[SML] Boston Mayor's aides convicted of demanding music festival hire union stagehands.

Dale Farmer dale at cybercom.net
Sat Aug 10 00:41:24 UTC 2019


Jury trial. Also jury only needed six hours to return a verdict, 
implying a pretty decisive case.   Unknown to me how much the union knew 
or participated, but the story did imply that there would be union 
picket lines at the festival.  Boston is a pretty strong union town, but 
not by any means exclusively.   Mayor Walsh got his launch into city 
politics from being president of one of the construction trades unions, 
and he got lots of support from the unions in town during elections.

As for the blow to the union's reputation.  If a given union needs 
extortion to get given jobs to go union, that implies they are a bad 
deal for the business.

Again, I was not following the trial, but when the story is top of the 
front page in the Boston Globe, I take notice.

Dale


On 8/9/2019 2:59 PM, E R Casey via Stagecraft wrote:
> Not to doubt for a moment the potential for corruption in a big city 
> political machine but I’m not clear from this article how ‘the union’ ( 
> IATSE? ) is responsible for this what was described here.  Also not 
> clear from the article how this was judged to be a demand rather than a 
> suggestion as the defendants claimed. It seems they had gotten permits 
> in previous years without union labor.  Short of a recording of the 
> meeting I’d be curious to know what constituted evidence.  Was this a 
> jury trial or decided by a judge?
> 
> 
> E. R. Casey
> 
> 
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>> On 9 Aug2019, at 2:15 PM, stagecraft-request at theatrical.net 
>> <mailto:stagecraft-request at theatrical.net> wrote:
>>
>> Dale Farmer <dale at cybercom.net <mailto:dale at cybercom.net>>
>> To: Stagecraft <stagecraft at theatrical.net 
>> <mailto:stagecraft at theatrical.net>>
>> Subject: [SML] Boston Mayor's aides convicted of demanding music
>> festival hire union stagehands.
>>
>> https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/08/07/verdict-reached-in-city-hall-extortion-trial/
>>
>> I don't think this one is behind a paywall, unlike the boston globe's
>> story.
>>
>> Short version.   Two senior city hall staffers were in a final meeting
>> with the Boston Calling music festival organizers days before the event.
>>  They say they asked the organizers to hire union stagehands.  But they
>> still had not handed over the final city permits needed for the event
>> when they asked.  The festival organizers felt that if they didn't agree
>> to what they viewed as a demand, they wouldn't get the needed city
>> permits.    They hired union stagehands and got the permits.  Someone
>> asked the FBI to investigate and this trial resulted.
>>
>> My memory (Unreliable on this, as I never worked the event myself) was
>> that in prior years, they used a mix of paid non-union stagehands, and
>> volunteers. anyone with first hand knowledge, feel free to correct facts.)
>>
>> My opinion, big black eye to the union's reputation.
>>
>> Dale
>>
> 
> 
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