New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
May 18, 2003, Sunday
CALL it a sudden reversal. Two
months ago, Terence M. O'Sullivan was part of a lonely minority on the board of
Ullico, the union-owned insurer, and was badly outvoted when he sought to
require the directors to return profits from a stock trading deal that is the
subject of four investigations.
That deal has become an
embarrassment to organized labor because 17 Ullico directors, most of them past
and present union presidents, are being investigated for making more than $6
million in profits from what some investigators suggest was illegal insider
trading.
Ten days ago, Mr. O'Sullivan, 48,
was elected Ullico's chairman and chief executive after he played a major
behind-the-scenes role in forging a new slate of directors that vows to restore
integrity to the company.
As if that task is not tough
enough, Mr. O'Sullivan, who is president of the 800,000-member Laborers'
International Union of North America, must also seek to reverse Ullico's
financial woes. The company, which provides insurance and pension services to
millions of union members, lost $116 million last year. Mr. O'Sullivan said it
needed a cash infusion of $50 million or more to go forward.
At first glance, he may not appear
to be the right man for the job. For the last three years, he has headed the
laborers' union, which not long ago was considered one of the nation's most
corrupt labor organizations.
But Mr. O'Sullivan says his union
has largely rid itself of corruption after an eight-year internal cleanup that
removed 220 officials for wrongdoing, including more than 120 found to be
members or associates of organized crime. He generally gets high marks from
union members, government officials and other labor leaders for moving his
Washington-based union away from its dark past.
“He's the greatest breath of
fresh air to come along at the top level in the labor movement in a long time,”
said John W. Wilhelm, the president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant
Employees International Union.
“Terry has simultaneously
led a process of very dramatic change in one of the nation's most important
unions and has taken a very strong leadership role in the labor movement as a
whole.”
In late March, Mr. O'Sullivan and
Mr. Wilhelm, members of a special committee of Ullico's board, were outvoted 6
to 2 when they sought to force other directors to return their profits from
buying and selling Ullico stock.
Mr. O'Sullivan was so upset by
that vote and by the reluctance of the chairman at the time, Robert A.
Georgine, to clean up the mess that he began working with other union leaders
to oust Mr. Georgine.
“What Terry did was unify a
lot of diverse elements to bring everything together,” said Peter G.
Aylward, president of Strategic Property Advisors, which controls more than 10
percent of Ullico's stock.
Once the new slate was elected,
Mr. O'Sullivan became chairman, and at his first full board meeting last
Tuesday, he pushed through a resolution that required all directors who
profited in the stock trading to return their earnings within 30 days.
“We need to put these
matters behind us so we can focus our time and attention on addressing the needs
of the working men and women of organized labor,” Mr. O'Sullivan said.
When he talks about helping
working men and women, it does not sound like hollow pandering. His father was
member of the laborers, a union that often does the heaviest lifting and dirtiest
work at construction sites. Mr. O'Sullivan said that thanks to the union, his
father, Terence J. O'Sullivan, was able to give his family a middle-class life.
“I love this union,”
he said. “Everything that I have, the clothing on my back, the shoes that
I wear, the education that I got, was because this union provides for working
men and women.”
Mr. O'Sullivan was born in San
Francisco in 1955 and moved to Virginia in 1968, when his father was elected
the laborers' secretary-treasurer. After graduating from American University,
where he majored in business administration, he taught high school and coached
baseball for three years. After starting his own computer-services company and
running it for seven years, he returned to the union, running a training center
in West Virginia that taught courses on construction and safety.
In 1994, he became assistant to
the union's president, Arthur A. Coia, and then the union's chief of staff. Mr.
Coia was forced to resign in 1999 before pleading guilty to federal fraud
charges involving his purchase of three Ferraris. After Mr. O'Sullivan was
vetted by federal and internal investigators, the union's board elected him to
succeed Mr. Coia.
“Maybe there's some ghost in
the closet about Terry,” said Ronald Nobili, a dissident under Mr. Coia
and a business manager of a laborers' local in Bridgeport, Conn. “But I
only have nice things to say about him. He's a motivator, and he's very well
liked by everybody.”
In his free time, he watches his
son, Brendan, 16, play baseball and his daughter, Caitlin, 11, play basketball.
He runs up to four miles a day.
AT the office, Mr. O'Sullivan is
focusing on restoring Ullico's integrity and financial health and making the
laborers' union grow. He is meeting with investors, looking for someone to run
the company day to day and overseeing Ullico's response to investigators.
As for helping the union grow, he
has increased its spending on organizing to 26 percent of the union's budget --
to $11 million a year from $2 million. The union added 32,000 members last
year, he said, as part of his strategy of increasing the union's share of the
construction market in many cities.
“My war cry is: 'Increase
our market share,' “ he said. “With significant market share, we
increase our ability to negotiate the kinds of wages, benefits and working
conditions that our members need, want and deserve.”