Awwww come on Stick, obviously you don't get it...as a Communications Workers of America member one is obligated to blindly follow in return for the tireless and selfless support shown by the union leadership....





Newswire

The Ullico Insider Stock Scandals

The Global Crossing bankruptcy, the fourth largest in U.S. history, has cost investors billions, resulted in over 9,000 people losing their jobs and has set in motion a federal investigation as to questionable accounting practices. As a result of a series of recent articles in Business Week and The Wall Street Journal, a whole new controversy linked to Global Crossing has arisen.



The focus is on Ullico, a privately held insurance company which is owned largely by unions and their pension funds. It was an early major investor in Global Crossing and its directors used the telecom�s volatile stock price history to personally enrich themselves at the expense of the union members and retirees whose pension funds own Ullico. Its board of directors is mostly made up of current or former union presidents and includes AFL-CIO head John Sweeney.



One of the Ullico directors most on the spot over the scandal is Morton Bahr, the longtime head of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and a Ullico director since 1996. Many of the workers who lost their jobs and their life savings because of the Global Crossing bankruptcy were CWA members.



And the emerging record shows that Bahr was intimately involved in the Ullico-Global Crossing deal from the beginning. Bahr pushed for the Global Crossing deal even though the company was involved in telecommunications but not unionized. Time and again, Bahr used his authority as CWA boss to promote the interests of Gary Winnick�s Global Crossing:



� Bahr supported Global Crossing�s merger with Frontier Communications and opposed the bid for Frontier by Qwest.

� Bahr wrote 14 state governors supporting a takeover of U.S. West by Global Crossing

� Bahr�s support of the Ullico initial major investment in Global Crossing was essential since he represented one of the larger unions involved in Ullico.



Apparently the favoritism was not a one-way street. The Wall Street Journal expose of the Ullico scandal revealed that Bahr had personally profited from insider trading of Ullico stock to the tune of $27,000. However, a spokesman for Mr. Bahr assured the reporter that Bahr was �concerned about the propriety of stock trading by Ullico board members.� (�Inside Deal: How Union Bosses Enriched Themselves on an Insurer�s Board,� by Tom Hamburger and John Harwood, The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2002, page 1)



The revelation was especially embarrassing to Bahr since less than a month earlier he had put out a press release in which he blasted �corporate arrogance� and singled out the �secret dealings and employee abuses of Enron and Global Crossing.� (PR Newswire, March 6, 2002, Communications Workers of America)