IAFF: The Mob at the Top
Who needs the Mafia when we have our own?
Today’s New York Times reports that the Feds busted members of the Colombo crime family for a racketeering scam involving health and safety and a union.
Wait a minute, that sounds like the IAFF and its executive board.
Vincent Ricciardo, a.k.a “Vinny Unions” and his crew were “manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family” and “directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.”
Harold Schaitberger and his corpulent cronies also sold us out to fire/rescue vendors thereby abandoning the union’s safety advocacy role while handing out no-show/low-show consultant contracts like Sugar Daddys on Halloween.
We’ll show the Colombos a thing or two.
The IAFF was and is run like a criminal operation right down to extorting money from a charity serving sick children and selling out the members to wealthy companies and dubious contractors.
Ed Kelly, current IAFF president, who ousted and succeeded Schaitberger, pledged both to expose the details and clean up the IAFF; he has done neither.
Excuse my firehouse coarseness, but Kelly is “pissing backwards”, i.e., reneging on promises faster than Schaitberger did.
Kelly refuses to level with the members by simply releasing, in full, the investigative report we paid for.
To be crystal clear, he does not need board permission to expose unethical conduct, it’s his sworn duty.
The very idea that he needs approval is in itself unethical, a fact they entirely miss.
He and his weak-willed “gang of six” are embarking on a plan right out of the Schaitberger playbook.
Schaitberger loved to play the tough guy but whenever faced with a decision which might cost him votes he would punt it to the executive board or the next IAFF convention.
You guessed it, the new plan is to take the report release issue to next year’s convention.
Didn’t we elect these guys to lead and make tough decisions?
I scorn their cowardly conduct and you should, too.
Schaitberger would totally approve of Kelly’s plan, the convention is far enough away that he can hope people will forget or another issue will arise.
Kelly is sawing his own plank off, proving his inability to lead while giving his future opponent a potent weapon: that he is nothing more than Harold Schaitberger with a Dorchester accent.
Tell your local president to demand that the IAFF release the report, now.
