May 17, 2006  7a.m.

BY CAROL MARIN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Andy Ryan is just as elusive as when I first reported on him two years ago. I know because I spent yesterday trying to find him. I wanted to ask about the City Hall corruption trial of Robert Sorich and three others. The defendants are accused of politically rigging the hiring of city workers.

In his opening arguments Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins prominently featured Andy's employment saga, making me wonder if he might end up on the witness stand.

When I called his parents' south suburban home, I think it was his mom who answered. "Please do not call our home. Thank you," she said politely. And hung up.

As the mother of a son the same age, I completely understand how unwelcome my call was.

It was in August 2004 that I first reported on the teenaged Ryan. It was his picture more than my words that told the whole story.

Andy is the son of Tom Ryan, a high-ranking official of the Carpenters Union Local 13. Back in 2004, Andy managed, at just 19, to get a coveted, $50,000-a-year job as a building inspector for the City of Chicago.

It was mind-boggling to think a kid who looked so young, who was so young, had accumulated all the requisite credentials to qualify for such an important job.

What made his hiring even more shocking was it came just a year after a fatal porch collapse and a nightclub disaster. Those tragedies had, in the starkest terms, established the life-and-death significance of city inspections.

So why did young Andy get hired?

Because the fix was in.

According to a recent government filing, a top Daley administrator complained that a "Carpenters Official was 'busting my balls' to hire" Andy Ryan. And also hire Kevin Sexton, the son of Carpenters Union President Mike Sexton. Just like Ryan, the Sexton kid wasn't remotely qualified.

As the story unfolded in the fall of 2004, just about every city official I talked to obfuscated, backtracked, or outright lied about what really happened. That included Stan Kaderbek, who was the city building commissioner at the time. And it included Andy's dad, who reluctantly called me back.

Tom Ryan, whose father before him was a honcho in the union, claimed his son was practically "born with a hammer in his hand." Kind of like arguing a child of a brain surgeon didn't need medical school to open somebody's skull.

What Mr. Ryan failed to add was that the members, locals and district council of his union combined forces to be Mayor Daley's single biggest contributor a year earlier. In that 2003 shoo-in race against three nominal opponents, the carpenters nonetheless showered Daley with $84,000.

Call it an entitlement program if you will, because clearly Ryan and Sexton felt entitled to some reward for their loyalty. How better than by arranging incredible jobs for their unqualified sons?

While it will be up to a federal jury to decide whether the current crew of defendants was responsible for this debacle, it's the union part of this story that gets neglected.

I learned early the good things that a union can do. I joined my first union at 16 when I worked the checkout counter at Dominick's. It helped pay my way through college.

Today, I have two union cards -- one from AFTRA-SAG for television work, the other from the Communications Workers of America for my newspaper job.

I'm proud of both but appalled by the failure of organized labor to hold its leadership accountable for the damage some have done to the movement. Tom Ryan and Mike Sexton are still in the high command of their union. They did not return calls.

Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, did call back and I'm grateful. But he chose his words carefully.

"Did we in the labor community get a bad name from it? Yes," he said. But he added, "I think it was a set of fathers ... trying to do something for their kids and just got overzealous."

"Overzealous" is far too kind.

Ryan and Sexton were ethically bankrupt and utterly disrespectful of the men and women who ply a union trade, fulfill the required apprenticeships, become journeymen and apply for city jobs on the square.

As the American middle class continues to disappear, as the gulf between haves and have-nots becomes a gaping chasm, unions need to be called to account just like politicians and just like the Enrons and the Tycos of this world.

Andy Ryan?

He was just a kid who got lousy guidance.

But his dad and the other guy?