The 2008 financial collapse hit Joseph Dougherty hard.
As the head of Philadelphia's ironworkers union, he held
responsibility for landing its members in jobs. And with construction projects
drying up, the work went with it.
Union membership started to shrink. Tension erupted with
other building trades. And for the first time in his nearly five-decade career,
Dougherty, prosecutors say, began to feel his position jeopardized as the
elected business manager of Ironworkers Local 401.
Dougherty and his union would survive the recession. But
what they did to get there has the 73-year-old facing the most direct threat in
years to his status as one of the city's most powerful labor leaders: a federal
racketeering conspiracy trial.
On Monday, prosecutors will begin to lay out their case
against the man who they say oversaw the union's years-long campaign to coerce
contractors into hiring its members through violent acts of arson,
intimidation, and sabotage.
"Like prospective members of the Mafia, apprentices
to Ironworkers Local 401 were taught that in order to advance . . . they had to
commit crimes," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert J. Livermore wrote in court
filings Friday. And if the union protected its turf with moblike tactics,
Livermore said, Dougherty was its undisputed "don."
He and 12 other union members were indicted last year -
charged with inflicting millions of dollars of damage at nonunion construction
sites.
Since then, a steady stream of ironworkers have admitted
guilt in attacks such as the December 2012 arson at a Quaker meetinghouse in
Chestnut Hill and the siegelike conditions inflicted two years ago on builders
of the Goldtex Apartments at 12th and Wood Streets.
Dougherty alone has chosen to take his case to trial.
That decision, his lawyer Fortunato Perri Jr. said, came easily.
As Perri sees it, his client was indicted for simply
doing his job. Dougherty knew nothing about the arsons, break-ins, beatings,
and threats admitted by his union colleagues, Perri said.
Come Monday, it will be up to a jury to weigh which
depiction of Dougherty it finds most convincing: the blue-collar Machiavelli or
the well-meaning and forceful advocate for organized labor. Recent court
filings contribute to both portraits of the man.
On the one hand, they suggest Dougherty deeply felt the
hurt the recession inflicted upon his members. He was the first to come to the
aid of ironworkers in financial straits and was known to lend money to his
colleagues from his own pockets.
"I look at the general fund, the health fund. It's .
. . hurting," he told a colleague last year, in a conversation recorded by
FBI. "Every hour nonunion [contractors] steal from us hurts. . . . Every
hour they steal, that's another hour less money we got coming in."
On the other hand, when confronted with direct threats to
union jobs, Dougherty reacted with fury, wiretapped conversations show.
"If he puts it up and gets away with it, we're
tearing it the f- down in broad daylight," Dougherty told a colleague at
the height of a conflict over construction at a small apartment complex at 31st
and Spring Garden Streets. "I'll rent the f-ing crane. . . . We're not
losing in Center City, man."
Dougherty's 16-year tenure at the union's helm came after
an improbable rise from the housing projects of East Falls.
He joined Local 401 in 1966 after stints in the Navy and
at various construction jobs. And quickly, he developed a reputation as one of
its most devoted and loyal members.
He memorized bylaws, meeting minutes, and balance sheets.
He stayed late picking up administrative tasks.
Even in those early days, he exhibited the knack for
palace intrigue that would later land him in trouble, Livermore said in court
filings.
Dougherty realized that by gaining control over the
union's two key benefits to workers - job assignments and loans from union
accounts - he could command the loyalty of its membership.
Starting in the '80s, he began to wield that loyalty to
outmaneuver rivals and consolidate his own power. He led a movement to oust the
union's elected business agent in the '90s by spreading rumors that the man was
a drug addict who snorted cocaine in the union hall.
He muscled out the heir apparent to the union's top job
in 1998 by convincing members that a meeting between the man and officials of
their parent organization in Washington was the beginning of a hostile takeover
of the local chapter.
When that ex-leader later left the organization to take
up a new career in food sales at the Jersey Shore, Dougherty joked that anyone
who crossed him would end up "selling hot dogs," according to court
filings.
Soon enough, Livermore wrote, anyone with aspirations to
an elected union post realized they had to please Dougherty first.
"You're always going to be the Jimmy Hoffa of this
local," one union aspirant told Dougherty in an October 2013 wiretapped
conversation quoted in court filings. "You made this union. You carry this
union. You're always going to be this union."
So when the recession of 2008 hit and jobs grew scarce,
much of the stress fell on Dougherty's shoulders. So, too, say prosecutors,
should much of the blame for the tactics the union employed to hold onto their
work.
Unlike the 12 other ironworkers who have pleaded guilty
to charges in the case, Dougherty is not alleged to have directly participated
in any acts of sabotage.
Instead, prosecutors say, he oversaw a system in which
violence was so deeply ingrained that contractors often cowed to his demands
for jobs before any threats were made.
The case will largely hinge on the government's ability
to show that he was aware of or encouraged violent acts committed by others.
To prove their case, prosecutors are expected to rely on
testimony from union members and various contractors who interacted with
Dougherty and on dozens of wiretapped conversations. Among them is a recording
of a meeting in which he roused ironworkers to step up their 2012 fight against
developer Post Bros. Apartments, which refused to hire an all-union workforce
at the Goldtex Apartments.
For days, the union picketed. Workers were beaten, car
tires slashed, and delivery trucks blocked.
Dougherty told his members that their futures could hinge
on the outcome of the dispute.
"If we don't make a commitment to stop them, there
will be more developers moving in the same manner," he said at the
secretly recorded meeting. "This is not just a picket line, it is a
war."
On Monday, he may begin to learn whether the battle was
worth the aftermath.
Source: Philly.com
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