Labor stung by Wu letters on Wiederhorn and casino

Oregon Congressman David Wu isn’t the most popular politician with leaders of organized labor. In less than a month, the third-term Democrat has taken two very vocal positions on the opposite side of building trades unions and the Oregon AFL-CIO. One involves a convicted felon and the other a state compact on a proposed Indian casino.

The most egregious was a letter the First District congressman wrote seeking special treatment for Andrew Wiederhorn, who is now serving time in federal prison for actions connected to the Capital Consultants scandal that wiped out $350 million in union pension fund assets. The letter to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons asked that Wiederhorn be released to a halfway house in Portland rather than be sent to a facility in Minnesota for treatment of his diabetes.

“Our members were devastated” when they heard about Wu’s letter, said John Endicott, business manager of Plumbers and Fitters Local 290, whose members suffered some of the greatest losses from Wiederhorn’s dealing with Capital Consultants.

Wiederhorn got off easy, pleading guilty to one count of filing a false tax return and one count of paying an illegal gratuity to Capital Consultants founder Jeffrey Grayson, union officials said.

Last year, Endicott led an effort to place Wiederhorn’s company, Fog Cutter Capital (of which Wu is a stockholder), on the Oregon AFL-CIO Unfair List for approving a paid leave of absence and a $2 million bonus for Wiederhorn while he served 18 months in the federal prison at Sheridan, Ore.

“If he (Wiederhorn) spent just one day in jail for every working person he stole from, he’d be spending the rest of his life in jail,” said Endicott.

Wu has since apologized for writing the letter. In a phone conversation with Oregon AFL-CIO President Tim Nesbitt on May18 Wu said, “I apologize. Bad judgment. Bad mistakes all around.”

Wu followed that phone call with an e-mail to the state labor federation.

But Wu isn’t apologizing for his stand against the casino.

The compact between the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation and the State of Oregon (with input from labor) took months to finalize, and was announced with great fanfare. The deal included a project labor agreement with the Columbia-Pacific Building Trades Council and neutrality language with UNITE-HERE after the casino opened.

But once the deal was inked, Wu embarked on an unusually vocal campaign to kill it — twice taking his argument to the House floor and through a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

Because the casino involved a land-swap with the state in order to be built on non-tribal land (outside of Wu’s district), it required federal approval.

On May 20, Norton denied the compact.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.