Massport’s union longshoremen have been placing kids as young as 2 years old on the payroll in a long-running scheme to give them bogus seniority that fattens the wages they fetch as adult dock-workers years later, investigators contend.
“We believe the fraudulent activity went on long enough so that people appearing on payroll records as children are now receiving the benefit of the fraud and working there as adults,” said David Guarino, a spokesman for Attorney General Tom Reilly, last night.
But one longshoreman defended the practice as a way to keep generations of the same families on the job.
“How is that bad if they can get their son a job?” said the longshoreman, who declined to give his name. “I wish my father had done it for me because I am not getting the full pay rate.”
But prosecutors suspect the practice – allegedly perpetrated by the powerful International Longshoreman’s Association for more than a dozen years – goes far beyond reasonable family loyalty and may have cost Massport and its customers millions of dollars.
By showing up on payroll records as young as 2, employees could have falsely claimed years’ worth of wages inflated by several dollars an hour.
Massport officials said the scheme began to unravel two months ago when they noticed a large discrepancy in payroll records.
“We were absolutely shocked,” Massport spokeswoman Danny Levy said. “When Massport was made aware of the discrepancy, we contacted the attorney general and began our own internal audit.”
Reilly’s office has launched a grand jury investigation into the scheme and plans to call witnesses in coming weeks, according to a statement by Kurt Schwartz, chief of Reilly’s criminal bureau.
Massport pays longshoremen hourly union wages on a seniority scale to offload ships at Conley Terminal in South Boston. Officials said fewer than 100 longshoremen are members of the union that performs work for Massport.
A lawyer for the International Longshoreman’s Association would not respond to the allegations being investigated by Reilly.
“We have not been given the allegations by the attorney general,” Boston attorney Edward McNelley said yesterday. “And until I receive them, I cannot comment.”
Reilly’s investigation is focusing on money paid out by Massport, but the scheme may have involved several other entities that employ longshoreman to offload ships arriving in Boston Harbor, sources said.
In his statement, Schwartz said state police and civilian investigators are in the early stages of their investigation and are receiving cooperation from Massport officials.
“It is not appropriate at the present stage . . . to confirm whether the evidence gathered to date confirms the existence of the payroll fraud scheme,” Schwartz stated.
Longshoremen working for Massport are paid through an outside company that receives the payroll records and forwards the wages to union members.
An employee of that company, Columbia Coastal Transport, said rumors of the investigation have been swirling in recent days, but he would not give his name or comment on the allegations.
AG: Union put kids on payroll in seniority scam
By Casey Ross
Thursday, June 9, 2005 – Updated: 07:43 AM EST
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=88663&format=&page=1
Now I know that longshoremen aren’t known for their academic achievements, but as far as thieving goes, I expect better from them than this!
The crime detailed here is the equivalent of killing someone in an apartment and leaving the body to rot while you cook up microwave popcorn and watch TV for a few months. Eventually they’re going to be asking about the stench. Which reminds me, before Jeffrey Dalhmer was caught he had been boiling the body parts of his victims down in some kind of acid. His neighbors claimed it made the building smell WORSE than cooking chitlins.
But that’s pretty sick – these dock workers were pretty stupid to think they’d get away with this. That it wasn’t caught in an audit until now makes you wonder.
So many ways to go with this: I am sure these people thought it was ok to do this because they were doing for their children. Or maybe you could make an argument that the economy must be really bad if people have to resort to these tactics to insure a job for their children. Really though this seams like a combination of greed and stupidity, and unfortunately makes good fodder for the anti-union types.
makes good fodder for the anti-union types.
Did I hear someone call me? Wow, a union enganged in fraudulent practices? Why, the last time that happened was…what time is it now…30 minutes ago. I love the guy who is upset his father was either too honest or too dumb to get him in on the scam. It’s a good thing there is no union for bank robbers.
Unions were great for about the first couple of decades but then the next hundred years saw only a mafia run group of professional extortionist. I do now a lot of firemen got some really good training thanks to unions but society as a whole has been dragged down.
There is no way anyone could have possible know this was a bad deal. What they did think was the company has money so let’s screw them out of it, just like old times.
Unions are an element of the American economy for a good reason. To chalk them all up as rubbish is to ignore why we have them at all. They’re there to protect the American worker from the stock prices.
Health care is being slashed, pensions are being manipulated for profit and then dumped – and we have a corporation like WallMart that is making billions in profit while also forcing my tax dollars to pay for the health care of their employees.
There are criminals in every part of our society – there are cops that end up in jail…do we get rid of the police? Teachers sleep with their students…do we get rid of the schools, teach all the kids at home? How about crooked politicians (McGreevy, Delay, that mayor from Spokane)…get rid of our government?
Nobody suggests that we get rid of any of these social necessities, yet when it comes to unions – organizations that clearly are seen as a menace by corporate America – the idea is to forget why they’re necessary and just get rid of them. The GOP has taken on this fight against unions and American workers jump on board, effectively turning back the hands of time and sliting their own throats. For what? Ideals? For the sake of a short memory, or to not have to refer to the history of this country? Why were unions put in place to begin with?
I’d say that it was for the same reason we need more of them now…managers who cannot do their jobs rarely suffer, while the workers who only did their jobs are asked to shoulder all the burden for their failure. GM is a perfect example. They’re poorly run so what happens? Workers have to make concessions to cover for their incompetence. Unions prevent American workers from becoming what they were in the 1800s and half of the 20th century.
A People’s History of The United States by Howard Zinn is a must read for anyone who doesn’t think unions are relevant today.
This seems apt for the discussion here:
BUSINESS AND LABOR….Here is Samuel Eliot Morison, in his Oxford History of the American People, writing about why businessmen hated FDR and the New Deal:
Worst of all, he had done his best to peg wages at trade-union levels. Almost every man of wealth had enough resources to tide him over any conceivable depression, but he wanted the downward spiral to hit rock bottom, smash the labor unions, and re-establish the free labor market of the previous century. Roosevelt’s successful effort to prevent that was his unpardonable crime; but in the eyes of the country at large, his greatest achievement.
A lot of things have changed since the Depression, a lesson that many Democrats need to learn. However, the core concern of the business-friendly right hasn’t changed a whit. That’s a lesson that a lot of Democrats need to learn too.
—Kevin Drum 2:56 PM
They’re there to protect the American worker from the stock prices.
Correction, They used to protect the American worker but now are self-perpetuating organizations demanding fealty to the union first. Ask not what your union can do for you kinda thing.
pensions are being manipulated for profit and then dumped
The pensions were too large in the first place, no company could have carried that load for more than a few decades since the first recession would cripple the company.
Roosevelt’s successful effort to prevent that was his unpardonable crime; but in the eyes of the country at large, his greatest achievement.
FDR didn’t really know what he was doing. It’s been said in documentaries that he just tried stuff from time to time hoping something would work. Only the war brought us out of the depression and we were in it for so long because of FDR. He was no brilliant economist, he was just an egotistic blowhard.
They still fulfill their initial responsibilities. We only hear about the fraud. You don’t get articles in the news cycle about a union that has made the lives of it’s workers better.
This isn’t the fault or the responsibility of the workers or the taxpayers to fix. Executives are paid too much money to make these types of mistakes. Especially today!
C’mon Right – you’re talking about a president who was elected four times in a row. The right-wing hated him from the jump, and the fact that America didn’t has prompted much revisionist history along the way. I read some history that quoted Prescott Bush…a man who, as a politician, I thing was ten times as loyal and honorable than most of the politicians we have today – and his perspective was based on a priviledged background.
The upper class during that period of our history went through life with blinders on when it came to the poor. Do you think any of the robber barrons thought they were guilty of anything? No – that’s part of what was wrong with America back then. A person’s background determined their ethical code. So a man like Prescott Bush could shamelessly swindle Americans out of their money, but also put in a career as one of the most honorable statesmen this country has ever seen.
In his personal life he stole with both hands, but in his political life he wouldn’t vote for deregulation of the oil industry in spite of the fact that his son stood to benefit greatly from it. George was the ‘inside man’, and his dad would not put his son’s needs above the needs of the American people.
I can’t see that happening too often on either side of the aisle today. It was the generation of George and Reagan that trashed FDR’s name for years, and it completely lacks objectivity.
The past handfull of presidents may have thought they faced roadblocks and problems along the way, but none of them had to overcome the enormously dismal problems that faced our country during FDR’s time in office.
Sure, he was liked by almost all but the story is still the same, he was totally taken by the depression and had no clue of how to fix it. He would just implement different plans to jump start the economy not knowing what would happen.
It was probably easier to just come up with a wealth redistribution scheme than to fix the economy so along came SS. I’m sure there was probably alot of good things about FDR, economics just wasn’t one of them.
Right – I don’t see what’s been wrong with social security all this time. Take the President’s prescription drug bill for instance. Two years out of the box and the estimates for how much it will cost have already doubled as the drug companies have jacked up prices. By Bush not allowing Medicare to negotiate for how much they pay…
So here’s a social program the current president has put in place that’s a disaster not even a few years in. Republicans call social security a disaster and it’s worked just fine for over 50 years. The thing won’t even go bankrupt for almost another 50 years.
If we’re going to criticize social programs…I don’t understand this blood lust over social security, I really don’t.
If we’re going to criticize social programs…I don’t understand this blood lust over social security, I really don’t.
Hopefully this won’t make things worse. I think the issue is one of control and self determination. Social Security keeps people poor, it takes from the poor and gives to the government but now the middle and upper classes are living so long with their great health coverage and access to doctors.
The poor can lo longer feed the machine and so now it is going broke. The system must allow people to make their own lots in life and reap the rewards. We need to take the Social out of Social Security and call it Family Security.
The government will still collect the funds for retirement by they are owned soley by the payor and can be left to heirs for their retirement accounts. Once a certain level is reached money can be used for homes and education and medicine.
No matter how poor or insignifican a person might be, in a generation or two that family’s line of poverty would be over.