Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement

9. The Liberation of IBT Local 560

161 9 The Liberation of IBT Local 560 It is not a pretty story . . . [it] is a harrowing tale of how evil men sponsored by and part of organized crime elements, infiltrated and ultimately captured Local 560. —Judge Harold A. Ackerman, United States v. Local 560, 581 F. Supp. 279, 282 (D.N.J. 1984) Members were intimidated from expressing their opinions and disagreements . They were intimidated, sometimes it was subtle and sometimes it was not so subtle. The Union was a burden the members suffered. It did not negotiate good contracts, good wages or good bene fits. It existed for the benefit of organized crime members who controlled the union, not for the members. —Peter Brown, Local 560 president, testimony before a congressional committee in 1999 [T]he goal [of the Trusteeship] has been to transform the culture of the Union from one in which racketeering was acceptable behavior to one in which exploitation of the membership by organized crime, or any other form of corruption, will not be tolerated. I believe we have achieved that goal. —Local 560 Trustee Edwin Stier, Report and Recommendations of the Court Appointed Trustee for Teamsters Local 560, January 1999 INTRODUCTION In 1982, the 10,000-member IBT Local 560 was one of the largest Teamsters union locals in the country. Its members were employed by 425 Note: This chapter is a substantial revision of James B. Jacobs and David N. Santore, “The Liberation of IBT Local 560,” Criminal Law Bulletin, March–April 2000. companies,1 ranging from large national trucking firms to small cartage companies with as few as three or four drivers. IBT Local 560 members drove trucks, worked in warehouses, on road construction sites, and in laundries. The Executive Board, which managed the union’s daily affairs, consisted of seven elected officers, including president, vice-president, secretary -treasurer, recording secretary, and three trustees. The Executive Board appointed business agents, shop stewards, and benefit plan trustees.2 The business agents negotiated collective bargaining agreements and handled workers’ grievances.3 Shop stewards enforced the collective bargaining agreements at work sites.4 Benefit trustees oversaw the administration and operation of pension and welfare funds. LABOR RACKETEERING IN IBT LOCAL 560 Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, and his two brothers, Nunzio and Salvatore, dominated Local 560 for decades. Tony joined the union in the late 1940s and served as a business agent from 1948 until 1958 when he became president.5 His rise in Local 560 paralleled his rise in the Genovese crime family, which inducted him as a “made member.”6 In 1961, Tony enlisted Harold Konigsberg, Salvatore Briguglio, and others to kill Anthony Castellito, Local 560’s secretary-treasurer.7 Tony believed that Castellito had informed authorities about Tony’s extortion of a trucking company.8 Law enforcement authorities also suspected that Tony had ordered the 1963 murder of Walter Glockner, another Local 560 dissident. In 1966, Tony was sent to prison for extorting labor-peace payoffs from a trucking company.9 While he was doing time, his brother Salvatore ran the union. Tony was incarcerated in the same federal prison as Jimmy Hoffa. The two had a falling out, perhaps accounting for Tony’s suspected role in Hoffa’s murder.10 In 1975, federal prosecutors indicted Tony for conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute.11 The charge related to a loan from the New York State Teamsters Conference Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plan.12 Tony acted as a broker between the benefit plan’s trustee and the borrowers, who had close organized crime ties. The trustee demanded a substantial kickback for putting the loan through. The borrowers balked because other parties to the transaction also de162 THE LIBERATION OF IBT LOCAL 560 manded payoffs. For his role in smoothing the waters and brokering the deal, Tony was convicted in 1978 and sentenced to a four-year prison term.13 In 1978, Tony was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder of Local 560 dissident Anthony Castellito seventeen years earlier . The Local 560 leadership quickly voted to pay Tony a lucrative pension for the rest of his life14 and selected his daughter, Josephine, as secretary treasurer. In 1979, at a federal trial, Tony and his henchmen Stephen Andretta, Thomas Andretta, and Gabriel Briguglio were found guilty of violating RICO based upon their labor-peace extortions of two trucking...