Shawn Clark, a New Jersey carpenters’ union officer, used his local’s credit card to run up $50,000 in bills over seven years at Double D’s, a Morristown strip club, according to an indictment. Now he’s in prison for 28 months.
Clark, 46, is among an increasing number of U.S. union officials and members accused of stealing from organized labor to feed gambling habits, buy jewelry and show horses or pay personal bills, a review of U.S. Labor Department reports by Bloomberg Government found. Convictions of union leaders and staff on embezzlement and related criminal charges in fiscal 2010 were the most since 2006, the review showed.
The department’s investigations led to convictions of 130 union members and staff in the year that ended Sept. 30, up from 121 in 2009 and the highest since 133 in 2006, according to agency data on federal and state prosecutions. The government won cases against 1,608 union members from fiscal 1998 through last year, an annual average of 123.
“Corruption and misuse of union funds has been a significant issue for labor,” Harley Shaiken, a labor-relations professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an interview. “It has a big impact because it’s corrosive to the confidence people have. Unions don’t want to be tarred by that.”
Plague of union corruption colors U.S. politicsClark, 46, is among an increasing number of U.S. union officials and members accused of stealing from organized labor to feed gambling habits, buy jewelry and show horses or pay personal bills, a review of U.S. Labor Department reports by Bloomberg Government found. Convictions of union leaders and staff on embezzlement and related criminal charges in fiscal 2010 were the most since 2006, the review showed.
The department’s investigations led to convictions of 130 union members and staff in the year that ended Sept. 30, up from 121 in 2009 and the highest since 133 in 2006, according to agency data on federal and state prosecutions. The government won cases against 1,608 union members from fiscal 1998 through last year, an annual average of 123.
“Corruption and misuse of union funds has been a significant issue for labor,” Harley Shaiken, a labor-relations professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an interview. “It has a big impact because it’s corrosive to the confidence people have. Unions don’t want to be tarred by that.”
