Opinion | Philadelphia’s Union Crooks

Big labor claims to stand up for workers, but too often its leaders exploit them. Philadelphia offers one example as a jury last week convicted two labor leaders for embezzling from their union.

The case involves John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty and Brian Burrows, the former business manager and president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98. Both men “treated the union and its assets as their own personal piggy banks—harming the union and its members,” says Kevin Smallwood of the Office of Labor-Management Standards for the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh District.