Brian M. McLaughlin is a former American Democratic politician and labor leader from Flushing, Queens.
McLaughlin was a New York Assemblyman elected in 1992 to represent the 25th district in New York City. He was also elected, in June 1995, as the President of the New York City Central Labor Council (NYCCLC).
McLaughlin was arrested October 17, 2006, on charges of stealing more than $2 million from the State of New York and labor unions. After his arrest, he announced that he would not run for re-election, and left office at the end of 2006.
In March 2008, he pleaded guilty to charges of racketeering and embezzlement. On May 20, 2009, he was found guilty of these charges and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.
Early life and family McLaughlin was born in Inwood, Manhattan, New York, and grew up in Queens. His family moved to Brentwood, Suffolk County, New York on Long Island, when he was 10. His paternal grandfather, Miles McLaughlin, an electrician, was an immigrant from County Cavan, Ireland. McLaughlin's father was also an electrician, who worked for years as chief electrician at The New York Times. His mother held jobs at General Motors and Gertz department stores. None of his family went to college. Both McLaughlin's father and his paternal grandfather were union activists; Miles McLaughlin sat on labor leader Harry Van Arsdale's "Committee of 100".
In his high school yearbook, McLaughlin's stated career ambition was practical: electrician. He later dropped out of Bridgeport University and did become an electrician.
Career
Electrician work and higher education McLaughlin started his career as a journeyman electrician. He belonged to Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and was one of the union's business representatives. At a union meeting, he met labor leader Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., head of the CLC, who would become his mentor. Van Arsdale also came out of Local 3 of the IBEW, which was "long the most politically active building trades union in New York".
Van Arsdale convinced McLaughlin that a job as a unionized electrician and a college degree were not incompatible, and persuaded him to attend night school.
While McLaughlin was working as an electrician, he attended the Empire State College of the State University of New York and eventually graduated with a B.S. He also attended the New York Institute of Technology, where he earned a master's degree in Industrial Labor Relations. He later said that at this time he also worked on honing his leadership qualities.
According to The New York Times, Van Arsdale "tutored Mr. McLaughlin on the ins and outs of labor politics and electoral politics." In 1981, Van Arsdale "gave the ambitious young electrician a huge responsibility – to organize the first Labor Day Parade in the city in decades."
Eventually McLaughlin left his electrician job and went to serve as President for the New York City Central Labor Council.
Politics In 2003, McLaughlin was quoted about his happenstance of being a politician, saying he entered "politics quite by accident... I don't particularly like politics, and I have no ego for it, quite frankly... I guess all of us would say it's disproportionately influenced by money. But in the end, it's a process where you have a limited opportunity to champion and better the situation of the people who elected you. And if you don't have determination, it's an unfriendly process."
Democratic district leader McLaughlin, according to the New York Times, "was drafted into running for Democratic district leader in 1986 with the Queens Democratic Party in disrepair after the suicide of Donald R. Manes; he won by 86 votes."
New York State Assembly In 1992, McLaughlin was elected to the New York State Assembly from the 25th Assembly District, which covers a portion of eastern Queens. He served as Chairman of the Democratic Conference and also sat on the influential Ways and Means Committee. While in the Assembly, he was author of the Sharps Bill, designed to prevent workplace injuries in the health-care industry. He was remembered as "not a particularly high-profile legislator; most of his influence was exerted as a union chief."
A February 2002 report noted that St. Ann's Athletic Association in Flushing had received $4,000 from McLaughlin for uniforms, equipment, and facilities, an appropriation he had introduced into the 1999 state budget. He stated, "Studies have shown that when kids play sports they are less likely to use drugs and get in trouble, and they are more likely to stay in school."
Mayoral ambitions In 1997 and 2003, there was speculation of a possible McLaughlin run for the New York mayor's office. By October 2003, he had raised over $1 million of campaign funds for a possible 2005 run.
Labor Council During McLaughlin's tenure at the Council on New York City Labor, he served as the assistant to the son of the first president of the organization, Thomas Van Arsdale. In 1986, Van Arsdale's father, Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., died, and he assumed his father's position in the organization as president.
The Labor Council today reigns as the largest municipal labor council in the country, a federation with 400 union locals and over 1 million members.
In June 1995, McLaughlin succeeded Van Arsdale as the president of the CLC in a landslide election; Thomas Van Arsdale floundered in the position and McLaughlin was charged with re-energizing the council.
The Labor Council represents laborers from a wide range of industries and enterprises. The union locals that belong to the organization "represent workers ranging from public school teachers to crane operators to employees at the Bronx Zoo, The council's main responsibilities are coordinating the various unions' political activities and placing labor's overall weight behind individual unions during organizing drives and strikes."
McLaughlin is also recognized for a number of achievements during his tenure at the CLC. He "was among the most influential labor leaders in New York City and in the state, providing pivotal early support for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's re-election and supporting the failed effort to build a football stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan. He led the fight to keep Wal-Mart out of the city and lent strong support to transit workers" during a 2005 strike.
McLaughlin had also been courted by not just the mayor, but also bishops, corporate CEOs and real estate magnates, thus emerging "as a major player in some of the biggest municipal battles" of 2006, "including the transit strike and the West Side stadium fight."
As head of the Labor Council, McLaughlin led the annual Labor Day Parade. In 2001, he praised the selection of United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten as grand marshal of that year's parade. "Throughout the years, labor has focused on certain issues - the eight-hour workday, a livable minimum wage, the protection of Social Security. This year our attention will be on the need for quality public schools... Randi Weingarten has not only been an outstanding labor leader in this city. In a time where teacher bashing and finger-pointing, she has been a beacon in fighting for teachers and students."
On October 4, 2003, as New York chairman of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, McLaughlin presided over a rally of 100,000 immigrants and their supporters at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and spoke up for illegal-immigrant workers: "The labor movement is well placed to redefine itself around the needs of those who most need a labor union."
In 2004, McLaughlin protested Mayor Bloomberg's fiscal austerity, saying, "Now is the time to invest in our public employees who have not let us down... Years of privatization and productivity schemes from City Hall have gotten us nowhere."
In 2006, after McLaughlin's indictment, he was defended for his accomplishments; labor leaders "credited him with reinvigorating the Central Labor Council in a city where unions were once far more powerful." One of the many local labor leaders to praise McLaughlin during his indictment, was most notably Randi Weingarten, President of the United Federation of Teachers: "Brian took over the Central Labor Council when it was at its lowest point in terms of power, prestige and stature and made it into an important institution again... One of his big strengths is that even if you're in a fight that's unpopular, he'll stand with you."
Moskowitz hearings on UFT contracts In December 2003, it was understood that New York City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz had "garnered the undisguised ire of Randi Weingarten, the powerful head of the UFT and Brian McLaughlin" by "publicly airing the work rules that many education reformers have criticized for years."
When Moskowitz held hearings in November 2003 "on how union contracts imposed inane work rules on public schools and made it nearly impossible for principals to fire bad teachers," she "went toe to toe" with Weingarten, who arranged to have McLaughlin, a longtime friend and ally, at her side during the confrontation. McLaughlin, who had opposed the hearings, said that he was there "to remind the city council members that the entire labor movement in the city is watching them." Influenced by McLaughlin's presence, then City Councilman Bill de Blasio, a strong labor supporter who would later become mayor, "did what he could to distance himself from Moskowitz during the hearing."
The New York Daily News stated in an issue of November 2003, "McLaughlin did not testify. But with 1.5 million members in his labor council - many of them active, Democratic voters - he didn't have to. McLaughlin's show of political muscle demonstrated how unnerved the unions are by the hearings."
In November, 2003, McLaughlin gave a speech at Queens College criticizing Moskowitz's hearings. He accused Gifford Miller, the City Council Speaker, of making "--referencing to Eve Moskowitz--at the expense of the careers of "over 100,000 workers"—referencing New York public school teachers—who "were ridiculed in the process." McLaughlin, stating that labor had "built our city," simply saying that it was time "to get tough and play offense."
A local newspaper, attempting to make sense of the speech, stated: "Clearly, here was the labor candidate denouncing the anti-labor candidate in no uncertain terms in what will be recalled as the day the race for the 2005 Democratic mayoral primary got off the mark."
Other activism McLaughlin was part of a coalition urging the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to commit $1 billion in post-9/11 federal funding to the Liberty Jobs plan. He led the 2003 Labor for Democracy campaign in reaction to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's effort to increase voter participation by replacing the 2003 party primaries with a charter referendum proposal. "If not the labor movement," he said, "then who is going to stand up and speak out for the working people? Sure, I'm looking cynically at the mayor's proposal; this smells of politics. What's broken? What's he trying to fix? The medicine we're trying to give the patient is not what the doctor prescribed. It imperils democracy."
McLaughlin, in collaboration with Randi Weingarten, Rev. Al Sharpton and others, was part of a coalition that organized a march against police brutality. In 2003, he started, as the New York chairman of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a campaign which called for "a road to citizenship, the reunification of families, a voice and dignity in the workplace, and the civil rights of all people."
At the 2004 Republican National Convention, he worked with convention organizers to negotiate no-strike labor agreements, in order to secure the convention's venue in New York. However, during the convention, he organized a rally of unionists from a wide variety of trades to protest certain Bush Administration labor policies.
Indictment, trial and imprisonment
Indictment