Word: localism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Under questioning by Arkansas' John McClellan and his staff last week, officials of San Francisco's 24,000-member Local No. 3 told of lavish till-raiding under tough old (75) Victor S. Swanson, who bossed the local from 1941 until the I.U.O.E.'s executive board elbowed him out last summer. Items...
...Swanson and other officials netted an apparent $44,000 for themselves in a complex deal that involved buying land from the local through dummies and later selling it back to their own union for a much higher price...
...Without even inviting competitive bids, the local awarded cost-plus-10% construction contracts to a firm owned by Swanson...
...entertainment of union chiefs and their friends, the local kept a 40-ft. Chris-Craft cruiser, a mountain cabin, a twin-engined Beech airplane; two Local No. 3 officials admitted that they once used the plane to fly to five different cities to cash $2,000 expense checks so it would look as though the money was being spent for campaigning...
Switching to the East Coast, the committee dug into the affairs of I.U.O.E. Local No. 138 on Long Island. The local's President William DeKoning Jr. reached his post by a simple, direct route: he was appointed to it by his late father, longtime boss of Local 138 and a convicted extortionist.* Of the local's roughly 2,000 members, only 500 are allowed to vote in union elections. Witness Peter Batalias testified that when, at a 1955 meeting of the local, he urged voting rights for more members, six goons dragged him outside, pummeled him into insensibility...