The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a consent judgment requiring Jersey City, N.J.- based Allied Novelty and Production Workers’ Union Local 148; and Joseph Nardone, Jr., and Ralph Somma, the administrator and trustee to the union’s retirement and welfare plans, to restore $70,742 for engaging in multiple violations of federal pension law. Local 148 already has restored $6,467 to the plan.
The judgment, filed in the federal district court in Newark, resulted from a lawsuit filed by the department in February 2003. The suit alleged that Nardone and Somma imprudently caused the two plans to unlawfully pay for Nardone’s defense during his trusteeship litigation, which is in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
The defendants also caused the welfare plan to pay for general administrative expenses incurred by an employee in the Production Workers’ Local 148 Salaried Employee Pension Plan from February 1996 through July 1999, which was created to provide retirement benefits for local union and employee benefit plan employees; and to pay the salary expenses for the former United Service Union Local 911 president, Edward Bingham, Jr., although he performed no services for the plan. [Employee Benefits Security Admin., 7/29/04]