Ed Mullins Admits to Stealing $600,000 From Big Apple’s Finest
On August 4, Big Labor boss Ed Mullins, who from 2002 to 2021 reigned as chief of New York City’s powerful Sergeants Benevolent Association union (SBA), became the latest in a long line of union officials to be sentenced to prison for stealing dues money collected from rank-and-file workers. Courtesy of New York labor laws, which are intensely biased against taxpayers and the individual rights of public servants, the SBA union wields monopoly-bargaining power over roughly 13,000 active and retired sergeants. It is reportedly the fifth largest police union in the U.S. After FBI raids of the SBA’s Manhattan office and his Long Island home caught him off guard in late 2021, Mr. Mullins decided to plead guilty to stealing more than $600,000 from the union rank-and-file over a four-year period.Former Union President Claims To Be ‘Amazed’ at How Long Ed Mullins Got Away With It
In recommending a sentence of 41 months, the maximum length Mr. Mullins had agreed not to challenge as part of his January 2023 guilty plea, prosecutors noted that he had repeatedly billed the union for personal purchases such as fancy restaurant meals and clothing and an array of other luxury items. Again and again, Mr. Mullins falsely claimed that his extravagant personal expenditures were SBA-related expenses. Moreover, as journalist Rob Beschizza reported, citing a prosecutorial news release, Mr. Mullins also “routinely inflated the cost of the fraudulent expenses, ‘treating the SBA as his personal piggy bank.’” While Mr. Mullins’ guilty plea covered only embezzlement that occurred within the statute of limitations, evidence obtained by prosecutors shows he was actually fraudulently reimbursed for about $1 million in personal expenditures over the course of nearly two decades. National Right to Work Committee Vice President Matthew Leen commented: “The fact is, Mr. Mullins was able to do what he did because, year after year, the SBA did not exercise the normal oversight over officers’ expenditures that legitimate private organizations exercise. “Mr. Mullins rarely even provided receipts for his putative ‘business expenses.’ Yet the union treasurer would write out checks to reimburse him anyway. “That’s why it is disingenuous for John Jay College professor and former police union boss John Driscoll to claim to be ‘amazed,” as he told the New York Times, that Ed Mullins got away with it for so long.”Workers Prevented From Defending Their Own Interests
Under the public-sector monopoly bargaining laws that have long been on the books in New York and well over 30 other states, police, firefighters, teachers, and other civil servants are almost completely dependent on union officials for their job security and pay increases. Recognizing that they have to rely on union bosses to defend their interests, regardless of how well they think Big Labor does the job, the vast majority of unionized public employees in New York opt to join and pay dues. They join and pay dues even though, under the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation-argued Janus decision, issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, they can’t be fired for refusal to do either.‘Is It Wonderful . . . You Will Rarely Find Flowers That Are Fragrant . . . ?’
“Police union bosses claim they wield their monopoly privileges to advance the interests of the men and women in blue, but the records in the Mullins conviction and multiple other similar corruption cases show how easily these privileges can be used to line union bosses’ own pockets,” said Mr. Leen. “The Mullins case is no anomaly. Just five years ago, the then-head of the Big Apple’s prison guards union, Norman Seabrook, was convicted of taking a $100,000+ kickback in exchange for steering $20 million in rank-and-file retirement money into a high-risk hedge fund. “Union monopoly bargaining is a classic example of state-sanctioned compulsion in which, to borrow the words of 19th Century British philosopher Auberon Herbert, the individual employee who opposes a union boss is ‘made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough to force those ends upon him.’ “He continued: ‘Is it wonderful then,’ that in such a garden, ‘you will rarely find flowers that are fragrant, and fruits that are clean and wholesome?’”This article was originally published in the National Right to Work Committee’s monthly newsletter. Go here to access previous newsletter posts . You can exercise your Janus Rights by filling out a few forms on our website. To take action by supporting The National Right To Work Committee and fueling the fight against Forced Unionism, click here to donate now.