Andy Zipser, Editor

11 Jan 2010

The Guild Reporter

Regardless of how wide a swath they cut, today's web-based bogus union sites have little chance of even approaching the longevity and resilience of the Trade Union Courier, grand-daddy of all scam union publications. 

Founded in New York in 1936 as the Butcher Worker, published by the Hebrew Butcher Workers Union, Local 234, it merged over subsequent years with several other publications and evolved into something distinctly gamier than rancid fat. The Federal Trade Commission went after it in 1952 for "unfair and deceptive acts and practices." The U.S. Senate Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field—more commonly known as the McClellan Commission—questioned its coziness with the corrupt Carpenters union in 1958. The Third Court of Appeals found the Courier guilty of criminal contempt in 1960 for persistently misrepresenting itself as affiliated with the AFL. And still the damn thing kept rolling.

More than 40 years later, in late 2004, the ILCA Reporter found that the tabloid was then implying an affiliation with the Teamsters and was inflating a virtually non-existent print-run to claim, variously, that it "reaches more than 11 million members as well as 10,000 physicians" and that it "is mailed to 26 million working men and women." Most curiously, its badly laid-out and obviously ripped off "news" was set off by page after page of glossy four-color advertising from some of the biggest brand names in the U.S.: Toyota, Honda, T. Rowe Price, Starbucks, Tommy Hilfiger and on and on. 

More recently, however, there are signs that "America's leading labor newspaper" may have breathed its last. The Courier's web site, for example, shows 2006 as its most recent date. More to the point, owner Jay Travin and one of his salesmen, Gary Weisbrot, pleaded guilty last August to tax evasion after being charged with concealing a million dollars in revenues. Weisbrot, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to mail fraud for selling space in "non-existent publications," was sentenced to 18 months in prison and a $10,000 fine. 

Travin, now in his 70s, was treated more kindly: five years' probation, including one year of home confinement, plus a $15,000 fine. The kid-glove treatment angered Weisbrot, who told a Gannett reporter at the time that Travin "was the one who thought up the situation."

Indeed, there's no question Travin got the better deal: "home confinement"  is a 5,000-square-foot house with swimming pool backing onto a golf course in Delray, Florida.  And although the Trade Union Courier may have gone dormant, that doesn't mean Travin has given up the life of a huckster: the Trade Union Media Group, which was the Trade Union Courier's New York-registered parent company, now turns up as a Florida-registered corporation in Boca Raton, just seven miles from Travin's home.

Moreover, in mid-2007 Travin also registered a limited liability corporation in Florida under the name American Labor Journal. The business address he provided for the American Trade Journal, which the Florida secretary of state indicates is "inactive," has the same Manhattan address as the Trade Union Courier. 

Stay tuned.