The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 11           March 20, 2006  
 
 
FBI raids New York City Labor Council offices
 
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  
NEW YORK—In an attack on the labor movement here, more than 20 FBI agents raided the offices of the New York City Central Labor Council March 2. The federal agents claimed they were investigating Brian McLaughlin, the council’s president for more than a decade. McLaughlin has also served for 14 years as a state assemblyman in Flushing, Queens, in New York’s 25th district.

The Central Labor Council, which is officially chartered by the AFL-CIO, has affiliates representing more than 1 million workers here in nearly 400 local unions. These include transit workers, teachers, dock workers, and janitors.

According to media reports, FBI agents sealed off and occupied the labor council offices for eight hours, ordering employees there to go home. The FBI then carted off computers and more than 50 boxes of files containing union books and records.

James Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI’s New York office, told the New York Sun that the raid was part of an “ongoing investigation,” which began years ago, prior to Sept. 11, 2001. The FBI, U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Racketeering and Fraud, and the city’s Department of Investigation are all involved in the probe. These agencies claim to be looking into whether McLaughlin was involved in “bid-rigging” with city electrical contractors to help them secure streetlight and traffic-signal contracts. The federal cops also say they’re investigating whether electrical contractors gave McLaughlin use of an American Express card.

A statement released by the Central Labor Council (CLC) the day of the raid said, “There are currently no charges or allegations against the Central Labor Council or any of its officers, directors, or employees. The Central Labor Council is fully cooperating with this investigation.”

An editorial in the March 3 New York Post, titled “New York’s Union Mob,” exposed the antilabor venom of the city’s capitalist rulers behind the “antiracketeering” veneer of this raid. It showed this is a probe by the ruling class targeting the entire labor movement and, in particular, unions that have resisted takeback demands by the employers and city and state authorities.

“Gotham labor unions have a sordid record of every type of corruption imaginable,” the Post said. “This may seem harsh, but labor unions lately don’t regard laws—or even generally accepted moral codes of behavior—as anything that applies to them.” The Post singled out the transit workers union, charging that TWU Local 100 “held up the entire city during Christmas week by illegally shutting down the buses and subways—sending New Yorkers out into the freezing cold, and robbing businesses and other workers of $1 billion.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home