Union officials
visited, worked
on Rodrigues’
Oregon home
Former residents of Rodrigues'
By Ian Lind
house say key UPW officials
did manual labor on the
union director's property
Star-BulletinKey officials of the United Public Workers have flown to Oregon several times a year to do construction and maintenance work on property owned by UPW state director Gary Rodrigues, according to several people familiar with the trips.
Walt and Donna Parker, who lived in Rodrigues' Oregon house from 1993 to 1996, said small groups of union staff arrived two or three times a year.
The union staff cleared the property, cut trees, put up and maintained fences, and did other jobs ranging from mowing the lawn to installing a sprinkler system, the Parkers said in a telephone interview from their home in Bend, Ore.
"They did whatever Gary told them to do," Donna Parker said.
The trips could have violated federal labor laws if union funds were spent improperly for Rodrigues' personal benefit, according to a federal labor official.
The UPW, in a written statement issued through the law firm of Brooks Tom Miller & Porter, said:
"The Honolulu Star-Bulletin is a longtime political opponent of United Public Workers and Gary Rodrigues. This article is yet another of its efforts to disparage and discredit them. Mr. Rodrigues, through a spokesman, denies any wrongdoing whatever with respect to the matters discussed in the story."
Leonard Agor, deputy director of the state Labor Department and former UPW Oahu director who participated in the trips, defended them as "retreats" for top union management.
The Parkers said they were invited to move in by Walt Parker's sister, Georgietta Carroll, who was joint owner of the Oregon property until 1993. Carroll was Rodrigues' secretary at UPW and had a long-standing personal relationship with the union leader.
Carroll has declined to answer questions about UPW. She resigned from the union earlier this year after her relationship with Rodrigues ended, and following the apparent settlement of a sexual harassment complaint she filed against him.
UPW staff who regularly traveled to Oregon were members of the union's inner circle, including island directors and several top administrators, in addition to Rodrigues.
Agor, who participated in the Oregon trips while on the union staff, acknowledged doing manual labor but said it was justified.
"To me, it was not an excursion, but a break away from regular business," Agor said. "It was more of a bonding thing.
"We did conduct union business, either over the dinner table or while watching TV," said Agor, who made his last Oregon trip before being appointed to the state position.
Donna Parker said the visitors "always wanted to make it sound like they were there on union business."
"They would come back in after a day working on the fence line and say, 'whew, that was a lot of union business,'" she said.
Walt Parker said during one early trip to Oregon he saw UPW staff helping build Rodrigues' log house, which was assembled from a prefabricated kit.
The UPW trips could have violated federal labor laws if staff time or union funds were used for Rodrigues' personal benefit, said Antoinette Dempsey, district director of the U.S. Office of Labor-Management Standards in San Francisco.
"Converting any union funds or property, including union staff time, to your own personal use could be considered embezzlement," Dempsey said.
But Dempsey said whether laws were violated depends on the circumstances.
"Lack of authorization has to be part of it," Dempsey said. "If in this union the members said, 'we like our state director, and feel that one of the benefits he should get is free labor to help build his house,' and it is brought before the union board and approved, there would be no violation."
Dempsey said she could not confirm or deny whether her office has initiated an investigation of Rodrigues or UPW.
Rodrigues and Carroll purchased the 40.5 acres of forest land in Bend in the mid-1980s, and built a 2,400-square-foot log cabin intended as a retirement home, according to Oregon property records.
UPW later purchased 193 acres next door, but the union land remains largely unimproved, the records show.
According to Walt Parker, the trips were treated as official union business.
"These were not vacation times for them," Parker said. "It was like a reward. Gary would say, 'enjoy, come help me.'"
Parker said he saw Rodrigues use a union credit card when taking a large group, including himself and visiting union staff, to dinner in a restaurant in Bend.
Parker said his sister also had use of a union credit card while she and several other women from the UPW staff visited following a union convention in California.
"She (Carroll) said Gary told her to use the credit card from the union for all the dinners," Parker said. "One night we went to their favorite Japanese restaurant, and the bill was close to $200."
One of the major jobs done by visiting staff was putting up a fence that runs along the west, south, and east sides of Rodrigues' 40-acre property, according to Parker.
UPW has not publicly stated its reasons for purchasing land in Oregon. It is inaccessible to the union's 12,000 members in Hawaii, and remains largely unimproved.
According to the Parkers, Rodrigues spoke of taking the land as part of a planned retirement deal with the union.
UPW's last annual report to the U.S. Department of Labor, filed in April 1998, shows the union's Oregon land cost $297,943, and an additional $18,401 has been spent for unspecified improvements.
