Kansas City-based union members welcome indictment of leaders. But will it bring change?

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As rank-and-file Boilermakers cheer last week’s indictment of two former union presidents and five other staffers in an alleged $20 million embezzlement scheme, they warn that the charges alone won’t fix the problems they’ve complained about for years.

What’s needed, they insist, is a legitimate process for electing their leaders. The way the system has been run — which isn’t by secret ballot and doesn’t allow everyone to vote — is the underlying issue that allowed things to spiral out of control and resulted in the mess the union finds itself in now, they say.

“We’ve never had a voice in the election of leaders,” said Adam Mendenhall, a longtime member of Kansas City-based Local 83. “Absolutely not. (Former International President) Newton Jones had fixed it to where he was always going to be elected.

“There’s not very much union about the Boilermakers union. It’s a scam anymore. It’s just a giant scam.”

A federal grand jury returned the 57-count indictment on Aug. 21, charging the defendants with conspiracy to commit offenses under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, as well as other offenses including embezzlement, health care fraud, wire fraud and theft in connection with health care and retirement plans.

The defendants are accused of enriching themselves by spending millions of dollars in union funds for personal gain. The money allegedly went toward salary and benefits for jobs they didn’t show up for, tuition, rent, luxury international travel, meals, vacation payouts and unauthorized loans, the Justice Department said.

Those charged are former union president Newton B. Jones, 71; his wife, Kateryna Jones, 32; and his son, Cullen Jones, 35, all of Chapel Hill, North Carolina; former secretary-treasurer William Creeden, 76, of Kearney, Missouri; former president Truman “Warren” Fairley, 59, of Chapel Hill; current secretary-treasurer Kathy Stapp, 53, of Shawnee; and former vice president Lawrence McManamon, 76, of Rocky River, Ohio.

The indictments came a little more than a year after the union’s executive council voted to oust Jones as international president , accusing him of misusing union funds for personal gain — including funneling large sums of money to his Ukrainian wife for work she never performed. That led to a monthslong court battle over who controlled the union .

In August 2023, a federal judge upheld the union executives’ June 2 decision to remove Jones as president and replace him with Fairley , who had recently retired as an international vice president.

Fairley announced his retirement as president on Aug. 20, effective immediately, according to a news release issued by the union. He was replaced by Timothy Simmons, one of the union’s five international vice presidents.

Members want election by secret ballot

The Boilermakers’ constitution calls for the election of officers every five years at its Consolidated Convention. The president and his international vice presidents run together as a package deal and are elected in a public vote by the delegates who attend the convention.

The rank-and-file say they have no input into the elections and want it to be a “one person, one vote” process carried out by secret ballot. They also say that this process is what allowed Jones to keep his “yes-men” in power and get away with embezzling millions.

“The rank-and-file never had any voice at all with what happened at the International,” said Ed Lacey, a former business agent and president of Kansas City-based Local 83. “The members have argued, but it’s to no avail. We want to be able to elect our own international vice president from our area. But no, no, no, they run as a ticket. There’s no separate vote.”

The international office sends the president and business manager of each local to the five-year convention, Lacey said, and the members vote for the delegates who will attend.

“The local’s president and business manager automatically go, and they’re pretty automatically a vote for the international president,” Lacey said. “If you’re a delegate and sitting at the table with your local, you’re not going to go against who your local business manager and president vote for. There’s nothing democratic about anything they do.”

A history of the union in the Boilermakers constitution shows that Jones succeeded his father, Charles W. Jones, upon the elder Jones’ retirement in 2003. At the Consolidated Convention in 2006, it says, delegates re-elected Newton Jones and International Secretary/Treasurer William Creeden to their first five-year terms and returned all incumbent international vice presidents to office.

At the next Consolidated Convention in 2011, the constitution says, delegates reelected all international officers by acclamation. The officers ran as a slate, it says, that included Jones, Creeden and seven vice presidents.

The same thing happened at the 2016 Consolidated Convention, according to the constitution. Delegates again reelected all incumbent international officers, who ran on a slate they called the “Proven Leadership Team.”

“The offices of International President, International Secretary-Treasurer, International Vice President-Canada, and International Vice President-Northeast were contested, but all incumbents retained their positions by wide margins,” it says.

And in 2021, delegates again reelected all incumbent international officers. Only one office was contested, the document says, but the candidate “won by a wide margin.”

The next convention will be in 2026 “at a time and in a city to be determined by the Executive Council,” the constitution says.

One of the nation’s oldest unions, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers represents about 45,000 workers in the United States and Canada who assemble, install and repair boilers, fit pipes and build power plants and ships.

The Justice Department called out the Boilermakers’ questionable election process in last week’s grand jury indictment, referring to those involved in the alleged conspiracy to steal from the union as the “Jones Enterprise.”

“It was further part of the conspiracy that members and associates of the Jones Enterprise and other conspirators would preserve their positions in the Boilermakers Union by ensuring that all international officers were selected for their positions by the International President rather than having them face an open and contested election for those positions among the membership,” the document said. That process, it said, ensured “that all international officers owed their positions as officers to the International President, Defendant Newton Jones.”

The indictment said that those “conspirators” would then preserve their positions in the union by making sure that all incumbent international officers stood for reelection in a single slate headed by Jones. Furthermore, it said, the election was conducted by means of a public voice vote of the delegates to the union’s convention instead of by a secret vote of the delegates or the entire union membership “so as to minimize any opposition” to Jones and his slate of incumbent officers.

How other unions elect officers

Michelle Kaminski, a labor-relations professor at Michigan State University, said that historically, two election procedures have been commonly used by unions — election of presidents by delegates, such as at a convention, or by a direct vote of the membership via secret ballot.

“If the membership wants to change the process by which officers are elected, they would need to change their constitution,” she said.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the country’s largest labor unions with 1.3 million members, holds its officer elections by secret ballot, according to its constitution. At the union’s International Convention, held every five years, delegates vote for the nominees by secret ballot, and then between four and six months after the convention, those candidates are elected by the rank-and-file members. All voting is by secret ballot.

The United Auto Workers went through a scandal similar to the Boilermakers in the past few years, with about a dozen officials convicted in a federal corruption case that involved bribery and embezzlement of union funds.

Kaminski said as a result of the federal oversight of the UAW that was ordered in the aftermath of the case, the union recently moved from a delegate system for electing the president to a direct vote by the membership. In an extremely close race, she said, Shawn Fain — who represented the reform caucus — was elected UAW President in March 2023. He is the first person to be elected UAW President by a direct vote of the membership.

In a statement after his victory, Fain called the election “a referendum on the direction of the UAW.”

“For too long, the UAW has been controlled by leadership with a top-down, company union philosophy who have been unwilling to confront management, and as a result, we’ve seen nothing but concessions, corruption and plant closures,” he said.

“ … We now have a historic opportunity to get back to setting the standard across all sectors, and to transform the UAW into a member-led, fighting union once again, and we are going to take it.”