Claude Huff put in a long work week. The problem is that the extra hours most likely were fictitious. Huff, former president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1385, which represents nearly 500 drivers and technicians for the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority (RTA), was indicted in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on February 14 for embezzlement in an amount exceeding $100,000. Huff had resigned his union post in November 2010, a day before he was supposed to go before a union hearing on allegations that he overpaid himself by claiming hours not worked. Earlier that June, he had stepped down from his RTA position. In a separate action, the international union late in 2010 placed the local under trusteeship.
According to court records, Huff, now 64, a resident of the Dayton suburb of Huber Heights, for nearly four years routinely paid himself for putting in a 75-hour work week without authorization to do so. A Local 1385 memo dated sometime in May 2010 indicated that Huff rather than his financial secretary performed “essentially all of the (local’s) financial functions.” The memo triggered a Department of Labor investigation. Following the probe, the DOL in January 2011 seized local records for the period February 15, 2007-November 16, 2010. By then, Huff had resigned. The indictment states he “did embezzle, steal and unlawfully and willfully abstract and convert to his own use and the use of another the moneys, funds, securities, property and other assets of said labor organization in an amount exceeding $100,000.” Huff was unavailable for comment. Two international vice presidents, Rodney Richmond and Gary Johnson, are serving trustees for the union.