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

2. Organized Crime and Organized Labor

2 Organized Crime and Organized Labor The meeting [of organized crime bosses in Apalachin, New York, in 1957] gave to millions of Americans their first clear knowledge that we have in this country a criminal syndicate that is obviously tightly organized into a secret brotherhood, which none of its members dare to betray, and which has insinuated itself into business and labor and public life at high levels. . . . One of the most significant results of this examination of the backgrounds of the Apalachin visitors was the revelation that twenty-three of them were directly connected with labor unions or labor-management bargaining groups. It was no coincidence that the names of these men and their cronies and associates kept cropping up during almost every investigation that was made of improper activities in labor and management. Hundreds of honest, decent union officials throughout the country, and perhaps millions of their hard-working members, are daily subjected to the manipulation of these racketeers and their henchmen. —Senator John McClellan, Crime without Punishment (1962), 116 The benefits a union officer’s position gave to a La Cosa Nostra member included the ability to transform an ugly criminal caterpillar into a very dangerous but beautiful butterfly. It gave instant legitimacy, an unlimited expense account, legitimate income for income tax purposes , plus all the money you could steal from union dues, an entree into the business community and an entree to those aspiring for political office. Later, the unions developed Political Action Committees or PACs to use for even more political leverage. To me, the unlimited possibilities the organized crime professional criminals involved in the American labor movement had to control the American public’s capitalistic and democratic society was frightening. —James Moody, FBI official in charge of organized crime, Testimony Before Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, July 24, 1996 23 Labor racketeering has never been just a sideline activity for the Cosa Nostra organized crime families. The image that some scholars and observers have of organized crime moving into unions and industrial racketeering as a way of laundering funds obtained from gambling, prostitution, drugs, and other black market operations is not accurate . Labor racketeering was a defining feature of American organized crime from the first decades of the twentieth century. Ultimately, it was labor racketeering that made Cosa Nostra part of the sociopolitical power structure of twentieth-century America. LAYING THE GROUNDWORK During the first third of the twentieth century, it was relatively easy for organized crime groups to take over local unions, especially craft unions. In violent conflicts between workers and employers, professional criminals supplied goons to both sides.1 Once the gangsters had a foot in a union’s door, they could take over by means of violence , intimidation, and election fraud. The immigrant workers could be intimidated, coerced, and deceived, but nefarious techniques were not always necessary. Some labor racketeers were charismatic leaders whom workers admired. No doubt, some workers thought they would be better off being represented by individuals with a reputation for being tough and well-connected. According to Harold Seidman ’s study of early twentieth-century labor racketeering, Labor Czars (1938): Unionists continued to do their own slugging until the great strikes of 1909 necessitated a change in tactics . . . the unions engaged gangsters to protect women strikers and pickets against employer thugs. . . . The unions soon discovered that gangsters did not accept temporary work. Once hired, they remained permanently employed, whether the union liked it or not. . . .2 Sometimes gangsters became labor officials without any vote or other action by the workers whom they came to represent. Under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), an employer could voluntarily recognize a particular union as the exclusive bargaining agent for his 24 ORGANIZED CRIME AND ORGANIZED LABOR workers.* That representation would be binding for three years and would continue unless the workers voted to be represented by a different union or not to be represented by any union. Some employers happily recognized practically nonexistent racketeer-constructed “unions” because, in effect, such unions were a scam allowing the racketeers to extract bribes and the employers to avoid having to deal with a real union. Indeed, employers could call upon these unions to establish and police an employers’ cartel. To cite just one early example, John Landesco ’s 1929 study for the Chicago Crime Commission reported that racketeers controlled the...