Labor's Biggest Loser

Brian McLaughlin, the disgraced former president of the AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council, needed close to an hour to admit to all his crimes while entering his guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan March 7. Length doesn't always tell the story, but when you're allocuting for that long, it's a sure sign you've been a very bad boy.

Not that long ago, Mr. McLaughlin - who was also a State Assemblyman from Queens - was considered a potentially serious candidate for City Comptroller or even Mayor. Any feints he made in that direction now seem like they were designed primarily to fleece would-be contributors, since his campaign fund was one of many money sources he pleaded guilty to ripping off.

There was the account he controlled for the J Division of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and one maintained by the IBEW itself. He swindled $185,000 from the CLC, which only serves as the umbrella organization for the entire city labor movement. There was also the political club he presided over, named for President Clinton, whom Mr. McLaughlin apparently identified with, although he took matters a step further by actually lavishing some of the embezzled money on at least one mistress.

Stealing union members' dues was bad enough, but not nearly sufficient for Mr. McLaughlin. He also tapped the Electchester Athletic Association - which was created to provide Little League and other sports activities for the children of the housing complex created by the IBEW more than a half-century ago - for $95,000.

We doubt there would have been a jury in the universe that would have acquitted Mr. McLaughlin if he had gone to trial and the U.S. Attorney's Office had played a recording of Mr. McLaughlin raging about a confederate who had the bad taste to spend some money sent to the Little League for baseball equipment. According to prosecutors, the tape had Mr. McLaughlin telling another associate, "all that f------ money he's f------ spending on other stuff, that ain't his money - that's mine." Once jurors heard that tirade, reasonable doubt about any other thievery Mr. McLaughlin was accused of might have quickly evaporated.

The shame of it is that he had it in him to be a good labor leader. He has been rightly credited with reviving the CLC as a voice for labor after it drifted into irrelevancy under his predecessor. But his guilty plea puts into a whole new light one of Mr. McLaughlin's most-visible public crusades before the Feds closed in two years ago and he had to give up the CLC post: leading the opposition to Wal-Mart opening one of its superstores in the city on the grounds that its employment policies exploited workers. It now seems like a stance rooted less in principle than because he resented the competition.

The lavish lifestyle Mr. McLaughlin's larceny afforded him in a Long Island town that was light years from Electchester is now over. He will have to forfeit much of what he bought with the embezzled money, including his fancy home. Once he is sentenced Sept. 12, he is expected to spend between eight and 10 years in the less well-appointed surroundings of a Federal prison.

Some of the union officials who worked closely with Mr. McLaughlin over the years refrained last week from castigating him for his grand betrayal, instead falling back on trite statements wishing his family well and observing what a sad day it was. They are phrases just as easily trotted out for a eulogy, and perhaps that makes sense, for the Brian McLaughlin people once envisioned began to die a long time ago.

He himself said nothing to indicate remorse during his guilty plea. Then again, Budd Schulberg already wrote the appropriate words, unforgettably uttered by Marlon Brando, in "On the Waterfront," the best movie ever made about union corruption: "I coulda had class, I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody. Instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it."