BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
The FBI is probing into the affairs of District Council 37,
the largest labor organization in New York City, on allegations
of voting fraud, embezzlement, and racketeering. The council,
which is an umbrella of 56 locals of the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) organizing
120,000 municipal workers, is also being investigated by the
Manhattan District Attorney on charges of union officials
embezzling funds, taking kickbacks, and falsifying records.
More than a third of the council's 24 board members are under
investigation by the attorney general.
The government moves come after a union panel ruled in June that the president of one AFSCME local, Charles Hughes, embezzled more than 1.7 million. Hughes was then expelled. Several months later AFSCME president Gerald McEntee announced November 28 he was placing the council in trusteeship and forced the executive director of the council, Stanley Hill to take an unpaid leave of absence.
Hill was ousted after he acknowledged November 23 there was vote fraud in the 1996 ratification of the union contract, which imposed a two-year pay freeze on city workers. Two days earlier, Hill had demanded the resignation of two of his top aides who allegedly helped stuff the ballot boxes to win the contract vote. New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani used that contract to pressure other city workers, including firefighters and sanitation workers, to accept similar two-year wage freezes.
Meanwhile, officials of the motor vehicle operators local and the librarians' local of AFSCME filed a federal lawsuit November 30 charging the district council with running a criminal enterprise. The locals are also suing the city of New York, asserting that city officials knew or should have known about the vote fraud. The lawsuit will be heard in federal court under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.