Iron Workers help Stephens campaign

Running a campaign for public office isn't cheap - especially when the office is for a non-paying position like the University of Michigan Board of Regents.

Greg Stephens, business manager of IBEW Local 252, is a candidate this year for U-M Board of Regents on the November statewide ballot. Shown here second from left, he recently accepted a check for $2,000 from the Iron Workers Local 25 Political Action Committee to offset the cost of his campaign. Shaking his hand is Local 25 Business Manager Frank Kavanaugh.

They are flanked by Local 25 BA Bob Couts and President Shorty Gleason.

Other locals wishing to make contributions can send a check to Greg Stephens for U-M Regent, P.O. Box 281, Saline, MI 48176.

Legal labor giant Boaz Siegel dies

A memorial service will be held at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26 for labor legal giant Boaz Siegel, who passed away Sept. 22, 2002 in his Laguna Woods, California home.

He was 87. The service will be held at the Birmingham Temple, 28611 West 12 Mile in Farmington Hills.

Michigan's lawyers knew Mr. Siegel as a professor, who began teaching at Wayne State University in 1941. He taught labor law for 31 years, and in 1962, was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Labor to the National Advisory Council on Health and Welfare Plans.

It was his work on health and welfare plans that won him the vast appreciation of the labor community. Over the years, "Buzz" Siegel not only acted as legal counsel for local union pension funds and SUB funds, he actually wrote the plans and guided them through the first legal and legislative hurdles.

Congressman Sander Levin, who worked as a labor attorney three decades ago under Mr. Siegel's tutelage, said his old boss' contributions were "immense." He recalled how Buzz was given the task of setting the first Supplemental Unemployment Benefit Fund for Pipe Fitters Local 636 and Plumbers Local 98 - the first such fund for any building trades local in the nation.

There were no suitable plans to follow in other local unions, so Levin, and then Mr. Siegel, made things up as they went along. Through trial and error, they worked together to formulate a suitable plan, one that passed muster with all the agencies that regulate union funds. It was no small task.

"I can't think of anyone in the legal profession in whom you can have more pride," Levin said two years ago, when Siegel was honored at the new Pipe Fitters Local 636 union hall. "Buzz frequently was asked to take a look at cases that involved injured workers or widows, who wondered about their benefits. Buzz wanted to follow the law, but he also followed his heart, and hundreds of individual union members benefited."

Buzz worked for numerous unions and union leaders over the years.

I knew him since I came on, and he's been with us since the origination of our funds back in 1957," said Michigan Painters District Council Secretary-Treasurer Robert Kennedy. "He was a union organizer before he was an attorney. Then he was the professor for most labor attorneys who came after him. He was very knowledgeable, and a good guy."

When he was honored two years ago, Siegel said "the reward has been in helping working people. As I look back on my career I can say it was substantially devoted to that purpose."