N.Y.C. has reportedly appointed four independent monitors to make sure that anyone affiliated with organized crime is kept off clean-up site of the World Trade Ctr. massacre. The Manhattan Dist. Atty.’s Office is conducting a grand jury probe into mob-connected truckers who allegedly stole tons of scrap metal and sold it instead of bringing it to a landfill where it was to be examined as evidence. Reportedly, at least five of the trucking companies being used to haul wreckage from the site are flagged on a city list of vendors involved in alleged corruption or with mob ties. City officials are reportedly now examining subcontractors. One firm, Scalamandri Trucking, is charge by federal investigators as being controlled by Steven L. Crea, the alleged boss of the Luchese crime family.
Further, many of the workers at the site have been provided by the United Bhd. of Carpenters Local 608, which allegedly has long-standing ties to the Genovese crime family. Investigators are reportedly probing allegations that some workers at the site have been forced to pay kickbacks to mob-connected union bosses in order to keep working there. [ABC News 10/4/01]
New York Funds Settle Whistleblower Suit for $18,500
The health and pension plans of Long Island’s United Industry Workers Local 424 agreed to pay nearly $18,524 to settle a suit that they wrongfully fired an employee because she cooperated with a fed. probe. The Dep’t of Labor sued the Local 424 Health Benefits Plan and Local 424 Retirement Plan in Aug. after the plans discharged an accounts-receivable manager, who worked for both since Jan. 1998. DOL alleged that the discharge violated whistle-blowing provisions of the fed pension law, ERISA. DOL’s Pension & Welfare Benefits Admin. interviewed the manager, who didn’t want her name used, to learn how the plans were run. When the plans’ leadership asked her about what she told DOL and she refused to say, the bosses fired her. U.S. Dist. Court on Long Island issued a judgment Sept. 28, which resulted in the capitulation of the local, which recently merged with the Retail, Wholesale & Dep’t Store Union Local 1102. The plans’ attorney Richard Greenspan emphasized that his clients didn’t plead guilty. The settlement includes compensation for lost wages and benefits. [Newsday 10/2/01]