The head of the biggest city workers union has been booted from his job over accusations that he hired more than a dozen employees, including some relatives, and spent more than $1 millions in union funds without official board approval.
The now ex-union president, Ernest Garrett, denied any misconduct, saying he substantially improved the organization’s finances during his three years in the job and was targeted by political rivals as he tried to fix longstanding management deficiencies.
Garrett was elected president of Philadelphia’s blue-collar municipal union, AFSCME District Council 33, in 2020, sweeping out a longtime incumbent and shocking the city’s political and labor establishments.
He vowed at the time to reform and bring “respect [and] dignity” to the 10,000-member union, which represents workers in a wide range of areas such as sanitation, prisons, libraries and the Streets Department.
But an AFSCME judicial panel member based in Arizona decided this week that Garrett made a host of financial decisions, including hiring, changing salaries, handing out contracts, and spending half a million dollars on hoodies and other union apparel, without getting proper approval by the union’s board.
One of the complainants, DC 33 vice president and former Garrett ally Omar Salaam, has been leading the local since the decision came down Tuesday. The union’s executive board is slated to select an interim president Friday.
Violations, but no personal benefit
Garrett was an official for Local 394, an AFSCME unit representing Water Department workers, when he was elected to head the district council in October 2020. His upset victory was part of a wave of heightened union activity tied in part to the health risks and job losses that essential workers endured in the early days of the pandemic.
He defeated an incumbent, Herman “Pete” Matthews, who was first elected president in 1996. Garrett’s supporters accused Matthews of being absent during the pandemic, the Inquirer reported.
During Garrett’s relatively short term as president, DC 33 flexed its power in sometimes unexpected ways, most notably by endorsing mayoral candidate Jeff Brown last year. The millionaire supermarket magnate and first-time political candidate later came in fifth place in the May primary.
At the same time, a group of six union officials, including his running mate Salaam and sanitations local leader Charles Carrington, became concerned about the way he was running the organization.
“President Garrett has engaged in financial malpractice and corruption,” the group alleged in the complaint, which was filed in October. Among other violations, he failed to hold required meetings of the union’s Legal Service Fund, they said. “Like in all other dealings, Garrett has run this fund as if it were his own private bank account,” they said.
“Actions that violate our constitution are not taken lightly,” Natalia Pérez Santos, a spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said this week. “Upon the conclusion of a thorough investigation, the national union’s independent Judicial Panel summarily removed Ernest Garrett from his position of leadership.”
Garrett said he never personally benefited from the alleged violations, and he argued that he took steps to strengthen the union’s finances and use revenue from members’ dues payments more efficiently.
He said the fund that pays for members’ health benefits went from a $30 million deficit to a $75 million positive balance during his tenure, and DC 33’s assets grew from $9 million to $33 million. He cut a number of employees’ excessively high salaries, such as a secretary who earned $80,000 a year.
“You don’t have a secretary in the city that makes $80,000, let alone one that’s at District 33,” he said in an interview.
In testimony before the AFSCME judicial panel, Garrett noted that it had been common practice for decades for DC 33’s president to hire staff without going through a board vote. Political director Evon Sutton had been hired and her salary set by his predecessor Matthews without board approval, he said.
“I told them about all the people we hired, but I didn’t understand there was some language that said that, I should have went to the board,” he said this week.
He said the complaint and judicial panel decision, which bars him from running for president again for four years, were spearheaded by his rivals within the politically fractious union local.
“You know, union politics — some individuals wanted to try to run against me in this upcoming election. They filed some charges, saying that I misappropriated union funds,” Garrett said. “I stand on everything I’ve ever done.”
He said he plans to appeal the decision.
Reforms fell short
The ruling by AFSCME judicial panel member Frank Piccioli paints a picture of an organization technically governed by a set of financial and administrative codes, but in practice run informally and on the basis of personal relationships.
Garrett appears to have inherited that informality and in some cases tried to institute reforms, but was ultimately sanctioned for continuing to deviate from the rules. Nepotism seems to have been common, with Garrett hiring or giving contracts to his and Sutton’s relatives. Her husband was James Sutton, a previous DC 33 president.
Garrett testified that he brought on his son as a paid intern and his nephew as a maintenance worker. He contracted with his sister-in-law to provide catering and other services, which he said saved the union money.
“Brother Garrett should have gone to the Executive Board before making the change from the previous caterer,” Piccioli wrote. “While not technically a violation, hiring his sister-in-law to perform the work also gives the appearance of nepotism.”
The complainants alleged that among those hired without board approval were Garrett’s other son and Sutton’s son, who were both also employed in the city’s scandal-plagued Sheriff’s Department at the time. Garrett denied they were ever on the payroll, but said Sutton’s son had a contract to provide security for the union. One witness described that work as inappropriate “double-dipping.”
Some of the positions he hired for had already existed in some version previously, Garrett testified. He argued that “no one has sought to change the hiring procedure or said he needs approval to hire employees, and the practice of the president hiring employees is well-known, ‘everybody knew.’”
The judicial panel acknowledged that Garrett’s management practices were nothing new, but said they were still wrong.
“Brother Garrett’s defense that he relied on a practice established by his predecessors in office over multiple years does not justify his violations of the International Constitution,” Piccioli wrote. “While the District Council may have saved money through Brother Garrett’s actions (as he alleges), it does not excuse the violations.”
The appearance of “something improper”
Garrett also defended some of the large expenditures the union made during his tenure. He testified, for example, that the executive board knew about and approved buying new union apparel for members to wear during a 2022 trip to Dorney Park, due to concerns about COVID.
But Piccioli’s decision says the union ended up paying a printing company about $495,000 for the apparel, more than double the $224,000 budgeted for hoodies, and Garrett violated the AFSCME constitution by not getting board approval for the higher spending.
The decision also notes that the printer apparently rents space in a union building, and is owned by Sutton’s nephew, who is himself a former union official.
“This appears to be a business relationship that Brother Garrett purportedly cultivated with the family member of a high-ranking District Council 33 staffer and former president. While no evidence was presented of a direct financial benefit to Brother Garrett, such conduct clearly creates the appearance that something improper is occurring, even if that is not the case,” the judicial panel member wrote.
With regard to the Legal Service Fund, Garrett said he himself commissioned an audit of the fund by a law firm, Spear Wilderman, which was paid a total of $600,000.
The lawyers discovered that a committee required by the fund rules hadn’t met for over 20 years. Garrett took the information to the executive board, which voted members onto the committee, including Salaam.
The Legal Service Fund’s board had information about Spear Wildman providing legal services, but Piccioli found Garrett guilty on the charge that he never brought the contract to the board for approval.
