July 9, 2010: Teamsters who work the movies, commercials, TV and other productions in the Philly area, that includes Atlantic City work, are getting rolled by the IBT and their own local leadership led by International Vice President Bill Hamilton.
An investigation by the Independent Review Board found that movie jobs in Philadelphia Local 107 were doled out to friends and relatives of Hamilton and other union officials. Now rank-and-file Teamsters, not Hamilton, are paying the price for the nepotism scandal.
Members Pay the Price
More than 100 of 161 Local 107 movie Teamsters will be banned from doing movie work. The few Teamsters who get to continue working in the movies will have to resign their membership in Local 107.
All this is according to a plan put forward by Ron Schwab, the International Representative appointed by Hoffa to supposedly clean up the scandal. But is this a clean-up or a cover up?
Schwab told a meeting of Local 107 members that Hamilton could not run the hiring fairly so the work will be taken out of Local 107’s jurisdiction and handed over to Local 817 to run out of New York.
“They say that Local 817 will run things the right way,” Tony Sgrillo, a Local 107 member told the Philly Inquirer. “My question is: Why can’t we run it right?”
Stuck on the Lowest Tier
Under a Local 817 takeover, not a single Local 107 member would qualify to work a captain (tier one work) in their own city. Eight Philly Teamsters would qualify for “tier two” work and 19 would qualify for “tier three” work.
Forty would qualify for the lowest rung “tier four” work which is an on-call, casual type assignment. In all, only 59 Teamsters get on the Local 817 list of the 160 Local 107 Teamsters who submitted for the process.
“We’re getting penalized . . . because they didn’t run things the right way,” another Local 107 member, Louis Cintron, told the press. Cintron testified before the IRB and helped blow the whistle on the nepotism scheme.
Hamilton himself faces no penalties for the scandal that will shrink the Local 107 membership and put rank-and-file Teamsters out of work. He continues to make $278,150 in total compensation from three Teamster salaries.
If Hamilton is too incompetent or corrupt to run a fair hiring hall, why isn’t he the one being cut loose?