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Linda
Chavez: Welcome
Back. It’s 17 after 5. It is a distinct pleasure to be able to
introduce our next guest. He is
somebody I have known about for a number of years now. I have actually even wrote about him in
my book. But I never actually got
to meet him face to face. He is in
the studio with us and I want to welcome to the program, Ronald Fino.
Let me tell
you a little bit about him. He was
an informant actually for the FBI.
He worked with providing information about some of the organized crime
activities that were going on in a number of unions. And he has testified before the Congress of the United
States. He testified on the kind of
racketeering that went on and some of the activities of some of the
unions. And he has actually even
taken his expertise overseas and has actually given advice to the Russians in
their attempt to crack down on the Russian Mafia. So I want to welcome to the program Ronald Fino. Welcome Ron, it is nice to finally meet
you after all these years.
Ronald Fino: And the same Linda. It is a pleasure.
Linda
Chavez: Well, as you
know I wrote a book that was published last year and it’s actually out in
paperback now. It comes out at the
end of this month, it will hit the bookstores and it’s called “Betrayal:
How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics”. And in it I quote you and I quote some
of your testimony. But why
don’t you tell our listeners firsthand your story and your involvement in
trying to crack down on those people who really are corrupting the whole
meaning of the labor movement today.
Ronald Fino: Yes, well, for over seventeen years I
was a source for the FBI. Regarding organized crime, costra nostra and its
control the rest ability of the Laborers, Teamsters Longshoreman and some other
unions. After 1989, I surfaced as
a result of a leak and I went on the FBI’s payroll under a personal
services agreement and taught FBI regarding labor racketeering, testified in
numerous cases. Eventually that
led to working with the CIA and Russian Mafia and things like that. As well I testified in front of
congress regarding the problems of LIUNA.
Linda
Chavez: LIUNA for our listeners is the Laborers
International Union of North America.
Ronald Fino:
Yes, that’s correct.
I was totally taken aback because here I was, dyed in the wool, to use
that expression, Democrat, oh, supporting labor rights and worker’s
rights, which of course I still do.
And I was attacked and vilified by the democrats. And I was told in advance about
this. And, Bob Luskin who was the
GEB or General Executive Board attorney for the Laborers told me that they were
going to lock me up for a little bit.
What bothered me even more so after that was leaks were made by Luskin
to the Village Voice in New York who ran with Jack Kemp which was not true. I
mean, but he did it. He had access to confidential 302’s which are FBI
reports stating that I said that Jack Kemp was mobbed up. Well, the reports never said such a
thing. They talked about a
conversation that I had with Jack, where he asked me if somebody else was mobbed
up. And I told him to be
careful. Then I received a phone
call at my house from Michael Isikoff, a Newsweek reporter. And I was concerned.
“Mike
how did you get my telephone number” because here I am under an unlisted
name and I have a price tag on my head.
And he refused to give me a name.
Linda
Chavez: Well, let me just
stop you there Ron because I think you know a lot of people they think that on,
oh, maybe films like On the Waterfront, you know and it was about the Longshoreman’s
union and the mob ties there and of course there have been very high profile
cases involved in the mob ties. I wrote in my book about LIUNA, the Laborers
International Union. And the close
ties between the president of that union and President Clinton. In fact the chapter of that book is
called “An Affair to Remember” and it was all about the funked relationship
between these two, but I was talking about the way in which that particular
labor leader who many people including yourself, I gather, believe had some
very, very strong ties to organized crime and to some of the big New England
Crime families with the Patriarca family which one that was involved with that
particular man. And you know you
hear this and you think oh gee that must have happened in the past because that
doesn’t happen anymore. But
I have in my hand, actually the semi annual report to the Congress of the United
States from the Office of the Inspector General at the US Department of Labor
and it is filled with racketeering, not just investigations, but with criminal
prosecutions of people including in November 22, 2004 Mario Gallapega, a Gambino
crime family associate and company owners pled guilty to conspiracy charges for
a scheme that involved embezzling employee benefit plans and on and on. There is one after the other of these
racketeering charges against unions.
So this still goes on.
Ronald Fino: Oh definitely. It is still the same deal. It’s
like the movie, for me at least, it’s like the movie Groundhog’s Day. I keep waking up and nothing has changed. And uh, with regard to the Laborer’s
for example, Coia is still in control.
Linda
Chavez: Arthur Coia is
the president – was the president of LIUNA
Ronald Fino:
He still controls what takes place. I was fooled. I believed in Bob
Luskin and I totally followed him and soon after that I realized that a scam
and a ploy to keep Coia’s cronies in power and to remove his enemies.
Linda
Chavez: Again, let me interrupt just to bring
our listeners in on this story.
Bob Luskin was the man who was essentially appointed by the government
to take over and run the union. It
was essentially taken into a receivership and the federal government went in
and saw that things were amiss and Coia signed an agreement with the government
basically saying Oh yes, come on in and clean up the place, you know, I’m
going to go along with this and I want to clean up all of those organized crime
folks who may have infiltrated my union.
Of course, he later got off the hook and was not prosecuted even though
there was a many paged 28 or 30 page document already drawn up accusing him of racketeering. He got off the hook with respect to the
feds but he did later get prosecuted by the state of Rhode Island for income
tax evasion and he was relieved from his office but from what you’re
telling me he’s still involved with the union.
Ronald Fino: Yes he is, yes he is. His son makes quite a lot of money off
of the union and his family is still there. His law partner is General Secretary Treasurer of the Laborers,
the general president of the laborers was hand picked by Arthur Coia Jr.. People
who are running the union with him. The members who have no say in their union. As I said earlier, I’m
pro-union. I’m anti a lot of
these union bosses that are out spending the member’s money on $600 a
night hotels.
Linda
Chavez: Well, you know
one of the things you know that I’ve been very involved in with my
organization and with my activity of writing the book, etc. is to try to give
union members more access to information about how their dues money is being
spent. Now I have been pissed off
for years at the way in which money is basically taken by the union and spent
any way they want to spend it.
They can spend it on the $600 a night hotels you are talking about or
they can turn around and give that money in in-kind contributions to political
candidates where the union members may not even support that candidate. We know, you talk about yourself as
being a dyed in the wool Democrat; I was a Democrat at one time. I don’t
have any problem with unions going out and collecting money from their members
voluntarily to give to whatever candidate. I do have a problem when you take somebody’s union
dues and without their permission you use that money to fund only one party
– the Democratic party and only Democratic candidates and you do so in
ways that are hidden from you, the union member.
Ronald Fino: Oh I totally agree with you, I
totally agree with you. The members
have to have more say. As I was mentioning prior to the show there has been a
report by an attorney in Washington, Steele and Cook, that he submitted to Senator
Mike Enzi regarding that type of reform.
And it is something that is necessary. That I know you have been a strong proponent of that.
Linda
Chavez: Well we know
that the labor movement has been suffering for years in terms of it’s
membership and I think that what is happening is that a lot of people are
looking at unions and saying why do I want to give several hundred dollars a
year of my hard earned money to this organization? I don’t really have a say where the leaders live high
off the hog and they spend my money in ways that I don’t even necessarily
approve of and what you’re seeing now is a huge decline in labor union
membership. It is under, it is
about 8.2% I think of the private sector employees are unionized in the
country. About 12% of the overall or
close to that are a lot of public employee union members. And now we’re seeing the AFL-CIO
is about to have their big general annual meeting and it looks like several of
the unions involved may actually pull out of the union, the AFL-CIO federation,
because they don’t want their money going necessarily to some of these
activities.
Ronald Fino: I think it’s more than
that. I think that there’s a
big problem with circling the wagons around public employees and governmental
employees. Basically, though from
what I’ve seen the private sector has been lost. They just cannot compete. There are very many ways available to
them to help them compete in those areas, market recovery programs. The problem you had especially in the
building trades is the few workers that remain are relatives so thus they
cannot change, they’re cronies.
The ordinary worker has left. He has no choice. He needs a job.
Linda
Chavez: Well, in fact,
we see that this continues now the department of labor I think under Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Labor has made
some very good improvements to reporting that’s required. I think she would do even more if she
could in terms of forcing unions to report to the public and to their members
in particular how they spend their money.
She’s changed the reporting detail required on the so-called LM2
forms which make the unions actually have to report on how they spend their
money. My organization, US Union
Watch now is posting the 990 forms – these are the tax forms filed by
unions again to give some indication to members. You have, we only have less than a minute left. There is an organization that
you’ve worked with that has been looking into corruption with the
laborers international. Maybe
you’d like to give their website
Ronald Fino:
Yeah, we have a couple. Laborers.org, thelaborers.net. and I could always be reached if
anybody ever wants to talk to me or email me at ronaldfino@msn.com. But I think that in closing the big
problem that we are facing in labor unions now is the influx of the Russian
mafia and all working class. This
is a very serious stage so that the public has to beware.
Linda
Chavez: Well, it is indeed and you can bet that
the federal government is very interested. As I’ve said I’ve got this report here which
talks just about that issue. Thank
you Ronald Fino so much. We have
too little time. Sorry we didn’t have more time. Thanks so much for being
with us.
Ronald Fino:
Thank you, Linda, it’s
a pleasure.