[QUOTE=Queenofthesea;97448]Ok the mfow in Wilmington has a graft system where the port agent sells Matson/APL jobs to the Philippine citizens through a bagman in the MEBA. This is so obvious that many well meaning people have quit being in the hall realizing it is a total sham. The port agent fancies himself as some Mexican drug lord running his plaza confident that the administration in San Francisco will do nothing. The only hope for a new member is to ship military. Two sets of registration books are kept and the privileged people paying for the job and any attempt to dismantle it comes with the threat of violence. Hard to believe that ait group of violent corrupt foreigners are allowed to dominate a union dedicated to American mariners and board our ships with barely a functional grasp of the required English language. The is a lawyer, I think his last name is Cavin, who is preparing a lawsuit against the union on a class action. He is a maritime law attorney celebrated for his outstanding damage claims against the APL line. He is aware of the problem and has a collection of depositions and witnesses to take to court when an A-book is ready to bring the union up on charges. Share your disgust with this transparent corruption by emailing the mfow president who seems in denial or simply uninterested in anything other than his own bite of the envelope of cash.[/QUOTE]
I think I can suggest what happened here. There is a MEBA engineer (Sonny) who picks up stand-by work from the MFOW. He seems decent when I worked
around him although he does seem to have a “shot-caller” mentality when telling applicants their order on the apprenticeship list. I did in fact witness him telling
one such applicant on a Matson ship that his brother in law was to get an apprenticeship before others due to his “recommendation”. The port agent is guility
of bumping applicants sitting in the hall on at least three occassions resulting from this in-house nepotism system. There was a big fuss made over this and
the wronged applicant quit in disgust and sought legal representation. The MFOW backtracked and pretended it was all a mistake but the applicant felt so wronged
he joined another union. Later after the coast was clear the special treatment of apprenticeships resumed and no administrative careers were ruined as a result
of the obvious corruption in the hall. Sonny continues to pick up MFOW standby jobs and channel his preferred customers to the jobs available including
apprentiiceships. The applicants for apprenticeships stand by white nuckled in the hall knowing that their time of registration means nothing if Sonny needs
to give his relatives a job. Business as usual indeed. God bless.