Razzle Dazzle
'Busfellas' Hang Over Local

By RICHARD STEIER

The sight of Eddie Kay by himself talking to a reporter and a photographer Jan. 23 was enough to stir visions of a mob in young Sal Battaglia.

Five days after he watched his father, also named Sal, plead guilty to labor racketeering in Federal court, the younger Battaglia strode from his post at the entrance of the headquarters of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 over to where Mr. Kay stood 20 yards to the south to inform him that he couldn't be there.

"It's a public sidewalk," replied Mr. Kay, a former official with Hospital Workers Local 1199 and Transport Workers Union Local 100 who is currently assisting Local 1181 dissidents who are seeking to have the local's remaining board members - including the younger Battaglia's brother, Anthony - removed from office.

Shakeup Call Leads to Calling Cops

Sal Battaglia backed off, but kept a nervous watch as 30 union members, who are part of the group Members for Change, arrived to make their case for a shakeup of the local - which is believed to have been under control of the Mafia since at least the mid-1970s - and Federal monitoring of the next union election.

When one outspoken dissident, Raymond LaRoche, called on the International ATU to "stop being in bed with these people" and objected that the younger Battaglia was being paid more as a security guard "to keep us out of our building" than the bus drivers the union represents, young Sal could be seen punching numbers into his cell phone, and a few minutes later, several police cars arrived.

The Chief-Leader/Michael O'Kane ROLLING OVER FOR MANAGEMENT: Simon Jean-Baptiste asserted that Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 officials have been far more aggressive in denying members their rights than they have in standing up for them with the Department of Education and school bus-company owners.

There was something deliciously ludicrous about the transaction. A young man whose father had just pleaded guilty to extorting bus company owners rather than have the Federal Government produce evidence at his trial that he was on a list for induction into the Genovese Crime Family had summoned the law with the complaint that union members were illegally parked outside a building paid for with their dues money.

It was enough to trigger the thought that somewhere below the ground Julius "Spike" Bernstein was giving thanks that he hadn't lived to see the day. Spike, before shuffling off this mortal coil last October, had graduated from truck hijacker to longtime secretary-treasurer of Local 1181, looking out for the interests of his old pal Matty "The Horse" Ianniello, whom prosecutors have identified as one of the bosses of the Genovese Family. The elder Battaglia and Mr. Bernstein had counted on the aura of Genovese muscle to keep rank-and-file members from running to the authorities with complaints about how the union was run.

That muscle asserted itself most visibly during a 1979 school bus strike when replacement drivers had their vehicles stopped and they were assaulted while the young children they were transporting looked on in horror. The Schools Chancellor at the time, Frank Macchiarola, expressed outrage about the thuggery, but little of substance happened in the aftermath: the city kept awarding school bus contracts to companies that were happy doing business with the union leadership and its mob overseers.

Mr. Bernstein going way back, and the elder Battaglia during his four-plus years as Local 1181 president, were comfortable taking payoffs from both the companies where their members worked and the ones that wanted to stay nonunion. Mr. Battaglia's guilty plea included the admission that he had extorted money from two unionized companies and one nonunion operation.

A Labor/Management Collaboration?

Last month a Department of Education supervisor named Geoffrey Berger was arrested by the Feds and charged with having taken bribes from company owners seeking longer and more-lucrative routes. Shortly after that, veteran organized-crime reporter Jerry Capeci reported on his Web site, Gang Land News, that in addition to Mr. Berger allegedly being paid off, Mr. Bernstein had been captured on tape stating that he got $1,000 a year from owners for every route beyond five that they received from the Department of Education.

During the rally outside Local 1181's headquarters, Mr. Kay summed up the effect that these cozy relationships had on how well rank-and-file members were represented. "They were on the bosses' payroll," he said of the elder Battaglia and Mr. Bernstein. "So how do you get a good shake on a pension or a grievance?"

One driver, Jonas Saint Fleur, asserted, "When you have a problem, they're not protecting us. Instead of helping us, they're helping the bosses."

Simon Jean-Baptiste, one of the leaders of Members for Change, cited as one example of the way the union has continued to shortchange its dues-payers its lack of resistance when one company, Atlantic Express, fired three drivers who were caught by Department of Transportation cameras going through red lights. Such violations for ordinary motorists carry nothing more severe than a fine, Mr. Jean-Baptiste noted, but he claimed that rather than contest the firings, Local 1181 officials made a formal agreement permitting Atlantic to terminate drivers for blowing through a light.

Modified Policy

A Local 1181 spokeswoman, Jane Rubinstein, responded that Mr. Jean-Baptiste was misstating the outcome of those cases. In each instance, she said, the driver had a previous camera-light violation, and Atlantic's policy was to fire those who got a second one.

The local grieved the firings, she said, and the case went to arbitration, but one of the matters that had to be considered was, "Is it acceptable to run red lights when you've got schoolchildren on the bus?"

A settlement was reached midway through the arbitration, Ms. Rubinstein said, under which it was agreed that violators would get a warning for the first offense, would be docked workdays for the second one and be fired for the third camera red-light citation. The three fired drivers were returned to work and treated as if they had just one violation on their records.

Atlantic Express's owner, Domenic Gatto, has been identified by prosecutors as among those who made payoffs to union officials, and Mr. Capeci had reported that he was prepared to testify in court against the elder Battaglia.

Nickname a Stigma

The former Local 1181 leader, who was forced to step down 14 months ago as a condition of his being granted bail, did not have much of a defense. One of his attorneys, who accused prosecutors of being "grossly misinformed" in accusing "an honest and good union president" less than a month before he pleaded guilty, had been forced to resort to a motion asking that Mr. Battaglia's nickname of "Hot Dogs" be banned from use by prosecutors during the trial.

This was not done on aesthetic grounds, although it is one of the more low-rent and colorless nicknames in the history of organized crime (unfortunately for Mr. Battaglia, a sobriquet with more panache had already been copyrighted by Salvatore "Sally Dogs" Lombardi, a reputed Genovese capo). U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood had granted prosecutors the right to present as evidence a list of candidates for mob induction that included "Sal (Hot Dogs) Battaglia" after they established that its validity would be attested to by the turncoat mobster Salvatore Vitale, known among his former compatriots as "Good-Looking Sal."

Rather, Mr. Battaglia's attorney was concerned about the stigma such nicknames place on criminal defendants, which is why most corporate wheeler-dealers forsake the glamour they convey as a precaution against their someday having to convince a jury of their honesty.

Most of those protesting outside Local 1181 were black, although the union's board is virtually all white and Italian. They were no more amused by gangsters with comical nicknames than longshoremen and carpenters have been over the years as they struggled to make a decent living while organized-crime controlled their unions and encouraged sweetheart deals with employers willing to make payoffs as a business expense that often improved their bottom lines.

'1181 an Embarrassment'

"A union's supposed to be a very powerful force for its members," Mr. Jean-Baptiste told those assembled outside Local 1181's Ozone Park headquarters. "But our union has become an embarrassment. Its leaders are only there for power or money. You don't see the union leadership taking a stand for the members. It's about time that all of us open up our eyes and realize that it's our fight and our union."

Another activist, John Bisbano, referring to the payoffs made to Mr. Battaglia by the nonunion company owner, said, "Collecting kickbacks for not unionizing members, that is the biggest sin that any union can do."

What is particularly aggravating to the dissidents, they have said, is that they believe the International ATU - which waited for more than a year after the initial indictments against Mr. Battaglia and Mr. Bernstein, and more than two months after Mr. Ianniello pleaded guilty to having controlled the union, to impose a trusteeship at Local 1181 - is not looking to cleanse the local of its mob elements. Nine of the 11 members of Mr. Battaglia's slate besides himself and Mr. Bernstein have been retained as local delegates during the trusteeship, and the dissidents charge that they are essentially running the local.

Union: 'No Assets Gone'

A statement from the primary trustee, Tommy Mullins, that was issued by Ms. Rubinstein contends, "There is no room in the union movement for people who put personal greed ahead of the good of the membership and who use their position as elected union officials to line their own pockets with money from employers."

He said independent audits had found, "There are no assets missing from Local Union 1181 or its benefit funds."

But that claim overlooks the financial losses members may have suffered as the result of sweetheart deals that were greased by the payoffs, and pension allowances that are far below those granted to city bus drivers, including those represented by two other ATU locals.

And Mr. Mullins, writing in a fall newsletter that probably wasn't vetted by Ms. Rubinstein, expressed the not-uncommon view of union officials trying to deal with corrupt colleagues or subordinates that the real crime is committed not by those who are stealing but by those within the union who are publicizing the bad deeds.

"You are the Union," he wrote to Local 1181 members, "and when you see or hear someone badmouthing or disrespecting this Union, they are talking about YOU."

Unwritten History

An attitude like that may explain why when someone calls up the union Web site category labeled "History of 1181," it contains a single entry: "under construction."

Which left it to Mr. Kay to begin last week's rally with some history of his own, which he proclaimed "a chronology of a disaster."

Engaging in a call-and-response with the dissidents, he shouted, "Half of the 17 Mafia people [charged in the case] pleaded guilty. What did the International do?"

"Nothing!" the crowd roared back.

He reminded them of the report done by outside attorney Richard Mark at the International's request, which was issued last January and found that the union had long been infested by the mob. It stated that the remaining board members had all refused to appear before him to say what they knew about the corruption.

"What did the International do?" Mr. Kay asked. "They buried that report until May of '07, and then what did they do about the report?"

"Nothing!" the crowd responded.

Ms. Rubinstein said that the delegates had all been interviewed by the trustees in the wake of Mr. Mark's report, and that those who were not sufficiently cooperative were bounced from the union.

Knowledge Irrelevant

She was asked whether the trustees were convinced that Anthony Battaglia was unaware of his father's criminal activities, and responded that this was not the criteria on which they decided whether delegates were fit for office. Their criteria, she said, concerned whether the delegates were personally "engaged in corrupt or inappropriate activities. At this time, there's no reason to believe [Anthony] was engaged in any activities."

But retaining as officers union officials who looked the other way while members' interests were co-opted by mobsters leaves the door wide open for organized crime to come back in once Federal law-enforcement officials - as they have been prone to do in the past - relax their vigilance. In one respect, there is a greater incentive to go along, since those officials weren't forced to pay a meaningful price for doing it the first time.

And any union official who doesn't stand up for his members because he is intimidated becomes that much more inclined to take the course of least resistance when dealing with less-malevolent forces that have a greater day-to-day impact on the rank and file.

"The union's mentality," Mr. Jean-Baptiste said, "is anything the bus company wants, anything the Board of Ed. wants, it's okay."