Two northern Ill. union officials were indicted on Jan. 27 on charges of labor racketeering in connection with union pensions. Acc. to the indictment, filed in the U.S. Dist. Ct. for Nor. Ill., the two accepted 1999 Harley-Davidson motorcycles from an administrative services company in exchange for their steering contracts paid for by 2 pension plans to that company.
Charged in the indictment were Thomas Kisting, bus. mgr. for Local 498 of the Intl. Assn. of Iron Wrkrs.; Fred Schreier, frmr. president of Iron Wrkrs. Local 136; and Michael Linder, president of Joseph/Anthony & Associates. Kisting was also the administrator of Local 498’s 2 pension plans. Schreier was a trustee of Local 136’s pension funds. The value of the motorcycles accepted by the 2 was estimated by the U.S. Attny for North. Ill. to be $38,868. [U.S.A.O., N.D. IL, 1/27/04]
Frmr. Cleveland Union Boss Caught in Alabama
Allan Spates was arrested in Flomaton, Ala., on Feb. 18. The frmr. head of Local 5-1250 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chem. & Energy union was indicted for stealing nearly $30,000 from the union on Dec. 22. He failed to show up in the U.S. Dist. Ct. for North. Ohio on Jan. 12 for a scheduled hearing. He was awakened at a home in the south Ala. town near the Florida border, and taken into custody. The next day, a fed. judge in Mobile ordered Spates to be returned to Ohio.
Asst. Fed. Defender Lyn Hamilton claimed that Spates’ failure to show up in the Cleveland court a misunderstanding. As proof of Spates’ cooperation with law enforcement, she claimed that Spates complied with court officials in Pennsylvania on drug and gun charges pending against him there. She also claimed that Spates was booked on a plane flight to Penn. on the afternoon of the day he was arrested, where he planned to plead guilty the next day. [Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/19/04: Mobile Register, 2/20/04]