwyer - to the rear - fronting for Mr. Loevy's nefarious legal maneuvers, needed personal satisfying revenge and a bitterness catharsis.

Mr. Loevy - who was taking a legal piece of yours truly - for firing him and telling him he should be knocked through a wall but that doing so would be as hitting a woman - sought revenge through legal processes and filings of needling, taking one apart at the defense cost rate of $350 @ hour - plus.

Mr. Loevy is quite an expert at legal process and using this fallacious nation of laws venue for his gain – the rule of law as the pols say – as the judicial branch of politics manipulates - but more later as to Arthur Loevy and his machinations with ‘”THE CREW”

And maybe even more threats of law suits – the weapon of choice of many of America’s manipulative phonies.

OUTFIT - POLITICS - COMMENTARY

2010-11-19T10:03:00.001-08:00

THE CREW'S LOEVY POINT MAN - BARRISTER - Ron M. Willis

2010-11-15T20:35:00.000-08:00

Ron M. Willis | Dowd, Bloch & Bennett

Mr. Willis is Arthur R. Loevy's protege - William Stutzman's, Michael Dwyer and "THE CREW'S" point CCPA attorney.

Introduced and positioned on Mr. Loevy's recommendation, direction and overseeing after retiring from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America(UNITE) - his union political career guided by - of course Mr. Loevy.

Boston Police Strike

2010-11-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

Boston Police Strike

Chicago Magazine - In the Name of the Father - May 2009

2010-10-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

Chicago Magazine - In the Name of the Father - May 2009

ANTERIOR CERVICAL DISECTOMY WITH FUSION

2010-09-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

That is what the neurosurgeons call it.

And that is the medical procedure – the surgery - I went through August 12th 2010. St Rose Hospital, Las Vegas, Nevada.

One word describes it. Brutal. The pain excruciating - but- no cancer found.

Recovery is difficult, time consuming – and certainly no blows to the head, jarring of the body, basic ambulatory movement restricted. No lifting anything heavier than a milk carton. Severe pain negates thoughts – coordination, structure of personal thinking. Cause – this time – and this time is stressed - accidental slipping and fall. Six to eight weeks for pain relief alone.

Writing to this BLOG had to be interupted. Writing will now commence again slowly - for readers keep emailing, asking, and inquiring - as to “THE CREW”.

“THE CREW” has had a pivotal role with the Loevy law suit initiation against Chicago and Illinois cops and FBI agents. The Loevy firm is spreading its legal tentacles across the Midwest and beyond. For cops are, as they are well aware- making instantaneous decisions - subject to political interpretation - against some very bad guys- every minute and everywhere. The firm can cherry pick -with a smile and dollar figure anticipated - and they can ballyhoo - all performed for their altruistic pursuit of civil rights and the constitution upheld.

After all Chicago is a world class city. Gets major press coverage -frequently national and international in daily scope. The Loevy firm fast preparation ability of suits continues as the high publicity trials are journaled notorious due to the major politicians involved, police management on and off the job and a U S Attorney named Fitzgerald. The law firm of Loevy & Loevy – Arthur being the titular head knows the magnificence of press coverage followed by well choreographed P R advertisements.

Who is "THE CREW" – their role? Their actions? Their involvement? And where are they now? What are they doing?

Bottom line. What is Arthur R. Loevy to "THE CREW" or should it be stated" THE CREW" of puppets to Arthur R Loevy?

"THE CREW" were the five police officers who came together to take over the administration of the Combined Counties Police Association when I announced my definite retirement after having struggled against the second onslaught of bladder cancer and another painful operation on January 3rd, 2000.

They comprised William Stutzman, Wheeling Illinois P D their titular leader, Michael Dwyer, Evergreen Park P D second in command, Solomon Smith, retired Maywood P D and CCPA staff member, Marty McGrath, Oak Lawn P D and Butch McGorcle, Burbank PD. Four were newly elected to union positions within the Combined Counties Police Association. They being Stutzman, Dwyer and McGrath holding Vice President Positions and Solomon Smith becoming CCPA Secretary Treasurer – McGorcle was in the wings with a promise from Stutzman and the guidance of Arthur R. Loevy to elevation of office when plotting developed on their timetable of perfidy.

They-“THE CREW” were all in alliance with Arthur R. Loevy who was surreptitiously pulling their strings. Loevy had more brains than the whole of "THE CREW" combined.

He had been summarily dismissed by me from employ with the Combined Counties Police Association but “THE CREW” saw otherwise. Saw it to their betterment- for financial opportunity to deal with Loevy – now a fledgling barrister under tutelage of his son. “THE CREW” - fully knowing of the police law suits that were to become the bread and butter of the then infant Loevy firm were underway."The Crew" nourished them in their embryonic stages

Arthur Loevy remained behind the scenes, undercover, while orchestrating “THE CREW’S" moves as I attempted retirement entrance after forty years in law enforcement. Thirty two of those years as the founder of CCPA, the police union movement of the USA and the longest termed police union President in the nation.

Mr. Loevy and son Jon were starting their firm – Loevy & Loevy. Son Jon was suing a Chicago Police officer and Solomon Smith was coaching Loevy Sr as to how police officers react and think as it related to the strategy of the initial Loevy inspired suit. Smith had touted behind my back and against my directives, in his position as a CCPA staff member legal actions against the Village of Oak Lawn PD Chief of Police Jim Houk and one of his commanders Terry Voderer with Officer Marty McGrath a CCPA representative within that Department point man to the cause. Stutzman and Dwyer agreeing of the actions and briefing McGorcle of Burbank P D.

The show was on. The Chicago Police Department suit and the suit one might consider calling the legal extortion of the Village of Oak Lawn, Illinois. In that municipality Marty McGrath, Solomon Smith and Arthur R Loevy engineered a legal maneuver that represented Oak Lawn Patrolman Carlos Panthera who was not well thought of in that Department for his braggadocio of having been a member of street gangs.

Oak Lawn Village administration settled the Loevy & Loevy suit against the strong disagreement wishes of Chief Houk and Commander Voderer because it would cost more to defend than to settle. Panthera left Oak Lawn P D.

I opened this remembrance as to a most recent surgery – for surgery played a major role in my leaving my career – my profession – and the union founded.

On March 21st 2009 – 59 years of age -woke up in the morning – blood in urine. That afternoon in Rush Presbyterian North Shore Hospital, Skokie, Illinois.

Bladder cancer – immediate surgery. My doctor - my internist of many years – wonderful man – Arthur R. Loevy’s cousin. The curse of cancer was a life changer – two people immediately notified of the CCPA union staff – Arthur R. Loevy and Solomon Smith – and then – new to the scene elected - CCPA officers William Stutzman, Wheeling P D and Michael Dwyer, Evergreen Park P D. All requested I stay overseeing administration till a transition could be arranged. Out of responsibility to the membership and state of the union – continued on – in a “lame duck” position.

The first of many betrayals began - openly – it was Arthur R Loevy - point man. The man I viewed as my closest friend, my professor, advisor of over thirty one years and “THE CREW” - as I was to become to call them - was quickly aligning under Loevy behind the back coordination and surreptitious leadership.

Arthur R Loevy was far smarter than the whole crew combined. He did not lack for intelligence and political acumen. Both are his forte. Personal courage is not.

He was aware that I was becoming cognizant of untoward matters involving him. Nine days after cancer surgery – recovering - Arthur Loevy phoned my home and in his almost laughingly rhetorical way – his deliverance of words – his weapons of ability – tried to convince me that I did not have bladder cancer. His conduct – his presentation – most difficult to fathom – to believe occurring. He was to write it off, later as playful –joking, kidding banter.

He continued behind my back political treachery and betrayal of trust. Such betrayal is not easily recognizable – especially when orchestrated by a man of Loevy’s political union savvy.

January 30th 2000. Hit once again. Bladder cancer. Second surgical go round. Doctor, overseeing care – Arthur R. Loevy’s cousin. Announce to all elected CCPA union officers and staff that retirement will be of necessity – but commitments will be met.

Commitments and my word I have lived by all of life and know of no man – none – from youth, through military and police career – the entire journey - who can challenge that statement – true of my mind.

If one does not have their word – then one has little. One’s character is wanting. Lost, maybe never possessed. One might achieve wealth and title – but one’s word means more than all.

It is a class – one’s word -and if you don’t have it – no matter what else you have – doesn’t make much of a difference. If you have it you don’t need much of anything else.

Arthur R Loevy - who does not have the aforementioned - was sumararily dismissed – March 6th 2000.

Fired - from my staff. Personal meeting of he and I.

I was mad as hell at that difficult meeting. Mad enough to want to hit him for his untoward conduct, betrayal of trust and deceit- but told him if I did it would be as striking a woman – for anything physical or situations that would place him in harm’s way - was to be left to others. As mentioned - courage not his forte. Words – the convolution of words - for the pen is mightier than the sword- and he well knows that – the wielding of words alone – to serve whatever of his purposes - definitely is his forte.

They the Loevy & Loevy Firm continue to be on the attack – ambulance chasers of a different form. They are the police chaser firm with a few FBI agents of note thrown in. Too this very day at the Chicago, Illinois Kluczynski federal building and other venues outside Illinois and spreading nationally as the specious legal maneuvers are sought with highly played advertisements and staged press conferences.

And it must be noted that all the major politicians of Chicago and Illinois know Arthur Loevy from his personal union career and involvement with the Chicago Federation of Labor – but most of all for his participation with the Combined Counties Police Association as my consigliore for want of a better term? He lived many years under my imprimatur – but he was kept well in line. He only felt safe to attack- form a cabal with William Stutzman, Wheeling P D, Mike Dwyer Evergreen Park P D Solomon Smith, Maywood P D, and Marty McGrath Oak Lawn PD when I was well weakened with cancer.

My pal Arthur Loevy surmised and “THE CREW “did to – that my possible death was imminent.

Now knowing what I had come to know as to his quick to leave the International Secretary position with UNITE, formerly the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America , and his son initiating law suits against police officers I was totally disgusted and wracked with a sense of stupidity as to how I could be fooled so long.

The law firm of Loevy & Loevy was underway – but his dealing with “THE CREW” to control the affairs of a then still major, well known police union as I attempted to leave my career was also well underway.

A coup d’etat of power was well formed underhandedly. Loevy was the brain. Wanted the power therein and "THE CREW" were his foils. “THE CREW” served his purposes and he served theirs. A mutual seduction of “THE CREW” and the law degreed Mr. Loevy, so to speak.

Few can plot, twist, remake reality, conjure untoward possibilities, misrepresent fact, distort and outright lie as attorneys.A lifelong evaluation. Most in the law enforcement profession are well aware that members of the bar and the ethics they profess are fallacious at best. The financial moguls and the legal practitioners along with the politicians they align themselves with and many of whom they outright buy – control the power structure of the nation. The good of anyone- the people per se - is secondary to the self serving power control. They can even debate over what the word “is” is ala William Jefferson Clinton – a liar of enormous historic proportions – true to his Juris Doctorate.

So for the moment now - I retreat from the continuance of this sad tale of police -lawyer chicanery.

For I tire- body seeking rest, following doctors orders. For my body to rise up and get the ANTERIOR CERVICAL DISECTOMY WITH FUSION addressed to a wellness state. To sully forth as best a man of seventy one years can do - and heal.

Operations take their toll and I have seen more major ones than most. Thirteen major medical shots of memory and the periphery needles and numerous tests, therapy and ongoing checkups.

So this most factual remembrance will commence again. But at a future time.

Steve Manning - Loevy Firm Triumph

2010-09-06T21:00:00.000-07:00

Steve Manning

SOME TEAMSTER GUYS - PLAYERS LARGEST TEAMSTER JOINT COUNCIL IN U S

2010-09-06T03:21:00.001-07:00

Some Teamster Guys - Major Players Still

THE CREW - POLICE OFFICERS - A MAJOR ROLE - LOEVY LAW FIRM

2010-09-02T02:32:00.000-07:00

William Stutzman Wheeling P D ( RET )

Solomon Smith Maywood P D ( RET )

Michael Dwyer Evergreen Park P D

Marty McGrath Oak Lawn P D

Butch McGorkle Burbank P D

Arthur Loevy

These police officers played an active, a major role in the launching of the Loevy and Loevy law firm and three have an active participation with barrister Arthur Loevy . It all started in 1997 right up to the present. The review will be of interest.

Lieutenant William Stutzman, Wheeling P D and Officer Michael Dwyer, Evergreen Park P D were the leaders and use a Loevy protégé - Ron Willis -presently - as their front attorney in their Machiavellian maneuvers - as both of them are not too sharp - and definitely need a thinker. The officers comprising THE CREW have cost a lot of other police officers huge legal problems - but such does not weigh on their consciences.

THE CREW one has to realize are not too brilliant and Arthur Loevy is their brain - does their thinking, leads them, strategizes for them. He provides them free legal when it suits his purposes to accomplish his objectives in their names.

They are the front men in matters that serve Arthur Loevy's nefarious purposes.

The whole story from when Mr. Loevy left his thirty eight year career as a union politician with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America - International Secretary Treasurer mind you - under suspect- and then clandestine reasons - to law firm establishment is something else again - with foundation from THE CREW.

I have known Arthur Loevy since I was twenty-eight years of age – he was the same.
Introduced to him by, Frank Furfaro, a most knowledgeable police officer under my command – most streetwise - from the Taylor and Bishop Italian neighborhood of Chicago. Frank’s brother in law, then in his seventies – was a business agent with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Joint Board at Ashland and Van Buren Streets.

The union owned just about the whole block east of Ashland with a large headquarters office building on the northeast corner. Loevy was an attorney who had been groomed since youth to be a union politician when finishing law school. His uncle was the International Secretary of the union – the way-the future was paved for him – a union career – that ended abruptly and surreptitiously- but of his accord in 1998 after forty years of destined ascension.

Arthur Loevy achieved power in that union - International Secretary Treasurer - one of the two top men running the entire organization. A most powerful union.

He commuted to New York City, Union Square address headquarters building in 'The Big Apple" from his downtown Chicago Park Newbury, 55 W Delaware condo building across from historic Bug House Square Park. Spent the work week there and then - for the weekend back to Chicago.

So knowing Arthur Loevy- quite closely- and once considering him to be my closest friend in life a cogent overview of the man and his legal activities will be rendered.

The involvement of – police officers well known to me. Two peripherally – they being Officers Marty McGrath of Oak Lawn P D and Butch McGorcle of Burbank P D. An overview of their questionable and self serving activities hand and hand with Mr. Loevy will also be rendered.

It was Monday January 5th 1998 when Art Loevy at his request joined the staff of the police union I led for over thirty-two years. He had a law degree but that was incidental to his executive role where he could come and go as he pleased and had total access to all records and financial information of the Combined Counties Police Association.

Law was something he had practiced very little of – very minor stuff over the years – several police and fire commission hearings and nothing more. His law degree then was but foundation to his Amalgamated Clothing Workers union ambitions and career. He was almost fearful of entering a court room – either federal or local. Avoided doing same - almost fright.

His son Jon who was about to start a law firm with his wife Danielle however was not and thusly the father had a point man and someone to tutor him as to law practice itself. The father while separating from his New York City quite worrisome entanglements had son Jon in September 1997 intermittently take over the important legal matters of CCPA.

The father oversaw and Jon did what the father could not do – legal in the trenches work.

The Loevy & Loevy legal corporation was underway and has probably made the family millionaires as of today. All this his happened after the father March 6th 2000 was summarily dismissed from my employ as CCPA President and founder - and any friendship. A friendship he had trashed, dishonored, taken advantage of and had so treacherously betrayed as sneakily as he could.

So Arthur Loevy was introduced with intimate contact of a police officer, his thinking, actions and career record when meeting John J Flood in 1968.

The beginning of a saga which in present day 2010 and for the last decade took a very ugly turn - with the developing of the Loevy law practice – then only son Jon with wife – as father was on my staff – was moving forth in 1998. The suing of the first law enforcement officers would unbeknownst to me commence shortly thereafter by son Jon in a case that was tossed to him by the erstwhile attorney and political candidate Al Hofeld.

I was in the embryonic stage of forming - building a new police association which was to become the true founding of law enforcement unionization in the United States.

Across the nation all police departments had some sort of organization – but those stating they were a union could be counted on one hand. Chicago Police had the Chicago Patrolmans Association, Confederation of Police and FOP – all in Daley I’s pocket and useless at best – detrimental to street cops at worst. The Illinois Police Association wandered around the state – also ineffective and downstate there was the Illinois Police Benevolent and Protective Association – more of the same.

I was about to change that and Arthur Loevy was my professor, a guiding hand as to - "your forming a union John" - its nature, structure, activity, labor relations objectives and history. As I look back over the years his was a friendship of accommodation to his interests. He had assured that there were no connections in his personal closet - his relationships.

Always he was to the side and beneath my leadership – but his opinions and college learned labor education was a directional foundation to my decisions.

Immediately I was cognizant – fully of mind - that; my endeavors were establishing a law enforcement union – an entity I would have probably been psychologically against due to a lacking of education as to the subject and its representative role in a free society.

So for forty-two years Arthur Loevy has been known quite personally to me. His nefarious actions and those of THE CREW have deeply affected my well being and peace of mind to this day.

He also has had a deleterious effect on the numerous police officers and federal agents his Loevy & Loevy firm has targeted -with the greenback in mind and probably – even - more important to him a psychological power over people- such as police officers and average citizens - that he considers his intellectual inferiors. He can use words and “the law” to make them sweat – like a mugger does with a gun – he does with words and the twisting of reality – but the end result is the same - it pays well.

And one should not think for a moment that the political power structure is not aware of the game nor complicit to the Loevy firm – just as THE CREW have been while holding his hand – fawning to him.

LABORERS UNION GUYS OF CHICAGO -SOME - DOA - SOME CRUISING

2010-09-02T01:53:00.000-07:00

The Unions of Chicago

Laborers Union Guys of Chicago

A PAUSE FOR SEVERAL DAYS

2010-09-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork Edward Abbey



The above quote by Mr Abbey relates well to "THE CREW" . Five police officers of duplicitous conduct.

William Stutzman Wheeling P D ( RET )

Solomon Smith      Maywood P D ( RET )

Michael Dwyer Evergreen Park P D

Marty McGrath    Oak Lawn P D

Butch McGorkle    Burbank P D

Deliberative actions and their proximity and foundational relationship to Arthur R Loevy launching his belated legal machinations - suing police and the FBI will - in future postings - be enlightened upon.

This format of BLOG writing comes forth in segments - columns if you will - for the reader to digest and review.

Many have urged that I write a book and that might well be in the offing - for during my lifetime in the police profession no other has been my peer.

The four years of being with Dick Ogilvie was akin to a soldier who had been in the Army thirty years who spent four of those years marching - advancing through Africa, to Anzio beachhead and landing on the shores of Normandy , proceeding to " the hood" in Berlin.

The four years with the man who prosecuted Tony Accardo as U S District Attorney General for Organized Crime in the Midwestern Region of the United States were unique in policing history. Four years of quite a street education for myself.

Richard B Ogilvie

Dick Ogilvie went on to become Governor of the State of Illinois

The organized crime fighting experiences with Ogilvie - when Sheriff of Cook County - led to my founding the police union that I led for over thirty two years - retiring in 2000 after the onslaught of two distinct major operations for bladder cancer.

The actions of police officers aligned with me in the embryonic years - some for the good and some for the bad - established police unionization in the United States.

Writing to John J Flood's BLOG will be put off for several days. Personal commitments to be addressed.

This site will become of interest to the public, law enforcement officers and those concerned with organized crime and public and private sector unions. Especially the historic formation of police unions in the United States and their ongoing performance and state of affairs

There is a great deal of history leading to present day events.

All will be related in a day to day format of writing.

Thoughts might wander- appear disjointed to a first read - but most will make sense to the reader in time and review.

Incisive commentary will be put forth from a very unique personal perspective of living.

LOEVY - T'IS THE MONEY MY MAN

2010-08-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

Chicago Cops balk at paying $110K
Owe punitive damages for fabricating confession in murder

Three Chicago Police officers are seeking to overturn a jury's $330,000 punitive damage award -- saying it would ruin them financially.

In June, a Cook County jury awarded Donny McGee $1.3 million after finding the officers fabricated his confession in the 2001 murder of his neighbor, Ethel Perstlen, 76. The award included $110,000 that each officer must pay from his personal funds.

Detectives Edward Farley and Robert Lenihan and Officer Robert Bartik have filed a motion seeking a new trial. Alternatively, they want the punitive damage award dropped or reduced.

Bartik, a polygraph examiner, and Farley are still on the police force and earn $72,000 and $82,000 a year, respectively, their motion says. Lenihan is retired and lives on a $59,000 a year pension.

The officers, who deny they framed McGee, argue the jury should not have been instructed that it could impose punitive damages. But they also pointed to an appeals court decision that said "the amount of the award should send a message loud enough to be heard but not so loud as to deafen the listener."

"A punitive damage award in such an excessive amount will effectively financially destroy them," says their motion, filed earlier this month.

They also say a juror improperly conducted her own Internet research during the trial, but the judge failed to remove her.

LIFE - THE WHOLE NINE YARDS

2010-08-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

"If we would have a stable society, we must have dangerous Old Men."

"The good youths are guided and disciplined by Old Men."

STREET HAZARDS - OUT OF POCKET

2010-08-21T01:59:00.000-07:00

Jury awards $1.3 million to man, saying cops faked confession with Polygraph

June 12, 2010

A Southwest Side man was awarded $1.3 million Tuesday after a Cook County jury found two Chicago Police detectives and a police polygraph administrator created a false confession about him in the 2001 murder of his neighbor, according to the man’s lawyers.

Donny McGee’s award is to include $330,000 from the officers’ personal funds, according to Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law.

McGee, who spent three years in prison, was to face the death penalty in the murder of Ethel Perstlen, 76.

Detective Edward Farley, Detective Robert Lenihan and Officer Robert Bartik fabricated a confession from McGee that was not written, audiotaped or videotaped, the lawyers added.

AMALGAMATED BANK -CHICAGO POWER - GENE HEYTOW

2010-08-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

Banks, casinos and a ... hit list?
(Casino owner Eugene Heytow)

Crain's Chicago Business May 13, 1996 Betty Healy

EUGENE HEYTOW

Gene Heytow seems odd, but he's profitable

As a gambler, Eugene Heytow used to dread the sweep of the rake across a craps table. It meant he'd lost his bet.

But as a casino owner overlooking the table action from the mezzanine, every rake-off is sweet, he says, grinning.

Strange sentiments from a lifelong banker. Then again, Mr. Heytow has long been an oddity among bankers, with substantial interests in gambling and real estate and connections to unions and politics.

A secretive and sometimes eccentric 61-year-old, Mr. Heytow declines to have his picture taken - "for security reasons," he hints darkly. Yet he is wagering millions of his personal wealth on Midwestern riverboat casinos, a highly public pursuit.

Even as the sun sets on the political clout that helped make his name at Chicago's labor-tied Amalgamated Bank, an ailing Mr. Heytow is trying his hand at a new game where money and connections reign supreme.

Indeed, Mr. Heytow's name comes up more often these days at state gambling commission hearings than in banking circles, despite decades as chairman of Amalgamated and of publicly traded Oak Brook Bancshares Inc. - a suburban bank company whose middling performance suits its chairman just fine but could threaten its long-term independence.

Riverboat reshuffling

Mr. Heytow and his investment partners at Oakbrook Terrace-based Aerie Hotels & Resorts Inc. are lobbying state officials to move their money-losing East Dubuque riverboat, the Silver Eagle, to the Vermilion River in Danville. After a hard fight, they won a license last month to run a vessel in Michigan City, Ind., and they have a license pending on a Missouri boat.

If the group's projections in its Indiana application prove accurate, Michigan City could yield $73 million in annual revenues - more than any other property in Aerie's golf resort, hotel and casino portfolio.

"This is the biggest gamble of all," Mr. Heytow concedes.

Though he professes to be a banker first, Mr. Heytow's plunge into casinos is emblematic of his divergent business interests and personas.

There is the conservative, genteel banker who insists on reviewing every loan over $1 million made by his institutions, as well as smaller ones if they're at all unusual.

"I'm very averse to losses," Mr. Heytow explains. "I tend to be happier with lower risk, lower return."

There is also, behind the gentlemanly veneer, a man who's schmoozed and swayed union bosses, Republican governors and Chicago's Democratic mayors, and who's known for a sharp tongue behind closed doors.

Raised in Rogers Park, this son of a Russian-immigrant father grew up with middle-class credentials that match those of the union workers he pursues as customers.

But his Harvard education, University of Chicago law degree and self-made wealth put him in the league of the big-time pols and executives with whom he's done deals over the years.

Powerful friends

Mr. Heytow has seen the highs and lows that come with having powerful friends.

William Daley, brother of Mayor Richard M. Daley, served as president of Amalgamated from 1989 to early 1993, and former Gov. James R. Thompson was an influential friend. Prominent Chicago lawyer and investor Peer Pederson is Mr. Heytow's key partner in the casino venture.

Yet one of Amalgamated's directors until 1992 was former Chicago Teamster official Daniel Ligurotis, who was acquitted of murder in the shooting death of his son. Later, he was ousted from his union post after being charged with embezzlement.

Acknowledging that the business of riverboat gambling is rife with politics, Mr. Heytow insists he's staying out of the fray: "If you're not squeaky clean, everything you do is on the front page of the paper."

Mr. Heytow, never fond of publicity, has become increasingly reclusive in recent years. Rejecting a request to pose for a photograph, he cites an incident 15 years ago, when his name showed up on a hit list of two bank robbers caught by the FBI. Some employees say they're instructed not to call him by name if they pass him on the street.

An air of secrecy prevails at Amalgamated, which Mr. Heytow and a brother-in-law purchased from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union in 1966.

Public silence

Today's top executives won't disclose their stake in the $632-million-asset company, nor why it's gone through three general counsels in as many years. And they never discuss family matters in public, former employees say, even though both of Mr. Heytow's banks are riddled with nepotism.

Robert Wrobel, president of Amalgamated, was once married to Mr. Heytow's daughter. Richard Rieser Jr., president of $713-million-asset First Oak Brook, is married to Mr. Heytow's niece. Andrew Heytow, Mr. Heytow's son, ran Amalgamated's computer operations until recently, but left after a disagreement with his father, sources say.

The younger Mr. Heytow has little to say about the parting. "I really don't want to talk about that," he says. He does confirm that he's still a director and an investor in the company.

Once a regular at political functions, the elder Mr. Heytow has cut back on his appearances, say bankers and others who know him. That's partly because of health problems, which range from a bad heart to chronic sinus trouble.

Though his ruddy complexion and stylishly coiffed salt-and-pepper hair bespeak vitality, Mr. Heytow leans on a cane when he walks and winces as he lowers himself into a high-backed leather chair in his corner office at Amalgamated. He sends a young driver, whom he calls "Killer," to fetch a forgotten dose of pills - one of several medications he complains he must take regularly.

"I'm an old 61," he says wearily. If Mr. Heytow's body is slowing down, his ambition is not. As the controlling shareholder in both Amalgamated and First Oak Brook - with a dominant stake exceeding 20% in each - he's free to pursue his riverboat enterprises, while also calling the shots on his complaisant bank boards.

Merger ambitions

He still dreams of merging Amalgamated with New York-based Amalgamated Bank, founded by the same union. He envisions a national institution with assets exceeding $2 billion and a populist mission - catering exclusively to workers, their union locals and their national organizations' pension funds.

Such a deal would buff the fading luster of the Loop's single-branch Amalgamated.

Although the bank is still a powerful force in public, or government, deposits (34% of Amalgamated's total deposits come from government agencies, municipalities and legislators - second-highest in the nation), it's nabbing fewer government contracts for check processing and other fee-based services than it once did. In three recent Illinois bids, Amalgamated wasn't even a finalist.

The bank's earnings fell 10% last year, to $4.6 million, a drop Mr. Wrobel attributes to increased spending on technology, advertising and hiring. Return on assets for the year was 0.73%, compared with a 1995 industry average of 1.0%. Return on equity was 11.8%, below the benchmark 15.0% for a well-run bank.

Yet Amalgamated's investors say they're satisfied. The bank pays its estimated 100 shareholders fat dividends: 30% of profits in 1995 and 27.5% in 1994, company executives say. Amalgamated's book value has jumped 35% in three years, to $39.2 million, according to Veribanc Inc., a Wakefield, Mass.-based bank research firm.

With investors earning good money, there's no visible pressure on Mr. Heytow to fashion an exit by jumping into the banking industry's merger fest.

"There's no hurry," says longtime Amalgamated investor and director Sidney Epstein, chairman of Chicago's A. Epstein & Sons International Inc., the architectural firm that designed the old McCormick Center Hotel - a Heytow property that was destroyed to make way for the expanded McCormick Place. "I think it's a very good long-range investment."

Also insisting that he's satisfied is Melvin Katten, a partner with Chicago law firm Katten Muchin & Zavis who joined the board four years ago, at the invitation of then-President Mr. Daley. Mr. Katten has been an Amalgamated investor for about 15 years, buying out smaller investors over the years.

Could be tough to sell

But if shareholders do turn restless, they may find Amalgamated tough to sell. Few banks specialize in public funds, and even fewer focus on unions. Amalgamated's clerks and tellers are unionized, an uncommon situation that most banks want to avoid.

Barring a sale, would it be difficult for investors to unload large blocks of shares?

"I suppose it would be," Mr. Katten says.

Even sister bank First Oak Brook isn't a willing merger partner. For a nine-office suburban banking company with large business clients and retail customers in affluent DuPage County, unions are anathema.

"We have two separate cultures," Mr. Heytow notes, "and I don't want to disturb either one of them."

First Oak Brook has been publicly traded since 1985, two years after Mr. Heytow and a group of investors created a holding company for a string of banks purchased over several years. Merging Amalgamated into it would open the Chicago bank to all the scrutiny and short-term earnings pressures of a public company.

Scrutiny isn't something Mr. Heytow and his bank presidents are accustomed to.

Amalgamated's 16-member board is made up of Mr. Heytow, his son, Mr. Wrobel, eight labor representatives and a handful of prominent business people, including Messrs. Epstein and Katten.

At First Oak Brook, insiders control 64% of the stock. Of that, Mr. Heytow and his wife, Mitzi, hold 21%, with a market value of $8.6 million.

Four of First Oak Brook's seven directors are also investors in Amalgamated: Messrs. Heytow, Rieser and Wrobel and Miriam Lutwak Fitzgerald, a surgeon and daughter of one of Mr. Heytow's former partners, the late Marcel Lutwak.

"The fact of the matter is that the same people are making the decisions" at both banks, observes Daniel Westrope, a senior vice-president and banking expert in the Chicago office of Principal Financial Securities Inc. "They control their own destiny, certainly, regarding whether they sell or not."

They also control their pay and perks.

Amalgamated has higher expenses than most Illinois banks - 4.1% of assets vs. an average 2.9% in 1994, according to Sheshunoff Information Services Inc., a Texas-based bank research firm.

And at First Oak Brook, where Mr. Heytow sits on the board's compensation committee, "the executive salaries are quite large for a bank that size," Mr. Westrope says. On top of 1995 salary and bonus of $550,000 for Mr. Rieser and $444,665 for Mr. Heytow, the executives accepted directors' fees ($17,000 each), an unusual practice for employee board members.

First Oak Brook did post an 8% earnings increase last year, to $6.7 million, or $1.95 a share. Return on assets inched up slightly, to an average 1.03%. Return on equity slipped a half-point to a ho-hum 14.0%.

Mr. Westrope thinks the bank company could do better, perhaps under an acquirer.

"Somebody could take those markets and do more with them than First Oak Brook has done," he argues.

No sale on horizon

But Mr. Heytow has no apparent plans to sell.

"Right now, Oak Brook is earning at a very fine rate; if nothing happens (as far as a takeover bid), that's fine," the chairman says, adding, "We entertain all inquiries."

As for Amalgamated, Mr. Wrobel says, "If anything, we'd be an acquirer. We're not looking to sell."

Mr. Heytow skirts the issue of succession at both banks. As long as he's around, he suggests, he'll be at the helm. His stated retirement date, according to First Oak Brook's latest proxy, is Jan. 1, 2007. He would be 72.

"I think our investors are very happy," Mr. Heytow says.

Meanwhile, he has more pressing matters on his mind.

Mr. Heytow and Aerie partner Mr. Pederson have put up personal guarantees of $25 million to back their $85-million Indiana riverboat project. Plenty of rough water awaits including persuading the Indiana Gaming Commission that a 70-foot-wide boat can sail a creek that measures 100 feet bank-to-bank.

"I don't know if it's going to happen or not," says Floyd Hannon, deputy director of the Indiana commission.

Mr. Heytow won't get any trouble from bank regulators, however. Bankers aren't restricted in their personal investments, says Frank Dreyer, chief of supervision at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, though he notes that, for a banker, "casinos are unusual."

If the Indiana plan does float, there will be ample competition for gamblers, both from a nearby American Indian casino on land and from New York investor Donald Trump, who's installing a higher-profile riverboat in Gary.

But it takes more than a little competition to raze Mr. Heytow: "I'm not afraid of Trump

INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY TREASURER A. LOEVY - THE UNION

2010-08-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

Arthur R Loevy

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was a United States labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations. It merged with the Textile Workers Union of America in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, which merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in 1995 to create the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE).

UNITE merged in 2004 with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE.

ORGANIZED CRIME FOUNDATION

In 1931 Sidney Hillman resolved to act against Buchalter, Beckerman and Orlofsky. He began by orchestrating public demands on Jimmy Walker, the corrupt Tammany Hall Mayor of New York, to crack down on racketeering in the garment district, Hillman then proceeded to seize control of Local 4, expelling Beckerman and Orlofsky from tech union, then taking action against corrupt union officials in Newark, New Jersey. The union then struck a number of manufacturers to bar the subcontracting of work to non-union or cut rate contractors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In the course of that strike the union picketed a number of trucks run by Buchalter's companies to prevent them from bringing finished goods back to New York.

While the campaign cleaned up the ACW, it did not drive Buchalter out of the industry. The union may, in fact, have made a deal of some sort with Buchalter, although no evidence has ever surfaced, despite intensive efforts of political opponents of the union, such as Thomas Dewey and Westbrook Pegler, to find it.

Lepke Buchalter

UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with more than 265,000 active members The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 by the merger of UNITE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union).

In 2005, UNITE HERE withdrew from the AFL-CIO and joined the Change to Win Federation, along with several other unions, including the Teamsters, SEIU and the UFCW. In May 2009 union president Bruce Raynor (originally from UNITE) left UNITE HERE, taking with him numerous local unions and between 105,000 and 150,000 members, mostly garment workers. They formed a new Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate called Workers United.

On September 17, 2009, UNITE HERE announced that it would re-affiliate with the AFL-CIO

WHEELING ILLINOIS POLICE OFFICER WILLIAM STUTZMAN EMAILS NOTIFICATION - LOEVY "THE CREW'S LEADER

2010-08-14T18:30:00.000-07:00

Art Loevy--

We also approached Art and asked him to come back. Whether you
want to acknowledge the fact or not, Art Loevy is an excellent labor law
attorney, a person we wanted back on board.

Art is paid 2,500 a month. So yes John, I again can see how you say that Art Loevy is taking advantage of the union.

Never mind that he has a very successful law firm with his son. $30,000 a year will definitely put Art Loevy into that higher tax bracket.

Bill Stutzman-- I have been paid $1,000 a month plus expenses,

INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY TREASURER - ARTHUR R LOEVY

2010-08-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

Arthur R Loevy

While viewing a little background - a little Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (UNITE ) history one must keep in mind Arthur R. Loevy was Secretary Treasurer. A position held during these 1990 times of turmoil within the now, visited and told of now in 2010.

Strife from within - with some pretty tough and he rightly surmised dangerous guys.

And strife from without from governmental investigation. Jay Mazur the International President-he and Art the top guys.

These two fellows ruled all, pensions, medicals and of course the Amalgamated Bank. The Amalgamated Bank in Chicago had been sold by the union to Gene Heytow - a well heeled politically connected guy on both sides of the governmental spectrum. Gene was sharp enough of forethought to make Billy Daley Amalgamated Bank President although his banking background was nihil.

Arthur Loevy, being the intelligent, well educated, cunning man that he was and is, decided the best move for Arthur Loevy was to get out and get out fast. Courage and guts as to his personally facing of tough issues - up front - were never his forte.

And being of sound mind Arthur looked for cover - wanted to be cloaked on both sides of his pending problems.

One side of his problems -he knew - some tough guys. The other side - well - major investigations - tough guys in other ways . Thusly- in fear, the smart move - turn too safety and self reputation fronting. Leave the NYC headquarters and his enjoyed power title of International Secretary Treasurer.

What better cover than police officers - good for the reputation he knew and - they carry guns should bad guys come around.

So in mid 1997 he placed a call to the teller of this saga. An interesting review from that time to the present now begin. A book could be written - but the telling will begin here. For Arthur Loevy did not tell as to his reasons for leaving his lifes all while calling John Flood, the President and founder in 1968 of the Combined Counties Police Association for employ on his staff.

He stated all was a life change. He withheld the true reasons that would eventually emerge to the chagrin of this writer.

Thoughts may wander now and then-but all will be the writers perspective as to Arthur R. Loevy, a law firms founding, direction to this day and the assistance of THE CREW...

They being:

William Stutzman Wheeling P D    ( RET )

Solomon Smith      Maywood P D ( RET )

Michael Dwyer Evergreen Park P D

Marty McGrath    Oak Lawn P D

Butch McGorkle Burbank P D

Interview Family Secrets Mob Trial Chicago Outfit - Click Below

2010-08-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Joey Lombardo

Frankie Schweihs

Listen to the interview here

YEAR 1999 SUITS - STARTS PRESS RELATIONS -- LOEVY & LOEVY - TARGETING CPD STREET OFFICERS

2010-08-08T18:36:00.001-07:00

Suit Claims Cop Beat Man Into Coma In '91

Officer Contends Fall In Drunken Stupor To Blame

October 13, 1999|By Matt O'Connor, Tribune Staff Writer.

More than eight years ago, Joseph Regalado was partying and drinking outdoors with friends when he got into an argument with his girlfriend.

When police stopped Regalado, who had a warrant outstanding for unpaid traffic tickets, he took off running, and Chicago Police Officer Jose Garcia gave chase.

What took place moments later in a nearby alley changed Regalado's life forever and is the subject of a civil rights trial that began Tuesday in federal

In opening statements to jurors, attorney Jon Loevy contended Garcia beat Regalado into a coma, possibly with his nightstick. Loevy and Blake Horwitz represent Regalado in the lawsuit filed in 1996 against Garcia, his partner Manuel Acevedo and the City of Chicago.

One of Garcia's attorneys, Robert Barber of the city's Law Department, denied that the officer laid a hand on Regalado other than to handcuff him.
Barber suggested Regalado, 34, sustained his injuries after falling in a drunken stupor.

According to Loevy, the alleged beating left Regalado in a coma for a month. Since then, he has been paralyzed, though he's conscious and essentially "a prisoner in his own body," Loevy told jurors.

He can't move, eat or talk, though he can blink his eyes, which allows him to respond to simple questions, according to Horwitz.

But he is unable to respond to queries about how he sustained his injuries on the night of June 20, 1991, after attending a party in the 2700 block of South Kedvale Avenue.

Loevy, though, promised that the plaintiffs have a witness who saw Garcia raise an object--perhaps, he suggested, his billy club or flashlight--and swing downward, striking Regalado in the back of the head and neck.

The eyewitness, then a 16-year-old boy who was violating curfew, took off out of concern for his own safety and emerged only in the last year after learning of the civil lawsuit, according to Loevy.

When friends reached the scene, Regalado was out cold and Garcia was standing over him, Loevy said.

The officer tried to revive Regalado by pouring cold water down his pants from a hose, Loevy contended.

The plaintiff's first witness, Mary Benevides, a friend of the victim, said Regalado's breathing was "real ugly," a snorting sound she had never heard before.

She and others begged Garcia and Acevedo to call an ambulance, but the officers insisted he was just drunk and said to take him home, Loevy said.

Friends carried him back to the party, and revelers, thinking he was passed out, wrote with markers on his body and shaved his eyebrows, according to Loevy.

It wasn't until the next day, some 15 hours after sustaining his injuries, that an ambulance was called after, Benevides said, she saw "a white creamy foam coming out of his mouth."

Regalado's lawyers said experts will testify he sustained damage to his brain stem from trauma and requires 24-hours-a-day care.

Court papers indicated Regalado's family is seeking nearly $45 million in damages.

John J Flood Web Site

2010-08-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

John J Flood

IPSN.org

LABOR ORGANIZATION HISTORIAN ROBERT FITCH

2010-08-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

Robert Fitch

Author

SOLIDARITY FOR SALE

Click here to view author's overview UNITE

TWO GUYS - PRESIDENT AND THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY TREASURER - CONTROL

2010-08-04T01:12:00.000-07:00

Arthur R Loevy

TEXTILE EMPLOYEES (UNITE)
New York Members Blast Union

A growing number of N.Y.C.'s garment workers are coming forward saying that the union they believed would protect them, the Union of Needletrades, Indus. & Textile Employees, has failed them. While most of the garment factories are unionized, advocates for the workers allege that pay and conditions in those shops are no better than in nonunion shops. "The union has a closer relationship with the boss than the worker," says Wing Lam, director of the Chinese Staff & Workers' Ass'n.
Worker Oi Kwan Lai told CSWA that UNITE failed to protect its members against abusive conditions. "It felt like being in prison," she told the association in a complaint. "We had to keep our heads down at all times once we started working. No looking up. No talking to anyone."
As more and more manufacturing work is taken abroad and N.Y.C.'s garment industry declines, "the union is afraid to enforce its contracts," said Ken Kimerling, Asian-Am. Legal Def. ; Edu. Fund attorney. "They're afraid the work will go overseas or go to nonunion shops." AALDEF recently filed three federal suits against unionized factories and others for a wide range of abuses.
A recent report by the Ctr. for Econ. and Social Rights, a Brooklyn-based "human rights group," quoted two Donna Karan workers who criticized their UNITE attorney. The workers alleged that the factory where they worked was closed after they complained about working conditions. "We thought he was a DKNY lawyer, not the union lawyer, because he kept saying that DKNY wasn't responsible for any of the conditions and the union couldn't do anything to help us get our jobs back," said one of the workers, who asked not to be identified.

UNITE blasted the dissents; UNITE boss May Y. Chen, said,"They say the union is no good, that the union is not going to do anything. That is extremely counterproductive."
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who recently met with CSWA said he plans to look into allegations that the union is not enforcing its wage agreements. "That's certainly one of the areas we intend to look into....[W]e certainly intend to...bring it up with the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao."
Criticism of UNITE surfaced in 1998 congressional hearings. Federal agents searched the offices of UNITE Local 23-25. The search was related to the indictments of Luchese crime family operatives on charges of extorting money from garment factories to buy labor peace. A UNITE business agent pled guilty to receiving a bribe. The probe was subsequently closed.
[Newsday (N.Y.) 5/6/01]

A LOT WAS GOING ON - TIME -TO RESIGN - BUT WHERE -SUCH HEAT

2010-08-04T01:08:00.000-07:00

Arthur R Loevy

Top Official Has Close Ties to NYC Garment Industry Mobsters

When the stakes are high, the real crime story usually lurks beneath the respectable surface.

That seems to be the case, at any rate, for the new labor federation, Change to Win (CTW).

The group, which comprises seven unions with a combined roughly 5.5 million members, held its gala inauguration in St. Louis on September 27. Organizing millions of new workers is priority number one, announced CTW President Anna Burger, who also serves as political director for the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union.

Her boss, SEIU President Andrew Stern, made the same point, as did Teamster President James P. Hoffa. Somehow the issue of corruption never came up.

There’s a good reason for that. The federation’s newly-minted secretary-treasurer, Edgar Romney, back in the 90s was a suspected bagman for the Lucchese crime family, looking the other way as the New York City garment industry, especially in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, reverted to sweatshop conditions of a century ago – and under union contract. Although neither he nor other officials of his union, UNITE (the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees), were indicted, their good fortune appears to be the result of federal investigators having other fish to fry.

Edgar Romney, 62, is UNITE’s number-two man behind President Bruce Raynor. He’s also the current international executive vice-president of Local 10, in the lower part of midtown Manhattan. Last year UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees to form UNITE-HERE, with a combined 450,000 members. But Romney a decade ago also was secretary-treasurer of Local 23-25 in New York City, long the flagship of one of UNITE’s predecessor unions, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. (Local 23-25 and Local 10, by no small coincidence, share the same Seventh Avenue address, floor and phone number). He comes off more as a professor than a union boss, notes union critic Robert Fitch, author of the forthcoming book, Solidarity for Sale. “It’s hard to imagine a more implausible Mafia associate than Edgar Romney,” Fitch writes. “The bespectacled, highly literate veteran labor leader is an African-American who is a member of Social Democrats USA and gives one of the best speeches in the New York City labor movement.” But that’s misleading, he notes, pointing to the fact that the Labor and the Justice Departments were onto him for some time.

In April 1997, a dozen FBI agents raided Local 23-25’s offices, carting away computers, software and boxes of records. Federal officials, following a three-year investigation, charged that Lucchese family mobsters controlled New York’s garment industry through extortion, murder, torture and arson. The Labor Department had prepared a 24-page affidavit which read in part: “Romney directs Local 23-25 business agents and organizers to put pressure on companies with the threat of unionization or strike and thereafter withdrawing the threat when an agreement with an organized crime family is made, thereby facilitating organized crime control of Garment Center companies.”

The department made clear that the Lucchese crime family called the shots, with assists from the Gambinos and the Genoveses. One Lucchese associate, Sidney Lieberman, didn’t just shake down apparel companies, he owned a few of them, too. He would give his lawyer, Irwin Schlacter, names and addresses of non-union companies, who in turn would forward the information to Edgar Romney. Romney then would send a union business agent down to the company owner to work out a “labor peace” agreement. In a wiretapped conversation dated May 3, 1996, Schlacter told Local 23-25 business agent Freddie Menau that he (Schlacter) “needed to sit down with ‘Edgar’ to discuss a couple of firms connected to the Mafia.” The UNITE agent would explain to the business owner that if he didn’t sign the contract, truckers wouldn’t make deliveries. And without deliveries, the company couldn’t stay in business. Any business owner who continued to operate without signing, and any trucker who delivered to such an owner, would answer to the mob, particularly Lucchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, who eventually confessed to being involved in three dozen murders; Casso for a while was a government informant, and now is doing life in prison. But if and when the manufacturer paid off the union agent, he could operate with a free hand – and pretend the union contract didn’t exist.

An unpublished survey conducted by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division (and leaked to the Wall Street Journal) revealed that about three-fourths of New York City’s UNITE-organized shops were in violation of overtime, minimum wage or safety regulations.

Disgracefully, many manufacturers, with apparent full awareness by union officials, relied heavily on child labor, typically illegal Chinese immigrants. Edgar Romney came out of all this a lucky man. The feds never intercepted his conversations with Schlacter, and subsequently crossed his name off the list of suspects. Indictments did come in 1998, but against Schlacter and several Mafia wise guys; Romney and other UNITE officials were home-free.

So was Romney running interference for the Lucchese mob, arranging extortion payoffs in return for substandard contracts? Someone out there knows a lot more than they’re letting on. At the very least, the evidence should raise a red flag among Romney’s growth-obsessed fellow chieftains at Change to Win – before it blows up in their faces.

AND THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY TREASURER WAS ? TAKE A GUESS

2010-08-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

Arthur R Loevy

Feds Finger Labor Boss
Apparel Union Tied to Mafia Shakedown
by William Bastone
October 14 - 20, 1998

Working in tandem with Mafia figures and corrupt businessmen, garment union officials were a key component of a shakedown ring that maintained an illegal chokehold on segments of Seventh Avenue, federal investigators have charged.

According to search warrants and wiretap affidavits prepared by FBI and Department of Labor investigators and obtained by the Voice, a major New York union official has been implicated in a criminal probe that has already resulted in the indictment of 12 men on assorted racketeering charges.

Investigators allege that Edgar Romney, executive vice president of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), participated in a scheme that employed the threat of unionization as a lever to extract payoffs from nonunion firms. Romney, who has not been charged in the ongoing federal probe, worked with a mob-tied lawyer in "targeting" garment center companies for "illegal labor peace payments," according to one government affidavit.

The attorney, Irwin Schlacter, was indicted in April along with several Mafia members—including Joseph DeFede, the acting boss of the Luchese crime family—on extortion charges. The indictment states that Schlacter and another defendant, Luchese associate Sidney Lieberman—both of whom have pleaded not guilty—"used contacts with Garment Center unions to facilitate such extortion payments." While this document skirts specifics of the government's case, the law enforcement affidavits include various allegations against Romney, 55, and other UNITE officials.

As part of the government probe, which began in 1994, investigators last April raided the Seventh Avenue offices of UNITE Local 23-25.Executing a search warrant signed by magistrate Andrew Peck, a dozen agents carted away boxes of union records in search of evidence of "bribery and bribe receiving under the Taft-Hartley Act," according to court records. Romney heads Local 23-25, which handles garment center union matters and represents 20,000 workers, in addition to his role with the international union. Local 23-25 is the largest in UNITE, which has about 250,000 members in North America.

Irwin Rochman, a criminal defense lawyer hired by UNITE after the search was conducted, said, "I see not a shred of evidence" that any union officials were involved in "anything of a criminal nature." Rochman contended that Romney, who has been interviewed twice, and other union officials have "fully cooperated" with investigators and that there "is no evidence that I'm aware of...or they would have indicted him [Romney]." Joseph Bianco, the assistant United States attorney handling the garment center case, declined comment on the government investigation.

In April, Lewis Schiliro, head of the FBI's New York office, told Women's Wear Daily that he was hopeful that the first round of indictments in the garment center probe would help other probes. While not naming any specific unions or labor officials, Schiliro said, "if we get the cooperation of some of the individuals involved, and if we can lead [the investigation] in the direction of the union, that's where it's going to go." Rochman said that law enforcement's suspicions about Romney and UNITE were unfounded and cast an unfair taint on the union.

The government's allegations about the apparel union are based on information provided by at least five cooperating witnesses and from intercepted telephone calls by Schlacter.

According to the affidavits and other court documents, the informants included two wiseguys (Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso and Alphonse "Little Al" D'Arco), a convicted former Local 23-25 business agent (Ed Ko), a convicted (but unnamed) former "Garment Center company owner," and a "confidential source."

James Vanderberg, a Department of Labor investigator, used statements from this snitch quintet and snippets of intercepted conversations to establish probable cause to raid Local 23-25. Included in his affidavit supporting the government's request for a search warrant are a number of allegations regarding Romney and the UNITE local, including:

Both Casso and D'Arco contend that the Luchese family has long dominated the garment center through the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, the predecessor of UNITE.

Casso described the procedure that was followed "when a company is targeted for labor peace payments by the Luchese Family." First, Casso said, Lieberman would contact Schlacter with the name and address of the targeted company. Schlacter would allegedly then contact Romney, who would send a union organizer "to the targeted company and threaten unionization." At that point, the affidavit notes, either Lieberman or Schlacter "would work out a deal with the targeted company in which an illegal payment would be made in exchange for labor peace."

Casso, who has admitted his involvement in at least 36 murder conspiracies, has now been disowned by his government handlers, who came to the realization that the bloodthirsty hoodlum held back details of some of his criminal escapades. Lieberman, now doing time for an exortion rap involving a Luchese-controlled Teamsters local, became the family's garment center point man after his successor, a gangster named Michael Pappadio, was whacked for skimming payoff money.

In a bugged talk between Schlacter and a Local 23-25 organizer, the lawyer said that he needed to sit down with "Edgar" to "discuss a couple of firms connected to the Mafia." In another conversation, a second UNITE organizer tells Schlacter of a "special deal" he was offering a mob-connected garment firm. This arrangement, the organizer noted, allowed the company to be only partly unionized, an arrangement that "Edgar was happy about." Rochman, UNITE's attorney, said that this decision was not evidence of capitulation to the mob, but rather was "an organizing decision based on legitimate union considerations."

A confidential source told investigators that in late 1996 Romney canceled a strike against a garment company with ties to Joseph "Joe Notch" Ianacci, a Colombo crime family captain. Romney did this, the source claimed, "at the bequest of Ianacci."

Among the documents seized during the UNITE raid, according to a search inventory, was a letter to Romney from a union organizer titled, "Re: Joe Iannaci." The contents of the letter are not further described in the inventory.

In a 1996 affidavit filed in support of an eavesdropping warrant for Schlacter's office telephone, FBI agent John Giacalone quoted a source stating that Romney met with Schlacter in the attorney's suite to "discuss illicit labor peace deals." The source added that Romney was then "nervous about setting up any new labor peace deals. Apparently, Romney believes that he is the target of a federal investigation involving the Garment Center." At the time, the federal probe that resulted in April's indictments was in its second year.

Based on these allegations against Romney, a federal judge agreed to allow the FBI to record conversations—and videotape meetings—between Schlacter and several of his associates, including Romney. But while at least three UNITE officials were recorded by the government bugs, Romney was not recorded on tape. As a result, when investigators petitioned a judge to extend their eavesdropping warrant, they dropped Romney's name from the list of individuals expected to be intercepted.

Rochman noted that the only UNITE official to be charged in the federal investigation was Ed Ko, a former business agent convicted of receiving a bribe. Shortly after his arrest in early 1996, Ko began secretly cooperating with federal investigators and, as a result, did not disclose his bust to UNITE officials. In September, Romney learned that a Chinese-language newspaper had disclosed Ko's criminal problems. Confronted about the article, the 53-year-old Ko admitted to union officials that he had pleaded guilty to a felony. He was fired the following day (not surprisingly, one government affidavit describes their source's departure more kindly: after 12 years of employment, Ko "ended his association with the union").

Ko's conviction—not to mention his suspected role as a government informant—was of such concern to Romney and UNITE that the union's general counsel, Max Zimny, petitioned a federal judge that September to unseal the transcript of Ko's plea allocution. The minutes, Zimny wrote Judge Denny Chin, were needed to "cleanse [the union's] ranks of any wrongdoing and to fully protect the interests of the workers they represent." Chin, though, denied the UNITE request.

..

IT WAS TIME FOR A GUY TO LEAVE - BUT WHERE ? ANSWER- GET COVER

2010-08-04T00:34:00.000-07:00

Arthur R Loevy

Clothing Union Corruption

Mon, 06/15/1998 - 00:00

According to Rep. Hoekstra's subcommittee, the bosses of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees are profiting from their members job losses due to a special industry proviso in federal labor law.

The May 27 report states UNITE receives "liquated damages" from companies for contract breaches which include relocating production overseas. UNITE treats the payments as its own since no explicit obligation exists to distribute the money to its members.

"So as contracts leave the country and UNITE's members lose their jobs, UNITE itself continues to receive 'a piece of the action'... Over the past few decades garment unions have lost more than half of their membership to overseas competition.

Yet during that same time, UNITE and its predecessors became the richest of all unions, as measured on an assets per member basis. UNITE not only on owns the Amalgamated Bank of New York, but also owns much prime real estate in New York City. Despite its wealth, UNITE's fully vested pensions, we are told, are worth an average of only $85 per month," said the report.

According to Rep. Hoekstra's subcommittee, the bosses of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees are profiting from their members job losses due to a special industry proviso in federal labor law.

The May 27 report states UNITE receives "liquated damages" from companies for contract breaches which include relocating production overseas. UNITE treats the payments as its own since no explicit obligation exists to distribute the money to its members.

"So as contracts leave the country and UNITE's members lose their jobs, UNITE itself continues to receive 'a piece of the action'... Over the past few decades garment unions have lost more than half of their membership to overseas competition. Yet during that same time, UNITE and its predecessors became the richest of all unions, as measured on an assets per member basis. UNITE not only on owns the Amalgamated Bank of New York, but also owns much prime real estate in New York City. Despite its wealth, UNITE's fully vested pensions, we are told, are worth an average of only $85 per month," said the report.

Hoekstra's committee is also monitoring a RICO suit filed against UNITE in N.Y. and a separate suit by CA employees. Also, a FBI probe recently had 12 members and associates of the Luchese, Gambino & Genovese crime families indicted ...

GUESS WHO WAS THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY TREASURER

2010-08-03T21:35:00.001-07:00

Arthur R Loevy

UNITE

Top Official Has Close Ties to NYC Garment Industry Mobsters

When the stakes are high, the real crime story usually lurks beneath the respectable surface. That seems to be the case, at any rate, for the new labor federation, Change to Win (CTW). The group, which comprises seven unions with a combined roughly 5.5 million members, held its gala inauguration in St. Louis on September 27. Organizing millions of new workers is priority number one, announced CTW President Anna Burger, who also serves as political director for the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union. Her boss, SEIU President Andrew Stern, made the same point, as did Teamster President James P. Hoffa. Somehow the issue of corruption never came up.

There’s a good reason for that. The federation’s newly-minted secretary-treasurer, Edgar Romney, back in the 90s was a suspected bagman for the Lucchese crime family, looking the other way as the New York City garment industry, especially in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, reverted to sweatshop conditions of a century ago – and under union contract. Although neither he nor other officials of his union, UNITE (the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees), were indicted, their good fortune appears to be the result of federal investigators having other fish to fry.

Edgar Romney, 62, is UNITE’s number-two man behind President Bruce Raynor. He’s also the current international executive vice-president of Local 10, in the lower part of midtown Manhattan. Last year UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees to form UNITE-HERE, with a combined 450,000 members. But Romney a decade ago also was secretary-treasurer of Local 23-25 in New York City, long the flagship of one of predecessor unions, the UNITE’sInternational Ladies Garment Workers Union. (Local 23-25 and Local 10, by no small coincidence, share the same Seventh Avenue address, floor and phone number). He comes off more as a professor than a union boss, notes union critic Robert Fitch, author of the forthcoming book, Solidarity for Sale. “It’s hard to imagine a more implausible Mafia associate than Edgar Romney,” Fitch writes. “The bespectacled, highly literate veteran labor leader is an African-American who is a member of Social Democrats USA and gives one of the best speeches in the New York City labor movement.” But that’s misleading, he notes, pointing to the fact that the Labor and the Justice Departments were onto him for some time.

The department made clear that the Lucchese crime family called the shots, with assists from the Gambinos and the Genoveses. One Lucchese associate, Sidney Lieberman, didn’t just shake down apparel companies, he owned a few of them, too. He would give his lawyer, Irwin Schlacter, names and addresses of non-union companies, who in turn would forward the information to Edgar Romney. Romney then would send a union business agent down to the company owner to work out a “labor peace” agreement. In a wiretapped conversation dated May 3, 1996, Schlacter told Local 23-25 business agent Freddie Menau that he (Schlacter) “needed to sit down with ‘Edgar’ to discuss a couple of firms connected to the Mafia.” The UNITE agent would explain to the business owner that if he didn’t sign the contract, truckers wouldn’t make deliveries. And without deliveries, the company couldn’t stay in business. Any business owner who continued to operate without signing, and any trucker who delivered to such an owner, would answer to the mob, particularly Lucchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, who eventually confessed to being involved in three dozen murders; Casso for a while was a government informant, and now is doing life in prison. But if and when the manufacturer paid off the union agent, he could operate with a free hand – and pretend the union contract didn’t exist.

UNITE at the time was leading a morally-charged crusade against Kathie Lee Gifford, who’d lent her celebrity name to a line of clothing while allegedly aware they were manufactured in Central American sweatshops. Yet its Local 23-25, whose ILGWU predecessor had taken to the streets to fight sweatshop conditions early in the 20th century, now was winking at those very conditions, despite the contracts it “negotiated.” An unpublished survey conducted by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division (and leaked to the Wall Street Journal) revealed that about three-fourths of New York City’s UNITE-organized shops were in violation of overtime, minimum wage or safety regulations. Disgracefully, many manufacturers, with apparent full awareness by union officials, relied heavily on child labor, typically illegal Chinese immigrants. Edgar Romney came out of all this a lucky man. The feds never intercepted his conversations with Schlacter, and subsequently crossed his name off the list of suspects. Indictments did come in 1998, but against Schlacter and several Mafia wise guys; Romney and other UNITE officials were home-free.

WHY ONE LEAVES AN INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY TREASURERSHIP

2010-08-03T21:15:00.001-07:00

Arthur R Loevy

LOOK BEHIND THE UNION LABEL

Robert Fitch

This holiday season, UNITE, the needle-trades union that nearly a
century ago began to transform Manhattan’s rag trade jungle into a
social democracy, bought full-page ads in major papers across the
country. ‘’We are taking a stand against sweatshops,'’ the union
declared. ‘’When you shop this season,'’ UNITE told shoppers, ‘’please
remember the women, men, and sometimes even children who have sewn the
clothes you may purchase.'’

Here in New York, Guess Inc. stood out as the main target of the union’s
ant sweatshop campaign. On December 4, UNITE staged a protest in front
of Guess Inc.’s Soho outlet. Guess is the high-fashion, low-wage jeans
manufacturer that’s been based in L.A. But as it transferred its
nonunion operations from L.A. to Mexico, Guess found itself moving to
the top of UNITE’s list of renegade clothes producers, where now
union-friendly Kathie Lee Gifford used to be.

But on the same day as the Guess protest, just a few doors down the
street at 446 Broadway, where Soho’s fashionable boutiques begin to
bleed into Chinatown’s Dickensian sweatshops, Dennis Vacco, attorney
general of New York, held his own press conference. UNITE’s ‘’Season of
Concern'’ for sweatshop workers was about to be interrupted by an
embarrassing revelation.

Vacco announced that he was set to arrest Lai Fong Yuen, a sportswear
contractor, who had been making clothes inside 446 Broadway for Kathie
Lee Gifford. Yuen, he charged, had failed to pay nearly 100 workers for
10 weeks. When she had paid them, she had consistently violated state
minimum wage and overtime laws. Inside her three factories, workers had
regularly put in 10-to-11-hour days, seven days a week. Most had earned
only a fraction of the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage. Some had
earned as little as $1 an hour. In November, Yuen had tried to skip out
on her workers, sending them home, then sending in movers to pick up her
sewing machines and clothes.

For jaded New Yorkers inclined to question the novelty of Chinese
immigrants working here under sweatshop conditions, Vacco produced this
surprise: 446 Broadway was a union sweatshop.

Lai Fong Yuen had been producing Kathie Lee clothes under a contract
with Local 23-25 of UNITE. What’s more, a recent internal Labor
Department investigation into New York City sweatshops–portions of
which were obtained by the Voice under the Freedom of Information
Act–shows conditions in Lai Fong Yuen’s shops weren’t so different from
those in the other 250 Chinatown plants where Local 23-25 contracts are
in force.

The original survey, released by Labor Secretary Alexis Herman on
October 16, studiously avoided drawing attention to comparisons between
union and nonunion sweatshops. But the raw data suggest that contractors
with union agreements actually tend to have more wage and hour
violations than nonunion plants.

Standing in the darkened factory at 446 Broadway, Vacco pledged to
recover the money owed the members of 23-25–variously estimated at
$300,000 to $500,000. About a dozen laughing, jubilant union women
surrounded Vacco, celebrating their partial victory over the inscrutable
system of American labor law. The Chinese immigrant women called down to
dozens of their fellow workers on the sidewalk, and a few climbed the
stairs to join them alongside Vacco. But no officials of 23-25 were
invited to share the moment–either by Vacco or the workers.

UNITE–which stands for United Needle and Industrial Trade
Employees–has a history that goes back to the 1909 ‘’Uprising of the
20,000.'’ That year, Jewish immigrant women, in revolt against their
bosses and conservative union leaders, staged a mass strike that led to
the rise of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. In 1995,
the 100,000-member ILGWU merged with the 90,000-member Amalgamated
Clothing and Textile Workers–Norma Rae’s union–to form UNITE.

23-25, the largest local in UNITE, could be called the mother of
presidents. UNITE president Jay Mazur became head of the ILGWU in 1986
because of his stewardship of 23-25. Mazur, who speaks no Cantonese,
organized downtown Chinese workers by winning over their uptown Seventh
Avenue bosses. Mazur won a flood of agreements with manufacturers
(sometimes reportedly by offering manufacturers better contracts than
other ILGWU locals had offered). Then the contractors signed up with the
union in order to get work from the manufacturers. Sometimes contractors
even paid workers’ union initiation fees. Workers got a health plan,
which is now much watered-down because of income restrictions and high
employee co-payments, which nonunion contractors did not offer.

These fees, together with workers’ dues of $18 a month–almost equal to
what a $40,000-a-year NEA teacher pays in dues–all add up. Last year,
Local 23-25’s total income topped $10 million. Four million came from
dues, and UNITE’s share of the local’s take was $2 million. UNITE knows
how to accumulate capital. The union began 1996 with $226 million in
assets. It owns Manhattan office buildings that house commercial tenants
like rag queen Donna Karan. UNITE even owns a bank the
Amalgamated–that its accountants value at $57 million.

Still, income from 23-25 members is critical: the rest of the union is
shrinking, and shrinking fast. The ILGWU went from 450,000 members at
its peak to 100,000 by 1995. Yet membership in 23-25 has stayed the same
for nearly 20 years.

What’s worse, Local 23-25 is currently under investigation by the
Racketeering Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. An official in
the department refused to speculate about whether indictments would come
down, saying he couldn’t predict the outcome of the investigation. But
federal investigators say the inquiry into racketeering activities grows
directly out of the bribery conviction of Local 23-25 official Eddie Ko,
a $40,000-a-year business agent. On September 10, 1996, Ko pleaded
guilty in U.S. district court to taking nearly $5400 in bribes from
employers over a two-year period. Ko is still awaiting sentencing.

And the ongoing investigation into possible widespread corruption in
Local 23-25 recalls a similar inquiry into UNITE’s Local 10–Dubinsky’s
old local–that began four years ago and resulted in jail time for its
top officials. In 1993, federal investigators set up a sting operation
called ‘’Brain Cutting'’ using a garment-shop front on East 34th Street.
Almost immediately, Israel Mechlowicz, the local’s manager, and Seymour
Resnick, the local’s assistant manager, dropped by to solicit bribes. In
exchange for cash, the union officials promised to look the other way
while the ‘’bosses'’ stole workers’ benefits and
‘’double-breasted'’–used nonunion labor while under union contract. A
backroom video camera caught them on tape taking bribes from federal
agents.

‘’An isolated incident and a temporary setback,'’ announced Jay Mazur in
1994, after Resnick and Mechlowicz were sentenced. But it turned out the
corruption wasn’t isolated at all. In December 1994, another set of
Local 10 officials was caught taking bribes from manufacturers.
Contractors for Anne Klein bribed Local 10 business agents to let them
use nonunion labor and ignore payments to union health funds. Sometimes
all it took was $200.

And just this summer, top officials in UNITE were deeply shaken by the
revelations coming out of Daily News reporter Ying Chan’s investigation
into the death of 11-year-old Quin-Rong Wu. For weeks, police searched
for the missing girl, who’d only recently arrived in America. She was
discovered murdered on May 28, her body thrown into the East River.

Though tabloid accounts had painted a picture of Wu as a happy Chinatown
school kid, Chan discovered the girl had actually spent her last days
working in a union garment factory, NBC Connections, at 54 Canal Street.
‘’She was so small,'’ a coworker recalled, ‘’she had to rest her chin on
the machine.'’

Her mother claimed that Wu had just played on the sewing machines, but
coworkers reported that tiny Quin-Rong Wu worked at machine number 67 in
a factory belonging to Johnny Lam, Chinatown’s most prominent garment
contractor. Lam, who owns 14 factories, is the former head of the
Sportswear Apparel Association, which maintains a model collective
bargaining agreement with UNITE locals 10 and 23-25. The contract
provides a 35-hour week and wages as high as $10 an hour. Had the union
enforced the contract, Quin-Rong’s mother, You Qin Wu, would have taken
home substantially more than the $100 a week she was earning under the
supervision of Johnny Lam’s sister JoAnn.

Child labor is no aberration in Chinatown’s union shops. Quin-Rong’s
family had to pay $700 a month for rent. Her father earned only $350 a
week working in a noodle factory. Earning less than $2 an hour, You Qin
Wu had to work long days. The family couldn’t afford child care. So
Quin-Rong came to the factory and wound up working alongside her
mother.

Sweatshops in Chinatown are as well known as whorehouses in Amsterdam’s
red-light district. And nearly as visible. ‘’Everybody in China- town
knows,'’ says Peter Kwong, chair of the Asian-American Studies program
at Hunter College and author of a new book on Chinese immigrants,
Forbidden Workers. ‘’It’s not as if the sweatshops were underground. You
can stand outside and see the lights burning all along Canal Street till
midnight. The whole economy of Chinatown is organized around the
sweatshop schedule. Fast-food shops stay open so they can sell to the
women who come off work at 9 p.m.'’ About 250 of Chinatown’s more than
500 garment factories have contracts with Local 23-25, according to
Louis Vanegas, who participated in the Department of Labor sweatshop
study.

Could Local 23-25 be unaware that children are working in its factories?
Each shop is supposed to have a business agent who’s paid to service the
members’ concerns and make sure the contract is enforced. You could
argue the kids are small and escape notice. But how could the union be
unaware that its members are being forced to violate the contract by
working 12 hours a day?

The union does know that its members are being systematically defrauded
by contractors who pay only a fraction of what they owe into employee
benefit funds–the largest single number of cases in the Southern
District consists of union suits seeking payment from contractors for
unpaid benefit contributions. Besides, Local 23-25’s assistant manager
May Chen says UNITE can’t be blamed for failing to enforce its contracts
with sweatshop owners. Chen, the first Chinese American woman in the
overwhelmingly Chinese local to serve as an officer, takes issue with
the the October 16 Labor Department study that portrays violations in
union shops as more widespread than in nonunion shops. In the
department’s 94-shop survey, 15 of the 20 union shops were in violation
of labor standards. Among nonunion shops the percentage was 59 per cent.
The report shows neither union nor nonunion contractors have much to be
proud of: only 37 per cent of all shops surveyed complied with federal
minimum wage and overtime laws.

‘’UNITE is very concerned with the results of the study,'’ Chen says.
Still, she disputes the Labor Department’s data. ‘’It’s our impression
that the department’s method of determining which shop was union and
which was nonunion was flawed. They just asked the owners in passing,
‘Are you a union shop?”’ So, Chen argues, nonunion owners lied–they
claimed to have unions–to make a good impression on the Labor
Department, and the department didn’t double-check.

And Chen denies that corruption is endemic in Local 23-25. ‘’Eddie Ko
was fired as soon as he was indicted,'’ she points out. Since Ko was
fired, Chen says, the local has gotten rid of five of its 14 business
agents. Four were offered early retirement. None have been replaced.

Sweatshop conditions persist in union shops, says Chen, because of
market forces and the unusual closeness that exists between Chinese
contractors and their employees. ‘’I think the union is making a
good-faith effort,'’ she says. ‘’In the garment industry we’re operating
in an environment of extreme competition. The bosses and the workers
share the same ethnicity. They’re very close-knit. The odds are stacked
against us.'’

A recent Photo in the Chinese press shows a smiling May Chen, with Edgar
Romney, cutting Christmas cake with Johnny Lam, the sportswear mogul. It
suggests what 446 Broadway sweatshop workers I interviewed actually
feel: that it’s the union that has close-knit ties with the boss–not
them.

In the world of 446 Broadway, Mr. Lin (not his real name), a 35-year-old
leather-jacketed garment worker, is something of a labor aristocrat.
‘’Most people make less than me,'’ he observed. Lin earned nearly $350 a
week putting in 12-hour days six and sometimes seven days a week. But by
October, Lin and the rest of the 446 workers weren’t getting anything.
Why didn’t he complain to the union? ‘’Once I did complain in this other
shop. We hadn’t been paid for 13 weeks. I called the business agent.
Later that week, the boss came up to me. ‘I can’t afford to keep you,’
he said. He paid me what he owed me. But I got fired.'’ Other workers
express similar fears and complaints about the union.

‘’It seems as if the union dragged on the case to give an opportunity to
the boss,'’ observes Mrs. Chin, another 446 Broadway worker and a
60-year-old grandmother, who’s been working in garment factories ‘’ever
since I got off the plane'’ in 1990. Mrs. Chin (also not her real name),
was one of nearly two dozen workers who slept on the street in front of
446 Broadway in a round-the-clock vigil to prevent Lai Fong Yuen from
moving her machines and clothes out of the factory in November.

‘’The union bosses only showed up after we appeared on Good Morning New
York,'’ says Mrs. Chin. At 10 a.m., while the movers were carrying out
the machines, May Chen arrived. ‘’She told us to go into the pen,'’ the
area the police had marked off for protesters far down the street, says
Mrs. Chin. ‘’May Chen says there’s nothing for us to do. If we try to
stop the machines from leaving, the police will arrest us. The union
doesn’t want arrests.'’ Then, Mrs. Chin says, May Chen ‘’tells us to
shout for the TV cameras ‘Boycott Sweatshops!’ I don’t even know what
this means. And she never told us.'’ According to Chen, she was only
concerned about the workers’ welfare.

What’s wrong with UNITE’s season-of-conscience campaign is not that it
exists, but that it exists in an organizing vacuum. Like May Chen’s
effort to get the workers to chant ‘’Boycott Sweatshops!'’ while their
boss moved the collateral for their back pay out the door under police
protection, it’s a distraction from the main task.

Remember Mrs. Jellyby in Dickens’s Bleak House? She winds up neglecting
her own children. One falls down a shaft because she is so preoccupied
with the welfare of children in far-off Boriobagoola-gha. It turns out
that Mrs. Jellyby’s husband has a project for teaching the children of
Boriobagoola-gha how to manufacture piano legs for export.

UNITE’s aging white leadership substitutes media campaigns aimed at
upper-middle-class consumers for the indispensable effort of connecting
with Asian and Latino immigrant members and potential members. Some of
these immigrant workers have joined UNITE’s workers’ centers in Brooklyn
and Manhattan, but trapped in its fatal tradition of organizing the
bosses, the union rarely organizes elections for new members. But the
Dubinsky days are over. The bosses aren’t signing up anymore. They
taunt, in their own full-page ads in the L.A. Times, ‘’UNITE has not
conducted a single election to unionize in more than 30 years in
Southern California.'’ That’s why it’s consumer-boycott time. But
consumer consciousness won’t make sweatshops go away. Only union
consciousness will. It wasn’t just the 1909 Uprising of the 20,000 in
Manhattan–in Chicago, where the Amalgamated was founded in 1910, and in
cities across the country, it was mass strikes that built unions.

This season, UNITE ought to examine its own conscience. Is it a union,
or is the union just a loss leader for its banking, real estate, and
securities operations? Peter Kwong recalls that it was an uprising of
Jewish immigrant women, dismissed as passive, clannish, and trapped by a
foreign language, that created the union and the moral capital off of
which its present leaders now live. Says Kwong, ‘’By not giving Chinese
women a real chance to participate in the life of the union, today’s
leaders are denying their own history.'’ Six-figure UNITE leaders ought
to ask themselves, ‘’Are Mrs. Cheng and the women who blocked the boss’s
trucks at 446 Broadway so different from our own grandmothers?'’

Waukegan Police Strike

2010-08-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

Read about the Waukegan Police Strike

Capt. Frank Pape dies - John J. Flood Mentor

2010-08-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

March 7th, 2000

John J Flood - Frank Pape

Capt. Frank Pape was known as "Chicago's toughest cop."

In a career spanning nearly 40 years, he sent 300 men to prison, five to the electric chair and engaged in more than a dozen gun battles, surviving without a scratch while sending nine suspects to their graves.
Capt. Pape, 91, died Sunday after suffering a heart attack in his Park Ridge home.

"Frank was probably the most feared lawman in the history of the Chicago Police Department," said Ald. Ed Burke, himself a former policeman. "He was a legend in his own time, tough because of his courage, his nerves of steel and his skill with firearms."

Capt. Pape never used a holster, but carried his weapon, a .38 caliber Police Positive with a bone handle, in a canvas-lined pants pocket that his wife sewed for him.

Those were the days when policemen would ambush a cop-killer in a trap, cut him down in a hail of bullets, then proudly pose for the newspapers afterward.

"My attitude was: If you shoot at me, I'm going to kill you if I can," Capt. Pape said years later. "Of the nine people I shot, every one of them had a gun and in every instance they had used it or were about to use it. I wouldn't take them into custody and I don't give a damn who criticized me for it."

He was born in Bucktown of Irish-German parentage, and joined the Police Department as a rookie at the Albany Park District in March 1933.

Capt. Pape was assigned to robbery, and never fired his gun in the line of duty until his partner, Morris Friedman--who was in the habit of firing a warning shot over suspects' heads--was gunned down by a fleeing felon and died in Capt. Pape's arms.

After that, Capt. Pape carved for himself a reputation for fearlessness if not ruthlessness, sometimes going after criminals with a Thompson submachine gun.

"He was the most famous policeman in the history of Chicago," said Ed McElroy, a friend. "In the United States, he was probably the greatest lawman of the century."

Capt. Pape ran the robbery unit during most of the 1950s, and was promoted to captain in 1959.
His techniques clashed with new superintendent O.W. Wilson, who wanted to send Capt. Pape back to Albany Park, so Capt. Pape took a leave from the force to run security at Arlington Park Racetrack.
When he returned in 1965, Capt. Pape found a changed world, and the last seven years of his service as a policeman were marked by protests and lawsuits from a public no longer unquestioning of such tough tactics.
He ended his career as the head of Area 5 Traffic, and was retired in February 1972. A thousand people attended his retirement dinner. Survivors include his wife Kitty, son Jerry, daughter Judy, and seven grandchildren.

Visitation will be Wednesday from 3 to 9 p.m. at Ryan Parke Funeral Home in Park Ridge. The funeral will be 10 a.m. Thursday at Mary Seat of Wisdom Catholic Church in Park Ridge.

Power and Wealth - Politicians Thinking - Actions - Absolutely

2010-07-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

"But they don't use law and they use law for their interests. They don't go by law, international, federal, local and; nothing! They go by whatever is expedient to protect the interests that are at stake."

Malcolm X

With Both Hands - Patrick Hickey

2010-07-22T17:31:00.001-07:00

Link to the site

Chicago Mob Overview - Takedown - Sam Giancana - Frankie Schweihs

2010-07-22T16:52:00.001-07:00

John J. Flood: The Emerald Society Police Officer of the Year

2010-07-16T15:58:00.001-07:00

Spring, 1994

John J. Flood was recently named 1994 Police Officer of the Year by the Emerald Society of Illinois, a police fraternal society founded in 1975 to promote good will, fellowship and an appreciation for the Irish heritage that is historically intertwined with police work in the older industrial cities of the U.S.; most notably, Boston, Chicago and New York.

The award bestowed upon Mr. Flood culminates a lifetime of service to the law enforcement profession both as a police officer and union leader responsive to the men and women who vested their faith in his leadership and his abilities to improve the working conditions for thousands of officers across the State of Illinois.

The Police Officer of the Year award is given in recognition of the generous support John J. Flood has extended to the Emerald Society of Illinois in the past two decades, particularly as it related to the establishment of the Pipes & Drums of the Emerald Society. In February 1982, Chicago Police Officers James Doyle, William Fahey and Richard O'Brien were killed in the line of duty. Through the auspices of the Mayor of the City of Chicago and others, the Pipe & Drum Band of the New York Police Department Emerald Society was brought in to play at the Chicago police funerals.

A few months after that it was decided be members of the Emerald Society to organize a local piping band to play at funerals of police officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty. Since that time the Pipe & Drum Band has grown to over fifty members - many coming from the outlying suburbs and the Cook County Sheriff's Police and Illinois State Police.

In large measure the success of the piping band is a reflection of the dedication shown by its founders - and individuals like John J. Flood who demonstrated their confidence in the long-term benefit of a musical ensemble such as this. 1994 marks the first year that the Police Officer of the Year Award will be given out.

Prior to this time the Emerald Society of Illinois named a "Man of the Year" at its annual Spring dinner dance.

This year, however, the Board of Directors decided to create a special award to be given to an individual from the law enforcement community who has demonstrated a commitment to his profession, community service and the ideals of the Emerald Society of Illinois.

John J. Flood will be the first recipient of the Police Officer of the Year Award at the 19th Annual Dinner Dance to be held at the Lexington House, 7717 W. 95th St., Hickory Hills, Illinois on April 23.

William F. Roemer Eulogy

2010-07-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

William F. Roemer, Jr. (1926-1996)

By John J. Flood

Everyone in law enforcement lost a true partner this past year. Many might not realize nor have known the man but one of their own - a street guy - has passed from law enforcement's midst.

Bill Roemer, who retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation after toiling 30 years ventured forth and became a book author and free-lancing attorney who specialized in assisting clients victimized by libel suits filed by organized crime associates, lost the toughest battle of them all and his life to that horrible disease - cancer of the lung. It took him down.

It was not the syndicate hoodlum or the contract killers he relentlessly pursued and investigated as an agent who loved the day to day activities of being assigned to the F.B.I.'s Top Hoodlum Program that did him in, but rather, he met his maker from a terrible scourge that our government should spend a few more dollars funding a cure for.

Bill Roemer was a great guy and a gentleman within law enforcement to say the least. Soft spoken, pleasant of nature and flashing a disarming smile, Roemer also spoke with conviction and authority. He blended an academic background with the experience only years on the street can bring. He lived by a simple credo that placed honesty, integrity, and duty to friends and family above his own needs. He could work the street with the best of those that had gone before him and he wouldn't back off tough matters when pushed in the belly. His quiet dignity and firm resolution set an example for younger agents to emulate. Duty. Honor. Integrity and a respect for those who paid their dues on the job.

With the passage of time he became somewhat of a legend within law enforcement circles, though some will steadfastly argue that the legend had a self-perpetuating bent. So what.

True, Bill had a knack for self-promotion, but so did Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok and of more recent vintage, Eliot Ness - an unknown G-Man who was wallowing in obscurity until author Oscar Fraley got a hold of him and built up the myth of the Untouchables around a few kernels of truth. In turn, the Ness myth gave rise to a cottage industry of films and books that still fascinate the public. The legendary Chicago Police Officer Frank Pape was touted as such by columnist Nate Gross of the old Evening American and many other cop reporters.

History often collides with fantasy and imagination. Ness was a freshly minted college grad assigned to the Secret Service when he came to Chicago in 1929 to do battle with Al Capone. Actually it was his street- honed agents recruited from various police departments who battered down the doors of the breweries and gathered the hard evidence that finally put Capone away with Ness absorbing much of the credit. But very often that is how our legends are crafted.

Bill Roemer was the son of a former Jesuit seminarian, but as a young man, he opted for a legal career, beginning at the University of Notre Dame where he played rough sport and became an excellent amateur boxer. He earned the nickname "Zip" because of the speed and accuracy of his punches. His motto, one that he carried through life, reflected his relentless, optimistic outlook. "Keep punchin!" he always liked to say and everyone who knew the guts of Bill Roemer also was aware that he subscribed to that ideal till his last. He was not the type to whine about unexpected reversals of fortune or back away from a challenge. He thrived on it. He was a law enforcement guy, and he respected his peers.

Bill was personally selected by the late J. Edgar Hoover to participate in the Bureau's Top Hoodlum Program, from its inception in 1957 when Hoover had to finally acknowledge the existence of a national network of organized crime - the Mafia as commonly known. Roemer's task was to gather data and conduct intelligence surveillance on several of the top outfit bosses in Chicago - notably Murray "the Camel" Humphreys among others, and Sam Giancana, the foul-mouthed gangster who was designated by Tony Accardo to head Chicago operations in the 1950s and sixties. One of the major reasons Giancana was hounded out of the country was due to the undaunting work of Bill Roemer and his colleagues who received a tremendous amount of their education from honest Chicago Police Officers.

Roemer once said that it was his boyhood fantasy to become the nemesis of the Chicago mob, and after 21- years of doing this kind of work in the Windy City, there were more than a few hoodlums in town who would say he achieved the goal. Roemer and the agents with him planted microphones and conducted around-the- clock surveillance of the hoods as they gathered to discuss their criminal ventures in the back of a Michigan Avenue tailor shop. No simple task bugging these guys and the dangers were high.

It was a black flag operation all the way, and Agent Roemer understood going in that if caught, his superiors from Hoover on down would deny any knowledge of the efforts to bug the wise guys leaving Roemer vulnerable to breaking and entering charges and the knowledge that his career could be over. Never mind if the hoods caught him in the act and turned him into trunk music. But the pineapple-sized microphone over- hearing mob activities was never detected by the wise-guys and over a period of months Little Al, as the device was dubbed, revealed a remarkable tale of political corruption, contract murder, and syndicate mayhem in metropolitan Chicago and throughout the country. A plethora of job action was opened to the government prosecutors.

Despite being an F.B.I. agent, Roemer was extremely generous with his praise for the courageous street cops and detectives who worked in the Chicago Police Department - they had acquired a sophisticated knowledge of the mob long before the F.B.I. jumped on the band-wagon and he readily admitted that without them, the agents would not have found an elephant in a phone booth.

Bill turned down several promotions to remain in Chicago environs working mob activities. He was always the street guy and liked being where the action was. He savored every moment of it - the constant intrigue, the danger, the challenges of working in one of the most mobbed up cities of the United States. Chicago was his kind of town. He had many friends - and enemies - as many in law enforcement who stir the murky waters always have.

Roemer cultivated a string of high-placed informants including the late and infamous Richard B. Cain, the rogue cop who went to jail in the 1960s for his complicity in all sorts of mobbed up activity. Bill maintained that even while Cain was in the employ of Sam Giancana as his point man chauffeur and confidante he was funneling information back to the G-Man in a double-agent role. In the parlance of street agent of the time, Cain was a friend. A friend could be very useful in building an intelligence profile on a mobster, reveal the trail of corruption and payoffs, and in some instances help circumvent an impending murder. Bill had many such friends as most who are knowledgeable in law enforcement cultivate along a very gray line.

He was never very far away from the action, even after he moved to Tucson in order to be closer to his son. In Semi-retirement, Roemer began a new career as a private attorney, consultant to the Chicago Crime Commission, and book author while keeping close tabs on one of his Arizona neighbors - former top New York City crime boss Joseph Bonanno and all else that was happening with La Cosa Nostra.

The accolades and recognition became more public after Bill testified as a witness before the U. S. Senate rackets committee held in Chicago in 1983. Suddenly Bill Roemer burst through the clouds as the newest media celebrity, and with it he cemented his reputation as the Man Against the Mob.

In 1989, Bill's first and best book, appropriately titled: Roemer: Man Against the Mob, was published and it chronicled his exploits as an F.B.I. agent in Chicago. It was an eye opener and must reading for any law enforcement type who wants to know what is going on to this very day. Two fiction-based-on-fact novels followed: War of the Godfathers and Mob Power Plays and a pair of non-fiction books including biographies of Tony Spilotro (The Enforcer) and Tony Accardo (The Genuine Godfather).

In the last decade of his life, Roemer was a frequent guest on TV and radio programs enlightening the public on organized crime influence. He appeared on such major news documentary programs as American Justice, on the A & E cable network and many more radio talk shows of local origin in addition to writing articles for numerous publications including the Illinois Police & Sheriff's News. He enlightened the public with his knowledge.

His opinions were sought out by the major media, and as the nation's reigning mob watcher Bill lent his insights and talents to a variety of projects including the made-for-TV movie Sugartime, which aired in 1995. Teaming up with the daughter of his old mob nemesis, bill and Antoinette Giancana formed an unlikely alliance, but they were designated as the major consultants to the producers of Sugartime. Roemer appeared in the movie in a cameo walk-on-role.

His life's work now complete, Bill Roemer, a man for all seasons, has gone to his maker. He has been laid to rest along side of his parents at the Cedar Grove Cemetery in South Bend, Indiana, not far from his alma mater and the site of his youthful accomplishments in the athletic realm.

He will be missed but never forgotten. Quite simply a great law enforcement guy and I am proud to say my friend. To his family, I would like them to know that I am a far better man because of my acquaintance with Bill Roemer.