Chicaho Trib

March 26, 2001

Unions finance Jackson staffers

Work isn't 'quid pro quo,' he says

By Monica Davey Tribune staff reporter March 26, 2001

For decades Rev. Jesse Jackson has picketed and prayed and negotiated on behalf of bus drivers, coal miners and steelworkers tangled in disputes with their corporate bosses.

Less known is what the labor unions do for Jackson.

Some give money to Jackson's organizations. A few pick up costs for salary and benefits' packages for employees in the organizations Jackson created.

Among the Jackson staffers who benefited from an arrangement with a union of hotel and restaurant workers was Karin Stanford, the former top employee who had an out-of-wedlock child with Jackson in 1999. The same year, Stanford received paychecks—at an annual rate of $35,000—from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) International Union, which also supplied Stanford with benefits that included health-care coverage, according to the union's leaders.

There's nothing secret, or subtle, about Jackson's solicitations to labor, to hear Gary Massoni, development director for Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, describe them. "When Rev. Jackson meets with union leaders, he says, I've been involved in labor rights. I've got three things I want you to do," Massoni said, adding this list: Put "someone on the staff payroll," take part in Jackson's conferences and events, and make a "cash contribution."

But unions that donate nothing to Jackson get no less help from the civil rights leader when it comes to the picket line or negotiating room, Jackson said in an interview last week. "Our support is not a quid pro quo," he said. "We need the support to support the people. We don't limit the support on that basis."

Still, the unions from which Jackson receives money certainly receive Jackson's attention. "He's been with us on strikes all over the country," said John W. Wilhelm, general president of HERE. "Whenever any of our members—or any other working person—needs him, he'll drop everything to come fight."

Several contributors

Several other unions are known to have contributed to Jackson's organizations, including the National Education Association, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the United Steelworkers of America and local branches of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, and Service Employees International Union.

In some ways Jackson's relationships with unions mirror the ones he has formed with major corporations in recent years. The hotel and restaurant employee union, for example, offers a snapshot into the close, give-and-take relationship between Jackson, a loyal supporter of HERE, and HERE, a loyal donor to Jackson.

In the 1990s, when a HERE affiliate was battling a Las Vegas hotel-casino, Jackson swooped in repeatedly to march and lead rallies during a struggle that dragged on for more than six years.

In 1996 Jackson met with hotel officials in Tokyo and proposed that housekeepers from the chain's Los Angeles hotel, who said they were fired for union organizing, be rehired.

Last June, when a HERE local was preparing to strike at hotels in Minneapolis, Jackson led hundreds of the workers marching through downtown. Then he moved the conference one of his groups, Rainbow Sports, had scheduled for Minneapolis to Chicago.

Leadership connection

The hotel and restaurant employees union began donating money to Jackson's organizations about a decade ago under the leadership of Edward T. Hanley, the union's longtime chief who has been described as a confidant of Mayor Richard Daley's as well as Jackson's.

Hanley also presided over a union that was repeatedly accused of links to organized crime and of questionable spending practices. Hanley, who died in a traffic accident last year, retired from the union in 1998 as part of an agreement with a federal monitor who was appointed to remove mob influences from HERE.

"The then-president of the union talked with Jesse Jackson, who was looking for help in making his payroll," said Ron Richardson, another top HERE official who also serves on Rainbow/PUSH's board of directors. The union also has made separate cash contributions to Jackson's groups, Richardson said. "I've heard [Jackson] do a lot of begging and wheedling. But I've never seen him force anyone to give him anything."

Since 1991, 11 employees of Jackson's organizations—now named the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and the Citizenship Education Fund—have at some point been on the payroll of HERE, Richardson said. HERE officials have no arrangement like Jackson's with other, similar organizations, Richardson said.

With two Jackson employees usually sponsored at any given time, the going union pay is $35,000 a year, plus health, vision and dental care, according to Massoni, as well as access to pension and 401(k) plans, both of which require a number of years to become vested in.

"It's a contribution—a straight contribution," Richardson said of the financial arrangement. "They pick the people. They supervise them. We don't have any control over what they're doing. We pay the wages and benefits."

At least two of the 11 who received union paychecks over the years were particularly close to Jackson, who said he ultimately selects which among his groups' 102 employees will go on the union payroll.

Key personnel

Between May 1993 and September 1995, Jackson's son Jesse Jr. received $35,000 a year from HERE as field director for Rainbow/PUSH before he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1995.

And the union also picked up the salary for Stanford, the former head of the Citizenship Education Fund's Washington office for more than a year before leaving Jackson's employment in fall 1999. In addition to the $35,000 a year, Stanford was receiving additional income—in 1999, for example, she also got $67,000 from the Citizenship Education Fund and $9,231 from Rainbow/PUSH.

Asked why he selected Stanford to get union pay, Jackson said, "The same reason six or seven other people got those slots."

"Any number of people across the years who had key positions, key to the stability of our growth, had union" checks, Jackson said. The union packages offered stability and "very good" insurance benefits when "sometimes you're sweating payroll," he said.

Union leaders and Rainbow/PUSH officials vehemently reject any suggestion of a link between a union's help for Jackson and Jackson's help for that union. "He helped us long before we had this arrangement," Wilhelm said.

Rainbow/PUSH leaders point to numerous instances where they say Jackson assisted a union that never contributed to his causes. Several pointed to Jackson's help in settling a transit strike last fall in Los Angeles.

The United Transportation Union gave Jackson nothing for that work, a union lawyer said. "He did it as a good citizen, and we felt that his participation sped it up," said Lawrence Drasin, the UTU attorney. "At no time during the strike did he even ask us for money."

Ask Jackson about unions, and he cites struggles he played a role in around the country. His list is long: Hotel workers, Teamsters, painters, textile workers, coal miners, nurses, utility workers and poultry workers. "Working with unions is what we're doing," Jackson said. "When we fight for workers' rights to organize, that helps workers everywhere."

Jackson, who, in the face of scrutiny over his organizations' finances, publicly issued an internal financial report earlier this month, declined last week to say how much he collects from all unions each year. "It's not your business," Jackson said.

Jackson also declined to describe how he solicits the union funds. "I'm not getting into that," he said. "I just ask them to help us help them."

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2001

Answers

He and Klintoon will make a great pair of leaders for the black populace. Both are for Rent! Now that Klintoon has embraced the blacks and vice versa, you will see in the future how much damage that they can do to the blacks. In the end they will destroy all the results of the Civil Rights movement. By associating themselves with known crooks, and those with gutter morals, they really do themselves a disservice. No Savior is going to pull the blacks up out of their present state. They have to do it themselves, and neither Rent a Riot Jackson or Klintoon is going to do anything but drag them back down to where they were in the 50s. And you can damn well believe they will bleed them dry. The Michael Jordons and Collen Powels of the world can only do so much to combat Jesse and Kintoon. The blacks have chosen the worst of the worst for role models/leaders.

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2001