 Rodrigues indicted for fraud
By Sally Apgar
Advertiser Staff Writer
The iron-fisted state director of the United Public Workers Union stands accused of betraying members of the very body whose rights he has defended with fierce loyalty for 36 years.
UPW is the state’s second- largest public employee union, representing 12,000 blue-collar state and county workers. Its leader, Gary Rodrigues, is arguably Hawai‘i’s most powerful labor leader.
Rodrigues, 59, was indicted by a federal grand jury yesterday on 43 counts alleging fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. One of his two daughters whom he raised alone, Robin Haunani Rodrigues Sabatini, 36, was also indicted for allegedly participating with her father in a scheme to steal from the union.
Rodrigues could not be reached for comment last night. And UPW members and friends of the powerful union leader contacted by The Advertiser yesterday declined to comment on his behalf.
In a 1997 interview, Rodrigues described his loyalty to the UPW, saying: "I don’t campaign for my job. My members understand me, and they do know that I will go to the mat for them. I will fight for them. That’s my job."
The indictment alleges Rodrigues and his daughter defrauded the union of money paid out of UPW accounts for dental benefits and defrauded a UPW health benefit program. It also alleges that Rodrigues embezzled an unspecified amount of money by having the UPW pay premiums on dental benefits that were not required.
The son of a plumber on Kaua‘i, Rodrigues garnered so much political power over the years that he is often referred to as Hawai‘i’s "26th senator." Known for working 12- or 14-hour days and organizing strikes as if mobilizing for war, Rodrigues has rarely been questioned by the union faithful. A tough negotiator, he became the union’s state director in February 1981, when he vowed to "run the union as a militant union should be run."
In 1996, Rodrigues was appointed by then Senate President Norman Mizuguchi to the powerful Judicial Selection Commission, which screens candidates for state judgeships and decides whether judges should be retained for succeeding terms.
Rodrigues’ critics within the union have called him "power hungry," and twice they have challenged him.
In 1999, he faced a one-day union trial behind closed doors but was cleared of all charges. The trial, convened by the UPW’s parent organization, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, addressed charges that Rodrigues violated the constitutional rights of members who questioned whether he had used union money to settle a rumored sexual harassment suit filed against him by Georgietta Carroll, his secretary until 1993.
In late 1998, UPW members circulated a petition demanding to know whether union dues were used to pay the estimated $200,000 to $300,000 that settled the suit.
Carroll, who jointly purchased a home in Oregon with the labor leader, was at one point in 1997 the highest paid woman in the UPW administration, with a base salary of $65,095, according to union records obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor.
The only other time Rodrigues’ authority was challenged was during the summer of 1983. Back then, the union’s executive board suspended him for 10 weeks when he accused then-president James Brown of misusing union money after Brown had alleged Rodrigues had also misused UPW money. In the end, Rodrigues was cleared. That same day, he changed the locks on the office doors and fired seven staffers who opposed him.
Rodrigues grew up on Kaua‘i, where his parents grew vegetables to make ends meet. He is a graduate of Kapa‘a High School.
In a 1997 interview, Rodrigues recalled how his father, Jackie, sympathized with striking plantation workers and gave them whatever vegetables they needed.
Rodrigues said in that same interview that he and his two siblings were expected to work hard at every task they were handed. Once when he told his father, "I cannot do that," his father snapped back: "‘Cannot’ died before you were born."
After high school, Rodrigues spent four years in the Navy repairing electronic equipment and radar. Then he returned to the Kaua‘i he loved, and at the age of 23 applied for a job as UPW’s Kaua‘i business agent. He was the youngest of 13 applicants for the job, and UPW officials worried members would not follow a man so much younger than them.
On Feb. 1, 1965, he was hired at a salary of $413 a month. During the next 16 years, he not only served the union, but after a brief marriage, he gained custody of his two daughters. He carried a diaper bag and raised them himself.
In 1981, he was first appointed and then formally elected state director of Hawai‘i’s UPW. That first year, he singled out disloyal staff members he felt were "do nothing people who have hurt the rank and file."
With yesterday’s indictment, a federal jury will likely decide if Rodrigues betrayed that same rank and file.
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