New Face, Lingering Problems for New York City's Carpenters" Union When he was elected in December as the leader of the city's 25,000 unionized carpenters, Michael Bilello was helping to build the new PATH station at ground zero. After the election, he "put down his tools" - as they say in his trade - and went to Brooks Brothers, where he had once built a staircase, to buy a new suit. "It was the only place I could find with the union label in the pocket," he said. Michael Bilello, 54, the new leader of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, was helping to build the new PATH station at ground zero when he was elected to the post in December. Mr. Bilello, 54, has been a carpenter since graduating from high school in Hicksville, N.Y., in 1975. After years of swinging a hammer, he won election as a reformer, pledging to return democracy and integrity to a union in distress. He has his work cut out for him. Among the challenges he faces are an increase in nonunion construction, unsigned labor contracts, a breakaway faction seeking to leave the union, a federal judge who monitors his every move, and organized-crime families that still view the New York City District Council of Carpenters as a prime feeding ground. He also has to beat the jinx: the last four leaders of the district council were indicted for on-the-job crimes. Mr. Bilello's immediate predecessor, Michael Forde, is serving an 11-year term in federal prison for taking bribes; Frederick W. Devine was convicted in 1998 of embezzlement; Paschal McGuinness was acquitted of bribery but resigned in 1994 as part of a consent decree that settled a federal civil racketeering case and placed the union under court oversight. Theodore Maritas did not make it to court: he vanished in 1982 on the eve of his trial on mob-tied extortion charges, leaving behind only a wallet found floating near the Throgs Neck Bridge. "The members have always felt kind of helpless over the way the organization has gone over the years," said Mr. Bilello, who had a brief stint as a union business agent in 1999 but was fired after he shined a spotlight on corruption. The idea is to give them the ability to determine their own future. As part of that effort, carpenters will vote this month on new collective bargaining agreements, for the first time. Previous contracts were approved by a small group of union officers. "They did it at a table about this size," Mr. Bilello said as he sat in the large wood-paneled corner office he inherited at the council's Hudson Street headquarters. Exploring the office on his first day, he opened what he thought was a closet door, only to find a well-equipped kitchen. Behind another door was a marble-clad bathroom with a glass shower stall. "They had it nice," he said. But the party appears to be over. Union benefit funds have slid sharply because of the lack of work. In a bid to keep the growing nonunion sector at bay, the proposed contracts give employers vastly increased freedom to pick their workers, bypassing the union's out-of-work list, except for shop stewards. They also call for increased job site scrutiny, including electronic scanning of union cards as a safeguard against the use of nonunion labor, a common fraud in the past. The pacts were negotiated by national union officials who placed the council in trusteeship after Mr. Forde's 2009 indictment. Mr. Bilello campaigned against the so-called full mobility provision, arguing that older carpenters and whistle-blowers could be left sitting on the bench. But he has not taken a position on the pending vote. "I don't want to taint it," he said. Then there is the secession movement started last year by current and former members, some of whom have run afoul of strict anticorruption measures imposed under the 1994 consent decree. The Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners Union is promoting itself as a viable option to the district council. Part of its pitch is that unlike the national carpenters, who are engaged in a bitter national jurisdictional feud with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the Amalgamated group is affiliated with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which belongs to the labor federation. "We have been offering assistance to them," said a painters" union spokesman, referring to the Amalgamated group.