On November 13, Michael Johnson, former president and business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1658, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas to five years of probation, with the first six months to be spent on a monitored curfew, for embezzling $9,317 in funds from the Pine Bluff-based union. He also was ordered to pay full restitution. Johnson had been charged this past March, pleading guilty immediately afterward. The actions follow a probe by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.