SWEENEY MUST LEAN ON ATU
Despite the fact that one of the bosses of the Genovese Crime Family pleaded guilty a year ago to having controlled Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, the International ATU has done little to cleanse the local representing school bus drivers.

Local 1181's two top officials - Sal Battaglia and Julius "Spike" Bernstein - have been removed from office, although it took a guilty plea by Mr. Bernstein in Federal court and, in Mr. Battaglia's case, the insistence of Federal prosecutors that they would not agree to have bail granted unless he stepped down as president, to accomplish that.

And while the International ATU belatedly decided to place the local under trusteeship last November, the trustees have let 11 union delegates with ties to Mr. Battaglia and Mr. Bernstein - including Mr. Battaglia's son Anthony - essentially operate the local, according to a dissident group known as Members for Change.

This is particularly baffling - and troubling - in light of a report done for the international by a special counsel, Richard Mark, that was completed in January but not publicly released until last week, after Members for Change obtained it.

Mr. Mark found that one reason that corruption flourished in the local was that ATU International Vice President Joseph Welch, whose relationship with local officials dates back to the 1970s, made a conscious decision to ignore the mob associations of its leaders.

He said that in an interview last November, Mr. Welch stated that he did not take the organized-crime allegations seriously "because he believed that Local Union 1181 obtained strong contracts, serviced its members proprerly, and that associations or friendships between officers and organized crime figures that arose because they happened to live in the same neighborhoods were not any reason for concern ... He does not know who Battaglia may have been associated with in the past in that regard, and made clear that he does not care to know."

To offer some context against which to judge Mr. Welch's statements, they came six weeks after a top Genovese mobster had pleaded guilty to influencing and corrupting Local 1181.

Then again, Mr. Welch had already demonstrated his willingness to overlook any hint of dishonesty last July, when he sat through a membership meeting at which Mr. Battaglia misrepresented the terms of a contract that he never presented to his members in writing.

Any notion that Mr. Welch was the only International ATU figure who was complicit in the malfeasance at Local 1181 is dispelled by Mr. Mark's experience when he sought to have the 11 delegates testify under oath about the local's operations. All 11 notified him that they wanted to check with ATU President Warren George about whether they had to speak under oath. That was the end of the matter. It's not clear whether they actually spoke to Mr. George; what is known is that in the eight months since Mr. Mark issued his report, not only weren't the delegates forced to testify, but the two other International VPs serving as trustees have generally deferred to them in running the local's affairs.

In questioning why no action has been taken by the international against Mr. Battaglia, Mr. Mark noted that his invoking his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions about criminal ties was a violation of the AFL-CIO Code of Conduct that is punishable by removal from office.

The dissidents who are trying to clean up Local 1181 plan to go to an International ATU meeting in Las Vegas next week to ask that the delegates be compelled to testify under oath or face removal from office for violating that code. If their request is denied, they plan to bring the issue to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

Mr. Sweeney should not wait to be asked. Mr. Ianniello's guilty plea would have been ample reason for the International ATU to clean house, even without the guilty pleas of Mr. Bernstein and another former union officer, Ann Chiarovano, who Mr. Mark noted was permitted to continue running the union's pension and welfare funds virtually until the day she went to jail for obstruction of justice. That the international has failed to do so suggests that either its leaders are particularly obtuse or they are intimidated by the organized-crime figures who have played a role in the local for at least the past three decades.

Unless Mr. Sweeney plans to charter an Organized Crime Division, he cannot permit such conduct by an international union that is an AFL-CIO member. That is especially so because when he left his position as president of Local 32B-32J of the Service Employees International Union nearly three decades ago to climb the SEIU ladder, he was succeeded by Gus Bevona, who was later identified by Federal prosecutors as an associate of that very same Genovese Crime Family.

It was not until Mr. Bevona's excessive salary, luxurious lifestyle and attempts to intimidate union dissidents made him a major embarrassment to the SEIU that he was removed from office and reform came to Local 32B-32J.

In that case, Mr. Sweeney could claim - notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Bevona was the son of a Gambino family mobster - that he didn't hear of any organized-crime connections until after he had given over the local's reins.

In this case, he can't say he doesn't know exactly what he's dealing with, and a failure to act if the International ATU doesn't behave like a legitimate labor organization would speak volumes.