Retired pipe welder Philip Livingston remembers during the 1980s occasionally stopping by the union-owned Konocti Harbor, about a mile from his home in Kelseyville. Mazzola claimed in public filings that Konocti was a place for union members to retire. So Livingston asked to retire there, and was turned down.
"At any time you could go over there and see Mazzola over there and enjoying the meals," says Livingston, who now lives in southern Utah. "I just thought something was wrong."
Mayor Gavin Newsom and his Airport Commission president Larry Mazzola.
James Sanders
Konocti Field: future bettors' paradise?
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Ed Bermingham, then a Lake County plumber, also believed the resort benefited the Mazzola family more than the union.
"We had to pay a quarter from every hour's work" to accounts that went to Konocti, Bermingham says. "That was unfair."
Jim Bunting, a pipeline-welder then living in Half Moon Bay, got so angry about the idea that Mazzola used union money to prop up his pet money-losing resort, that he sought election to a union business-agent post in hopes of influencing the direction of Local 38.
"Part of my campaign literature was 'we're putting in $3 million a year to Konocti,'" recalls Bunting, from his current home in northern Oregon.
When Bunting won the election, the union eliminated his post.
In 1989 the three pipe workers joined together in a lawsuit alleging that top officials of Local 38 improperly used money from worker-benefit accounts to cover losses at the resort.
The litigation was a fracas. Livingston lost his temper in court while acting as his own attorney. Bunting lost a fortune in lawyers' fees. Bermingham years later reached a separate settlement of $100,000, he recalls.
The three retired pipe workers no longer talk to each other.
"We ended up fighting among ourselves," Livingston recalls. "To tell the truth, I wasn't that smart in front of the judge."
But they didn't let go of their grievances with Mazzola. Bermingham for a decade continued giving information to Labor Department officials who were investigating Local 38.
Livingston, meanwhile, turned himself into an amateur private investigator, learning about public records laws, rules governing union trust funds, and what the three retired plumbers describe as the Byzantine world of failed private investments Mazzola entered into using union money.
"I had a stack of paper 2 or 3 feet high. I could see they were taking loans out of these trust funds, and sending it out there. The money that was going out there was incredible. I helped get this later case going," recalls Livingston, who for 20 years kept up a regular correspondence with Labor Department officials and national plumbers' union leaders.
Three ornery pipe workers have a chance at immortality as the men who helped force Local 38, fiefdom of legendary old-style union boss Larry Mazzola, go straight.
But their legacy may be imperiled by a reputed political deal involving a Vegas-backed gambling pact in need of help from powerful Bay Area congresswomen.
If Pelosi, Boxer, and Feinstein can manage without skybox parties, and corporate jet rides, surely they can pass on this.
