A bookstore isn’t a place where one normally finds a union scandal. Powell’s Books, one of the largest in the world, is an exception. On March 27, Britta Duncan, former secretary-treasurer for International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 5, was charged in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon with embezzling $43,500 in funds from the Portland-based union and with falsifying union financial reports. Powell’s employees had voted to form a union back in 1998, later affiliating with the ILWU. The charges follow a probe initiated by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards in or around September 2011 at the request of local leaders.
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Oregon Warehouse Workers Local Ex-Secretary Probed for Theft