Laying Down His Hammer to Apply a Broom to a Troubled Union

By TOM ROBBINS

When he was elected in December as the leader of the city’s 25,000 unionized carpenters, Michael Bilello was helping to build the new PATH station at ground zero. After the election, he “put down his tools” — as they say in his trade — and went to Brooks Brothers, where he had once built a staircase, to buy a new suit. “It was the only place I could find with the union label in the pocket,” he said.

Mr. Bilello, 54, has been a carpenter since graduating from high school in Hicksville, N.Y., in 1975. After years of swinging a hammer, he won election as a reformer, pledging to return democracy and integrity to a union in distress. He has his work cut out for him. Among the challenges he faces are an increase in nonunion construction, unsigned labor contracts, a breakaway faction seeking to leave the union, a federal judge who monitors his every move, and organized-crime families that still view the New York City District Council of Carpenters as a prime feeding ground.

He also has to beat the jinx: the last four leaders of the district council were indicted for on-the-job crimes. Mr. Bilello’s immediate predecessor, Michael Forde, is serving an 11-year term in federal prison for taking bribes; Frederick W. Devine was convicted in 1998 of embezzlement; Paschal McGuinness was acquitted of bribery but resigned in 1994 as part of a consent decree that settled a federal civil racketeering case and placed the union under court oversight. Theodore Maritas did not make it to court: he vanished in 1982 on the eve of his trial on mob-tied extortion charges, leaving behind only a wallet found floating near the Throgs Neck Bridge.

“The members have always felt kind of helpless over the way the organization has gone over the years,” said Mr. Bilello, who had a brief stint as a union business agent in 1999 but was fired after he shined a spotlight on corruption. “The idea is to give them the ability to determine their own future.”

As part of that effort, carpenters will vote this month on new collective bargaining agreements, for the first time. Previous contracts were approved by a small group of union officers. “They did it at a table about this size,” Mr. Bilello said as he sat in the large wood-paneled corner office he inherited at the council’s Hudson Street headquarters. Exploring the office on his first day, he opened what he thought was a closet door, only to find a well-equipped kitchen. Behind another door was a marble-clad bathroom with a glass shower stall. “They had it nice,” he said.

But the party appears to be over. Union benefit funds have slid sharply because of the lack of work. In a bid to keep the growing nonunion sector at bay, the proposed contracts give employers vastly increased freedom to pick their workers, bypassing the union’s out-of-work list, except for shop stewards. They also call for increased job site scrutiny, including electronic scanning of union cards as a safeguard against the use of nonunion labor, a common fraud in the past.

The pacts were negotiated by national union officials who placed the council in trusteeship after Mr. Forde’s 2009 indictment. Mr. Bilello campaigned against the so-called full mobility provision, arguing that older carpenters and whistle-blowers could be left sitting on the bench. But he has not taken a position on the pending vote. “I don’t want to taint it,” he said.

Then there is the secession movement started last year by current and former members, some of whom have run afoul of strict anticorruption measures imposed under the 1994 consent decree. The Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners Union is promoting itself as a viable option to the district council. Part of its pitch is that unlike the national carpenters, who are engaged in a bitter national jurisdictional feud with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the Amalgamated group is affiliated with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which belongs to the labor federation. “We have been offering assistance to them,” said a painters’ union spokesman, referring to the Amalgamated group.

The breakaway leaders declined to discuss their organizing. Listed as the Amalgamated president is a lawyer named Angelo R. Bisceglie Jr., who has represented several carpenters charged with wrongdoing. Mr. Bisceglie also served in the 1990s as labor counsel for a New Jersey businessman named Thomas Petrizzo, who was described by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a member of the Colombo crime family, exerting influence over past carpenters’ union officials.

Mr. Bisceglie did not return calls. But at a hearing in December before Judge Richard M. Berman of Federal District Court in Manhattan, he said he did not believe that the consent decree should apply to his new organization. “We realize the importance of keeping a clean-running union,” he added.

The new union’s secretary is John Holt, who was removed as a carpenters’ union business agent after the current court-appointed monitor, Dennis M. Walsh, cited him for violating job-referral rules. “I can’t help you right now,” Mr. Holt said when reached by phone. The first vote on the breakaway union will come later this month, when some 700 dock builders, who construct piers and pilings, will vote on whether to stay with the district council or be represented by a new Dock Builders Local of Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners. (They will also have the option of voting for none of the above.)

Leaders of the effort said they decided to leave last summer, after national carpenters’ union officials abruptly dissolved their old local, Dock Builders Local 1456, merging it with another carpenters’ unit. “They took our union,” said Eric Gundersen, a dock builder for 13 years. “We’re looking to stand by ourselves and not have things shoved down our throat.”

But the revolt also followed the resignation or retirement of top Local 1456 officials, after an investigation by Mr. Walsh found thousands of dollars in unauthorized spending on lavish dinners, golf and spa fees, and trips to conferences in Florida and the Caribbean by officers and their spouses. Mr. Gundersen, who was not one of those cited, said the inquiry was unnecessary. “I felt like it was a witch hunt,” he said.

Mr. Walsh said such scrutiny was needed at the union. “I believe it is difficult if not impossible for any person with bad intentions to steal a dollar from the district council right now,” he said.

Mr. Bilello agreed. “These are people who were players in this organization that are not allowed to play here anymore,” he said. “Now they’re trying to bring the game across the street.”

Mr. Bilello stowed his old work clothes — a Carhartt jacket, boots and hard hat — in the walk-in closet near the marble bathroom in his office. He has been wearing them lately to job sites, where he has urged dock builders to stick with the district council. “Like any other election, you’ve got to work it,” he said.