The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has placed its local at Sikorsky Aircraft into trusteeship, accepting the recommendation of an independent review that found a systemic lack of financial controls that investigators said resulted in thousands of dollars being embezzled by a former president.
The union’s failure to adequately document expenses also led to millions of dollars being spent without approvals from the executive board or members of the Local 1150, and tens of thousands spent on meals and personal expenses, according to a report from the Teamsters Independent Review Board.
In a Dec. 11 letter to Teamsters General President James Hoffa, the board recommended that Local 1150 be placed into trusteeship due to “corruption, failure to comply with required financial controls … and officers’ breaches of fiduciary duties.”
The report cites various failures by former President Harvey Jackson, Principal Officer Rocco Calo, President John Santamaria, and Vice President Richard Rollinson. The Teamsters Local 1150 represents more than 4,800 Sikorsky employees, including 3,506 in Connecticut. 549 in Alabama, and 736 in Florida.
Jackson, who died in August 2014, used a union credit card to pay about $8,000 in personal cell phone bills, filing “false, vague, incomplete explanation of equipment he claims was being bought,” the review found. He also bought about $5,500 in electronic equipment, including speakers, a projector and a laptop, which were either delivered to his home or picked up at the store.
“Jackson’s scheme only succeeded because the Local officers had not complied with local internal control procedures. The need for approvals were ignored,” the review board said. “The requirements of an adequate description and the purchased property and a meaningful description of union purpose were also ignored.”
In many cases, the review board found that local officials approved their own credit card expenses, a violation of local by-laws and union policies.
In addition to Jackson’s purchases, the board found that more than $11,000 was spent on nearly 200 meals for local officers that had no union benefit. From January 2010 to August 2014, Secretary Treasurer Calo ate at places like Wood-N-Tap, Riverview Bistro, Chili’s, and On The Border, the report said.
“There was no union purpose for these charges,” the review board said. “On their face, these were personal expenses.”
“A lot of the embezzlement cases we have had have been substantially higher than that,” said John J. Cronin Jr., administrator of the Independent review Board. “But it’s the abuse, where a bunch of the officers drink up glasses at expensive restaurants and accrue $50,000 in a couple of years, it’s pretty significant. And it needs to stop.”
Reached by phone on Monday, Calo declined to comment on the report and forwarded questions to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Sikorsky, a division of United Technologies, said the union matter has nothing to do with business operations and that the company will continue with the terms of the union’s contract.
Reviewing the board’s findings, the union accepted its recommendation, and a trustee, Bill Moore, took over financial management of the local on Jan 12. The local’s officers were removed from their positions, though they have kept their business responsibilities, according to Bret Caldwell, spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
“They are not writing checks,” he said. “The fiscal control of the union if in the trustee’s hands.”
Moore will address the problems outlined by the review board in itsreport to Hoffa. If the changes are adequate, the local will then hold new elections.
The Independent Review Board was set up in 1989 after the United States sought to break up what they called a “devil’s pact” the Teamsters made with organized crime, especially the Sicilian La Cosa Nostra. The three-member panel currently comprises former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, Joseph E. diGenova, and William H. Webster, who directed both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice and lawyers from the Teamsters asked a federal judge in New York to phase out the review board, while retaining some oversight and election reforms.
