ISRAEL RIVERA: ‘Samuelsen acted illegally.’
Posted: Monday, May 2, 2011 5:00 pm | Updated: 3:52 pm, Mon May 2, 2011.
By FLORA FAIR | 0 comments
The public release of an interim audit of Transport Workers Union Local 100 by its international union has brought more questions and new charges, with much of the controversy centered on a large relief donation the union made to a radical labor organization in Haiti.
The interim audit covering January to October 2010, conducted for the TWU of America, has stirred anger among already-disgruntled members, including ousted Secretary-Treasurer Israel Rivera, who was removed from his post by the executive board last year. It also sparked an audit by the local of 2008 and 2009 spending to show that it inherited the criticized policies and practices from the prior administration.
Spotlight on Haiti Fund
Mr. Rivera has now charged Local 100 President John Samuelsen with illegally signing off on a donation of more than $77,000 to a Haitian labor-rights organization for earthquake relief. The interim audit raised questions about the Haiti Relief Fund, noting that in a few instances the auditors could not corroborate claims made by Mr. Samuelsen and in one case found he violated both the TWU international’s constitution and the local’s by-laws. Most notable were the movement of $50,000 from the union’s Building Fund to the Haiti Relief Fund and donations made to Batay Ouvriye, a labor organization that bills itself as “an alternative to the traditional bureaucratic, corrupt union movement that upholds the dominant classes’ power amongst the exploited masses of Haiti.”
According to the audit, “We could not find evidence in the minutes of the meetings...that the Executive Board approved this donation, despite the fact that the minutes of the Executive Board meeting held on January 25, 2010 requires prior approval of the Executive Board for spending moneys from the Building Fund for operating purposes.”
Mr. Samuelsen said this rule regarding the Building Fund was one he introduced. “When I won the election, there was possibly $28 million left in the bank, and every penny of that was shifted out of the Building Fund and used to pay off the operation costs and other things like that,” he said. During his first board meeting, he said, he proposed that all transfers out of the Building Fund be approved by the board.
Got Approval by Phone
When asked why he transferred $50,000 from the Building Fund into the relief fund, Mr. Samuelsen said, “There was a catastrophe in Haiti and there was a desire of some members to give...The only source of the money was the Building Fund to do it.”
He said that the reason approval wasn’t recorded in the minutes was that a telephone survey of the board members was conducted—a practice he said has been common at the local for years—and that the members expressed support for the plan in the phone poll. He also indicated that at the following board meeting, the executive board decided to stop the practice of phone surveys, which, Mr. Samuelsen said, “don’t allow open discussion on the board.”
The donation to Batay Ouvriye is the largest made by the local for Haiti relief, and it was made not to a charitable organization, but to a labor-rights advocacy group. The international’s audit found that the wire transfer for the money was signed only by Mr. Samuelsen. “According to TWU of America’s constitution, Article XVI, Sections I and IV, and the Local’s by-laws, Articles III and VI, the president can only countersign checks and all checks must be signed by the Local’s Secretary Treasurer,” the audit stated.
Mr. Samuelsen contends that there was no secretary-treasurer at the time because Mr. Rivera had been recently removed, but the audit also indicated that Mr. Samuelsen didn’t wait until the executive board had appointed a new secretary-treasurer before authorizing the transfer.
Was Group Ineligible?
The audit found that Batay Ouvriye is not dedicated to relief work and is not listed by the IRS as an organization eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions. This means the organization is not liable under U.S. tax law to report how donations are allocated.
Mr. Samuelsen explained that he chose the organization after hearing one of its leaders speak at a Labor Notes Convention in Detroit last April, and that he was impressed with the work it was doing in caring for the displaced. He said he also conducted online research on the group and discussed it with an executive board committee before making his decision.
Shortly after the earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, Batay Ouvriye issued a plea for disaster relief assistance that was couched in political rhetoric: “...the ruling classes were always set on getting us out, displacing us, which is why we were never able to even try to consolidate ourselves by our own means. As some capitalists try to force the workers to return to work in factories that are still damaged; while the store owners clutch their merchandises, not to speak of those who’ve decided to sell at exorbitant prices; while the state is showing (again) its complete nonexistence...while the imperialist forces are taking advantage of the help they’re giving to establish a protectorate they hope to be definitive... the workers and working class, the popular masses in general are undergoing a catastrophic situation in which they are left alone and helpless.”
In the statement on its website, www.batayouvriye.org, the group goes on to ask for $170,000 in aid for repairs, medical needs and daily necessities for earthquake victims. Local 100 in its contribution six months ago provided approximately 45 percent of that total, which is also more than seven times what any other organization received from the union relief fund.
Paper Trail Tails Off
Though Batay Ouvriye followed up in July 2010 with an accounting of the donations it had received to that point, and promised to continue to do so, there is no further documentation on the site about what money was provided or how it was spent. E-mails to the organization were not returned, but a spokesperson at the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center said that it “provided direct aid and humanitarian relief to all (or at least all that are registered) unions in Haiti after the quake, which included Batay Ouvriye.” Though there is no way at this point to account for how the money was spent, Mr. Samuelsen promises that there will be a report on how the Haiti Relief Fund money was put to use.
Blasts 'New York Repression'
Batay Ouvriye is 1,500 miles away and a world apart from Local 100, but this isn’t the first connection between the two organizations. In a January 2006 statement on its website, Batay Ouvriye expressed solidarity with Local 100 members who walked off the job for three days a month earlier, in violation of the Taylor Law. In its statement, Batay Ouvriye called it a “worthy strike” and “courageous battle.” It went on to praise “the permanent mobilization they maintained, despite the repression of the New York authorities and the press supporting these dominant structures and individuals.” It went on to condemn then-president of the TWU of America, Michael T. O’Brien, and demand his dismissal. The statement closed dramatically, with the statements, “Down with the New York authorities’ repressive stand! Down with the TWU’s International president’s betrayal! Forward the struggle and mobilization of TWU’s Local 100 workers!”
In a letter to TWU of America Secretary-Treasurer Joe Gordon, Mr. Rivera said he was filing charges against Mr. Samuelsen for “violations of the TWU Constitution Article, XVI, Sections I and IV and the Local 100 by-laws, Article III and VI” mentioned in the audit. He said the charges warranted immediate suspension.
Mr. Samuelsen responded by calling Mr. Rivera a “professional charge-writer.”
“It needs to be noted that Israel Rivera was removed from office for participating in an extortion scheme against Xerox and he has no credibility whatsoever,” the Local 100 leader said. “He occupies all his time trying to figure out ways to cripple Local 100 going into a massive contract fight with the MTA. And all of this is a distraction.”
He also pointed to a December 2010 membership meeting at the Javits Center, in which Local 100 presented a PowerPoint that listed donations from the Haiti Relief Fund, including to Batay Ouvriye.
As the report is read and digested by union members, Mr. Samuelsen’s administration has responded with an audit of its own, conducted by accounting firm Novak Francella. Mr. Samuelsen said it proved that his assertions about a double standard were true.
‘Practices Handed Down’
“By far the most important revelation is that when you apply the international auditor’s standard to the years prior to my administration, the audit reveals significant problems,” he said. “The primary goal of the audit was to identify that the practice had not changed. And, in fact, the audit proves that. The practices were handed down to me by the prior administration.”
The local’s audit covers 2008 and 2009, during former Local 100 President Roger Toussaint’s administration and that of his interim successor, Curtis Tate, who is now on Mr. Samuelsen’s staff. According to the audit report, there were about $4,000 in petty-cash exceptions for all of 2008 under Mr. Toussaint and about $7,800 for all of 2009, when Mr. Tate handled the local’s day-to-day operations. Such exceptions were granted for $9,700 worth of disbursements under Mr. Samuelsen’s administration for the investigated 10-month period in 2010. He said that both audits revealed a lack of written policies in place, and that one for credit-card use has now been adopted by the local. “We may be the only local in the entire TWU that requires its officers to produce itemized credit-card receipts now,” he said, noting that the local’s audit revealed many instances of a lack of adequate documentation for union credit-card use and what would be considered potentially improper usages of the card, including hotel laundry services and flights between New York and Atlanta, where Mr. Samuelsen said Mr. Toussaint has family.
Justify or Repay
“If it was not for a business purpose, then the local is going to seek to recoup the money,” he said, adding that this action would be taken for all instances in 2008, 2009 and 2010 where the audits found that an expense does not have a union purpose.
Mr. Samuelsen said he’s growing more frustrated by the attacks on every issue, and that he wants to focus on the job ahead. “I’m desperately trying not to dredge up the past and just march forward into the contract negotiation that’s coming with the MTA,” he said. The union’s contract expires next January.
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