You Don’t Say: NYC Carpenter’s Union Hit With Racketeering and Corruption Charges
The men were named in a 29-count indictment that alleges crimes similar to some set out in a civil racketeering lawsuit that Manhattan prosecutors brought against the union, the New York District Council of Carpenters and Joiners of America, in 1990. That case led to a 1994 consent decree and, later, a court-appointed corruption monitor; both are still in place.
The indictment was unsealed in Federal District Court in Manhattan hours after a 6 a.m. roundup in which seven of the defendants were arrested, some as they prepared to go to work. It charges that in exchange for bribes valued at about $1 million, they helped corrupt contractors steal millions of dollars more from the union and its benefit funds by allowing contractors to pay members cash wages below union scale without benefits, hire illegal aliens and nonunion workers and skip contributions to the union’s benefit funds.
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