Organized Labor (Contd.)

Digging its power shovel into the violence-prone International Union of Operating Engineers, whose 270,000 members run most of the nation's cranes, bulldozers, drilling rigs, etc., the Senate labor-management rackets investigating committee dug another truckload of dirt out of what passes for organized labor in some sectors of the U.S.

Under questioning by Arkansas' John McClellan and his staff last week, officials of San Francisco's 24,000-member Local No. 3 told of lavish till-raiding under tough old (75) Victor S. Swanson, who bossed the local from 1941 until the I.U.O.E.'s executive board elbowed him out last summer. Items:

P: I Swanson and other officials netted an apparent $44,000 for themselves in a complex deal that involved buying land from the local through dummies and later selling it back to their own union for a much higher price.

P: Without even inviting competitive bids, the local awarded cost-plus-10% construction contracts to a firm owned by Swanson's son.

P: For entertainment of union chiefs and their friends, the local kept a 40-ft. Chris-Craft cruiser, a mountain cabin, a twin-engined Beech airplane; two Local No. 3 officials admitted that they once used the plane to fly to five different cities to cash $2,000 expense checks so it would look as though the money was being spent for campaigning.

Switching to the East Coast, the committee dug into the affairs of I.U.O.E. Local No. 138 on Long Island. The local's President William DeKoning Jr. reached his post by a simple, direct route: he was appointed to it by his late father, longtime boss of Local 138 and a convicted extortionist.* Of the local's roughly 2,000 members, only 500 are allowed to vote in union elections. Witness Peter Batalias testified that when, at a 1955 meeting of the local, he urged voting rights for more members, six goons dragged him outside, pummeled him into insensibility, left him lying on the sidewalk.

Some day the committee hopes to get hold of the I.U.O.E.'s longtime big boss, International President William E. Maloney, who claims that he is too ill to testify. His name came up in last week's hearings when a Local No. 138 rebel testified that Maloney, presiding over a meeting at the union's international headquarters in Washington, looked on calmly as an elderly member was kicked in the belly for protesting against his local's undemocratic management. Later, according to the witness, Maloney casually remarked that after all, it was not unusual for somebody to be kicked in the belly at an I.U.O.E. meeting.

McClellan: "Was he telling the truth?" Witness: "I guarantee you he was telling the truth."

* The younger DeKoning was also charged with extortion (extracting kickbacks from builders), but he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of coercion, drew a one-year suspended sentence.

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