A California union boss is under investigation for soliciting bribes from financial firms who wanted to invest in Big Labor’s pet political projects.
Sean Harrigan, a former top official with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFWC) union, was also a board member of California’s massive public pension fund (CalPERS). Instead of working to safeguard workers’ pension plans, however, Harrigan used his position to steer lucrative state investments toward financial firms who agreed to contribute to the UFCW’s political programs:
Financial firms showered nearly $1 million in political cash on the United Food and Commercial Workers union in California while a top union leader sat on the boards of big public pension funds in the state, an analysis of campaign finance records shows.
Sean Harrigan [2], the union’s former executive director, is now under scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has charged several firms and individuals with making improper payments to win investments from pension funds in New York and New Mexico.
Harrigan, 62, stepped down from the board of the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension [3] system last month in response to the SEC inquiry into his dealings while at the fund. He was appointed to the LA fund in 2005 after serving as a trustee and board president at CalPERS from 1999 through late 2004.
Whoops. Apparently, appointing corrupt union bosses to oversee millions of public dollars is a bad idea. The Sacramento Bee has a helpful list of Harrigan’s greatest hits:
An examination of campaign contribution records, disclosures CalPERS board members file when they have contacts with money managers and documents outlining approved deals show the UFCW campaign fund received contributions from money managers as their deals were being considered by the CalPERS board.
Among the examples:
• In July 2001, CalPERS closed a $125 million deal with urban developer CIM Group after board members – including Harrigan – initially rejected it.
On March 18, 2003, the board approved up to $280 million with the CIM California Real Estate Fund, supplementing the initial $125 million. Seventeen days later, CIM donated $12,000 to the UFCW union fund, records show.
Harrigan, meanwhile, bought a penthouse apartment at Sky Lofts, one of the CIM projects that CalPERS backed in downtown Los Angeles for $887,500 in 2006, according to property records.
In other words, firms’ investment proposals magically sailed through as long as UFCW bosses got their cut. Adding insult to injury, Harrigan allegedly received a favorable real estate deal from the same firm whose investment fund he’d just approved.
Keep in mind that these are the same union bosses who routinely disburse millions of dollars in compulsory union dues from employees across the country. Harrigan himself was the former Executive Director of the UCFW – do you think he was any more trustworthy with workers’ dues than he was with California’s pension fund?
The answer, of course, is no. Corruption is endemic to Big Labor’s massive political fundraising apparatus, and this sordid incident of corruption is just one more example why union bosses should not be given the power to force workers to pay dues or be fired.
