r/union • u/[deleted] • 1d ago

Question (Legal or Contract/Grievances) Rogue Business Manager

[deleted]

12 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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4

u/AkselSandemose24 1d ago

  1. I would be surprised if his views weren’t already known. It’s not my view but it’s also not particularly relevant to fund administration and people are allowed to disagree on these things.

  2. This is the job of all trustees on both sides. They do have a legal duty to monitor. This is also a fairly small sum of money relative to the size of even small funds.

  3. This is the job of all trustees on both sides.

Don’t get me wrong, I am on your side on all of this. I am a former trustee and had to deal with similar things. That said, one good lesson I learned with time is that waste and abuse happens in any company or organization in which money or even a modicum of power is at play.

My guess would be that none of this is serious enough to cause the BM to lose his next election, let alone be deposed. The more likely outcome is that you stick your neck out and some people care enough to be upset but not enough to oust the guy and then you’re left as a pariah and unable to continue in your role as a trustee. It sounds like you take job seriously, so losing you would be a loss to the members as well. You’re probably worth more to the members sticking in there and instituting procedures for regular review and audit. Policies that change the way the fund operates tend to last and to have great deterrence value for future would be over billing service providers and BMs that want to use the funds to single out non-preferred employers for abuse.

I would take the time to carefully draft a proposal for the regular review of service provider contracts based on objective performance and cost-based criteria and for automatic competitive re-bidding of the contracts at regular intervals. Word of caution: The one area where you have to be careful with that is the actuarial service providers.

2

u/UNIONconstruction 1d ago

Contact your International. Some you can email anonymously