Of course not all the members of the fiftyfour- member AFL-CIO Executive Council are corrupt. But silence undermines even those leaders who foreswear kickbacks and manage to survive on their six-figure salaries. Because while it is completely unmentionable, corruption is most often at the root of the mentionable problems. Understood properly, it could reveal why American union leaders cannot organize, win strikes, offer a progressive political agenda, keep labor standards from falling, or reform themselves.

Corruption, properly understood as the private use of public office, has been built into the labor movement from its very inception. When union corruption appears in the press, it's usually because of illegal acts: the outright pilfering of union assets or collusion with the boss, selling the members' jobs or giving away their benefits. But a lot of corruption is legal — hiring your relatives, taking excessive salaries, hiring hall favoritism.

It was the same for the rulers of unions like the Teamsters, the Laborers, and the United Food and Commercial Workers. After Jim Hoffa regained the "Marble Palace" Teamster headquarters of his father, James R. Hoffa, the new Hoffa-hired Ed Stier, a former U.S. Attorney to head an internal anticorruption task force. Stier tried to probe alleged second-generation Chicago mob ties but had to charge Hoffa with stonewalling the investigation. The scams were traditional—kickbacks to allow companies to hire non-union drivers, kickbacks from members to get favored jobs. Mobsters even communicated with union dissidents in traditional Outfit style — a .44 caliber bullet in an envelope meant "Stop passing out leaflets." In case dissident John Pavlak, who'd criticized incumbent president Dominick Romanazzi, missed the symbolism, the envelope also contained a written message: "You are dead."