Reformers Sense Uphill Fight May Yield Justice

Warren Zaugg remembers being approached nearly four years ago, on the night when Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 held its last officers election, by a shop steward who disapproved of his challenge to the union's leadership.

The steward, who has since retired, "asked me why I was doing this," Mr. Zaugg said Feb. 26. "I said, 'Because it has to be done.' He said if I continued to do this, I'd get a bullet in my belly. I took it as a message from the leadership of the union."

The president of Local 1181 at the time was Sal Battaglia, but the real power in the union, Mr. Zaugg said, rested with its secretary treasurer, Julius "Spike" Bernstein. Mr. Bernstein was fond of letting people know that he was best friends with Matty "The Horse" Ianniello, long identified by prosecutors as one of the bosses of the Genovese Crime Family.

An Intimidating Brand Name

Simon Jean-Baptiste, who had been pushing along with Mr. Zaugg for reform in Local 1181 since they began working together at the Walter Green Bus Company more than 20 years ago, said this type of intimidation wasn't unusual, and the role of the Genovese Family in the local's operations gave it the aura of something more than idle woofing.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow 'MEMBERSHIP DESERVES BETTER': John Bisbano (left), who is running for president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 on the Members for Change slate, stresses the importance of breaking from the old regime which was controlled by the Genovese Crime Family, as running mates Simon Jean-Baptiste and Warren Zaugg look on. Why should we walk away from the chance for this next generation to move into the middle class?' he said, vowing to win improved pensions and working conditions if elected.

"I received phone calls that were so scary I cannot repeat them," he said. "We were followed from the union. But when you want change, you cannot be concerned too much about threats, because it will undermine you."

Mr. Battaglia was re-elected that year, repelling a challenge by the reformers that was led by Tommy Nero, who organized the group known as Members for Change. But the landscape at Local 1181 when election ballots go out March 9 will be drastically different from what those looking for honest union leadership encountered then.

A few months after that election, Mr. Battaglia and Mr. Bernstein were indicted by Federal prosecutors along with Mr. Ianniello and a slew of Genovese middle managers for having operated the union as a mob business. Mr. Ianniello pleaded guilty to controlling Local 1181 and went to prison, Mr. Battaglia got a 57-month sentence for racketeering crimes that included taking kickbacks from some school bus-company owners not to organize their employees, and Mr. Bernstein pleaded guilty to similar crimes before dying at age 86.

The ATU International, from a mix of timidity and inertia, moved with glacial speed to rid the local of its most-sordid elements. Mr. Ianniello's guilty plea was not enough to get it to clean house; it was only after Mr. Battaglia was required by Federal prosecutors to step down as a condition for being granted bail when he was indicted for the second time in November 2006 that the international ordered a trusteeship imposed. Even then, its efforts to right the union seemed largely cosmetic: it hired an outside attorney to examine the local's operations, but his attempt to question board members was stymied when Michael Cordiello, who is now the old regime's candidate for president, said he wanted to get an opinion from International President Warren George about whether they were compelled to testify under oath. Mr. George never ordered him to do so, and the report by the frustrated outside attorney was later denounced by the man considered the more-honest of the trustees the International had installed.

Agreed to Hold Mail Ballot

The two trustees kept in positions of power many of the union officers who had faithfully served Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Battaglia —including one of the disgraced former president's sons. But the International, faced with a court suit last fall, ultimately agreed to conduct the coming election through a mail ballot overseen by the American Arbitration Association, increasing potential participation by the local's 15,000 members and minus the atmosphere of intimidation that hung over previous walk-in votes.

Members for Change has also undergone something of a transformation as its ranks grew over the past four years. Mr. Nero gradually stepped away from the group—its remaining leaders say he quarreled with their position that rather than automatically renominating him for president, delegates should choose their candidate—and is now running at the top of what he calls the Connect, Protect and Respect slate.

Another activist within the group, Raymond LaRoche, recently struck out on his own independent quest for the presidency after delegates chose John Bisbano over him to head the Members for Change ticket.

Mr. Jean-Baptiste, who is running for vice president (Mr. Zaugg is the group's candidate for recording secretary and Jean C. Calixte its choice for secretary-treasurer), dismissed the possibility that the three-way split among the reformers could lead to victory for Mr. Cordiello, who's leading the slate known as Advocates for Truth and Unity.

"They're not gonna win—that team is toxic," he said, stating that in addition to the presence of Anthony Battaglia on the slate and Mr. Cordiello's longtime support of Mr. Bernstein and the various presidents who had the Genovese seal of approval, one of its running mates was best known for beating up a bus driver for questioning his directive.

Point to Inferior Benefits

Members for Change's argument to the rank and file reaches beyond an appeal for a break from the embarrassment of Local 1181's longtime status as an organized-crime subsidiary. Its primary focus is on the economic consequences of being represented by people whose priorities sharply diverged from the best interests of union members, and the argument that electing Mr. Cordiello would perpetuate all those old ills.

Start with the pension, Mr. Bisbano said. Once upon a time, school bus drivers with at least 20 years service were eligible for a pension equal to 51 percent of their final salary; over the years, that has been whittled down to 32 percent, or less than $16,000 a year. Escorts receive significantly less: about $10,500 at maximum.

Both groups of employees, as well as Access-A-Ride workers, earn no additional pension credit for service during their 21st through 25th years on the job. And since 1991, they have been prohibited from borrowing against their pensions once retired; unlike city bus drivers, they never had the right to take pension loans while still on the job.

Union members, also in contrast to city bus personnel, are not treated as annualized workers, meaning that their salaries are not paid for most of the summer if they are not working. And they receive no sick days, Mr. Bisbano said, meaning that if they are not feeling well, drivers and escorts face a choice between staying home and not being compensated or dragging themselves into work knowing that their being ill could pose safety or health hazards to the children they are transporting.

Too Cozy With Owners

All these disparities in treatment when compared to their city counterparts, he said, were the result of cozy arrangements between the local's leadership and the bus company owners, "all breaking bread together along with coffee in the back room." (In addition to sweetheart contracts that saved management money in return for kickbacks, Mr. Nero claimed there has been at least one instance in which the son of a mob-linked buscompany owner wound up enrolled in the union's pension plan.)

That coziness has also raised questions about the need for what Local 1181 calls its defense fund, which Mr. Bisbano said is "collecting cobwebs because it can only be used in strikes. We want to be able to use the $12 or $13 million in that fund to give people free legal advice when it's a seri- ous matter—accidents on the job, lawsuits against them, or anything that has to do with holding onto your job."

Mr. Zaugg joined the local 31 years ago when he was hired by Varsity, one of the largest school bus operators. Two weeks later, he discovered that he was ineligible for a cost-of-living raise that was guaranteed to senior drivers, and complained about it to the union's recently elected president, who he said responded, "The union will side with Varsity."

"I said to myself, 'You're on your own,' " Mr. Zaugg recalled.

A Hangout for Nicky Black

In 1987, he transferred to the Walter Green company, and discovered that its depot was an unofficial home office for Nicholas "Nicky Black" Grancio, a Colombo Crime Family soldier. "That was all I needed to know that the union was aligned with the owners, which were aligned with organized crime," Mr. Zaugg said. Mr. Grancio was murdered four years later as part of an intra-family headcount reduction.

Walter Green was one of the few bus companies the Department of Education discontinued its relationship with over the past three decades, when contracts have been routinely renewed even after owners have been linked to the mob or charged with making payoffs to either union or DOE officials. The company's owner, Mr. Zaugg said, was so far behind in his required contributions to various union benefit funds that DOE felt compelled to act, and two other companies took over its routes and its employees.

What roused Mr. Zaugg and Mr. Jean-Baptiste to press for changes in the union was an incident a decade ago in which, the latter gentleman said, "The union leaders joined with the bus company against the member. They agreed to lie to get the member fired."

Framed And Then Exiled

That individual was Marc Clergeau, who was employed by another company, United. During the hearing into his firing, Mr. Jean-Baptiste said, one driver who had testified against Mr. Clergeau admitted under crossexamination that he had been "coached to lie" about an incident that he hadn't actually witnessed. Mr. Clergeau was ordered reinstated, he said, but United refused to take him back, and he wound up working at another company where until recently he lacked status as a union member and lost all seniority rights he had accumulated at his old company.

That was the case, Mr. Jean-Baptiste said, that spurred him and Mr. Zaugg to begin organizing members who were unhappy about the representation they were receiving from Local 1181. "It was like a club, where they're running everything," he said of the union's leadership. "And they treated us like we were their possessions."

Not long after that, Richard Logan, who owned one of the largest companies, split his operation in two and fired about half his 200 drivers. "That was the start of Members for Change," Mr. Zaugg said. The group's leaders sought help from the Association for Union Democracy, which put them in touch with two dedicated labor lawyers and a veteran union organizer, Eddie Kay, who previously helped spur reform movements in Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union and Transport Workers Union Local 100.

Ridiculed, Ejected for Standing Up

Mr. Bisbano became an activist early this decade, initially complaining about the porta-potties that female employees were forced to use instead of toilets at many of the garages. Five years ago, he said, he stood up at a union meeting at the Blackwell School, a couple of blocks from Local 1181's headquarters on Woodhaven Blvd. in Queens, and protested something that he believed was an indignity as well as a financial burden: the requirement that union members pay out of their own pockets for the annual tuberculosis X-ray mandated by DOE for all school bus personnel.

"I said, 'People, you're sitting here with your tails between your legs,' " Mr. Bisbano recalled. "'It's your union —tell your representatives what you want.' "

Mr. Battaglia declared him out of order, and when Mr. Bisbano tried to argue the point, he was hooted at by the union president's acolytes and one official came over and told him to leave the meeting. As he exited the auditorium, he said, Mr. Battaglia called out, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." Mr. Bisbano said he responded by kicking the door.

Asked whether he had concerns, then or now, about the possibility of being at physical risk, the 63-year-old former city Sanitation Worker said, "You always have to worry about that, unless you're an idiot. But there's that Thomas Jefferson quote about how it's a travesty when good men sit silent."

Perplexed by Mob's Image

His reaction upon learning of the union's mob ties a couple of years before he stood up at that meeting, Mr. Bisbano said, had been one of anger. An Astoria native who still lives in Queens, he said he never understood the American love affair with the Mafia or the way that some people in the borough romanticized John Gotti, whose Ozone Park headquarters was not far from Local 1181.

"I would tell them, when your daughter gets hooked on drugs and becomes a prostitute or your son robs a store and gets killed because he has a drug problem, then tell me what nice guys you think they are," he said.

"People say to me, 'Why do you get so involved?' " he continued. "I tell them during the '20s and '30s people got beat up, got their legs busted, to build the union movement. Somebody years ago stood up for me—why should we walk away from the chance for this next generation to move into the middle class?"

The biggest sin Mr. Battaglia—who was on an induction list for membership in the Genovese Family at the time that he was indicted—committed, Mr. Bisbano contended, was that "he got paid [by bus company owners] not to organize, not to make us stronger."

And the refusal of past union leadership to stand up for its members— "they made it easier for them to fire people," Mr. Jean-Baptiste said—bred a lack of respect for the rank and file that also could be seen in its treatment by DOE.

'Can't Use School Bathrooms'

"They're all certified," Mr. Bisbano said of the bus personnel, "yet at 75 percent of the schools we're not allowed to come inside and use the bathrooms."

"The membership deserves something much better than they've been getting," Mr. Jean-Baptiste said. "Now is the time for membership to pass a judgment: give the union leadership to Members for Change. We will make it work for them."

As evidence, he, Mr. Zaugg and Mr. Bisbano cite their success in running the Local 1181 credit union since they won an election there a year ago. With Mr. Jean-Baptiste, Mr. Zaugg and another Members for Change activist, Brijida Pilgrim, serving as trustees, that operation has a surplus of $200,000, said Mr. Bisbano, adding, "You never saw a surplus, even in boom times, during the 30 or 35 years that [the old regime] had it."

"The same way we won the credit union, we're going to win this thing," Mr. Jean-Baptiste said of the election. "Members should take this chance— they don't have any reason not to."