(Right photo: Doug McCarron – second from left – and his mob; left photo: Chicago gangsters)
Doug McCarron, president of the carpenters union, has always led the union leadership in backwardness, selfishness, narrow-minded pro-corporate attitudes, etc. He split the AFL-CIO over ten years ago in order to be free to raid the other building trades. In an act of nepotism typical of his self-serving attitude, he had his brother installed as the head of the biggest Carpenters’ regional council – the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters. That’s why I was surprised when I heard that he recently put that council into receivership and ousted his brother over corruption in that council. What was happening?
It turns out that that the McCarron’s mother died recently and left a $2 million estate. Evidently the two brothers are squabbling over their inheritance and Doug is using his position as Carpenter Union president against his former ally turned rival, Mike. (We should note that some years earlier, McCarron was one of those union presidents who tried to profit off of an investment in the Union Labor Life Insurance – ULLICO. What he did was put the ill-gotten gains in his mother’s name. So maybe he’s done that with other money and he figures “it’s my money, why should I give any to Mike?” For more on that, see the pamphlet linked to below.)
Watching such carryings on can be pretty demoralizing for union members, especially members of the Carpenters Union. But we have to realize that the Brothers McCarron represent something: There is a direct link between their corporate personal values (“enrich yourself”) and their pro-employer politics. Doug McCarron always saw the union as little but an employment agency for the employers. He believes that the way to advance the union is to make hiring union carpenters more profitable for the contractors. But the only way to do that is to cut wages, which is what McCarron has encouraged.
He got this view from his association with the likes of financier Richard Blum and contractor Ron Tutor. He also gets his personal values from them.
McCarron is not so different from the rest of the union leadership; he’s only a little more blatant. For those who are interested in reading more about Doug McCarron and the Carpenters Union, we suggest this pamphlet – “What Happened to Our Unions?”.