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Disgraced former Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin returned to work last week. He is an electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 working at a construction site on Manhattan’s West Side.

He’s also awaiting trial on a 186-page federal indictment that charges him with 43 counts of racketeering and corruption. McLaughlin, a former Queens Assemblyman and once New York’s top labor leader, is accused of defrauding the union, receiving bribes and embezzling funds from a number of sources, including a Queens Little League. He pleaded not guilty in October and is out on $250,000 bail.

The pre-trial hearing was scheduled for June 14 in United States District Court Southern District of New York. Numerous calls to the case manager for presiding judge Kenneth Karas to retrieve results of the hearing went unreturned.

McLaughlin was president of the New York City Central Labor Council, the country’s largest municipal labor council. He has not been active in that capacity since August 2006 when he was forced to take an unpaid leave of absence and was subsequently indicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

A spokesman for the CLC said the council has, for all intents and purposes, put McLaughlin in the past.

“The CLC is a victim of his crimes,” the spokesman said. The indictment alleged that McLaughlin took $185,000 from the council

The CLC appears to be one of many victims.

The indictment also asserted that McLaughlin, who served seven terms as a Democratic Assemblyman representing District 25 in Queens, illegally obtained a total of $2.2 million from the State Assembly, Local 3’s Street Light Division and a Little League, among other sources. This was accomplished, the indictment stated, through criminal activity involving mail fraud, wire fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, the receipt of unlawful payments and other things of value from employers, and labor bribery.

As a major result of the fallout from the McLaughlin case the CLC drafted a new constitution. The secretary and treasurer positions were eliminated, and the president and vice president are limited to one three-year term.

Gary La Barbera is running unopposed for the presidency. The elections are scheduled to take place June 25.