Boston Herald Howie Carr column

Aug. 31--Tomorrow is Labor Day -- have any of youse seen my pinky ring?

The big breakfast is at the Park Plaza, because the hotel is that rarest of modern institutions in the Dreaded Private Sector, a unionized anything that hasn't gone into bankruptcy. The boys even bring in a union band, which is about as good as the brotherhood's scrambled eggs.

This year an SRO crowd is expected because the Democratic primary is only a week away, so every politician in the state has to show up. It's required, just like when you get a subpoena, which is a word you should probably think twice about using with this crowd.

Outside in Park Square, every business agent's cigar smoke-filled Cadillac will be festooned with bumper stickers like "Labor Day: From the People Who Brought You the Weekend."

Oddly, the bumper stickers never brag, "Labor Day: From the People Who Brought You the No-Show Job."

But the most amazing thing about this year's breakfast is the free pass the three female candidates for statewide office -- Marsha Coakley, Maura Healey and Deb Goldberg -- are getting for their support from a different union, Teamsters Local 25.

It's outrageous enough, the way AFL-CIO boss Steve Tolman is pumping union dues into the campaign of his brother, Warren Tolman, or Tol-person, as the wannabe AG is now known for his pandering TV ads to the gender that will make up at least 57 percent of the Democratic voters Sept. 9.

But what's even more appalling is how these three female pols have thrown in with thug-infested Local 25, which has been running its own personal War on Women for decades. Earlier this month some of its members were accused of trying to shut down a non-union TV crew in Milton by threatening to "break the face" of the show's female star.

But that's not all. Just ask a woman who used to operate a vending truck on the sets of movies filming in Boston that were controlled by Local 25 gangster Jimmy Flynn. (His mugshot appears directly below Jimmy Sims' on the feds' Winter Hill Gang organizational chart.)

Flynn began moving up in Local 25 after beating a 1981 organized-crime murder rap. He eventually muscled out another Teamster punk named Billy Winn, whose career in the trade-union movement you can read about at some length in Count 19 of Whitey Bulger's indictment.

Flynn wanted to give the vending concession to one of his wiseguys, Bobby Martini Sr., an ex-MDC cop fired for insurance fraud.

According to Herald stories at the time, Flynn assigned the murder contract to Martini but word of the plot got back to George Cashman, then the president of Local 25.

According to Herald stories, Cashman nixed the hit, saying that whacking a dame would bring down too much heat on the mobbed-up local. Instead, Cashman ordered his gunsels to just give her a good beating, which they did.

Cashman himself later went to prison.

Nice people, you say, but what does this have to do with the leadership that endorsed Marsha, Maura and Deb?

The connection is the current president, one Sean O'Brien. He got his start in Local 25 through his dad, William O'Brien of Medford. In 1994, two armored-car guards were murdered in cold blood in Hudson, N.H., by a crew that included four Local 25 thugs from Charlestown.

According to the indictment, William O'Brien ordered the rental car used in the getaway after the double homicide. He was never charged.

And now William O'Brien's son Sean is the boss of Local 25, when he's not serving a suspension for brazenly threatening his fellow Teamsters down in Rhode Island and then having his rant posted on YouTube as a warning to the honest membership.

Do you think anyone will inquire tomorrow of Marsha, Maura and Deb how they can allow O'Brien and his misogynistic minions to run phone banks for them?

One last thing. Wednesday is Whitey Bulger's 85th birthday. Do you suppose a moment of silence will be observed at the Park Plaza tomorrow for the boys' erstwhile no-show public-sector brother?

After all, the whole breakfast is From the People Who Brought You Cement Overshoes.

Go to howiecarrshow.com to order tickets to Howie's next "Night of Crime" in Bangor, Maine, Sept. 12.

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