Word: dio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Latching onto the 1,000 employees of Roto-Broil Corp. (electric broilers), one crooked local was so helpful as to allow the management (1956 gross: $10 million) to keep about $23,000 in check-off dues. In most other instances Dio-controlled "unions" were nothing beyond fronts for extortion thugs, who sent their worried victims into the arms of Equitable Research Associates, Inc. For handsome fees Equitable saw to it that employers were never bothered by Dio's union organizers. Equitable's boss: Johnny Dio...
...this dragnet procedure we have caught an assortment of man-eating sharks." It was indeed as forbidding a catch of fish as John McClellan's Senate labor rackets investigating committee has yet snared. One by one last week's school of hoods-including notorious Extortionist John (Johnny Dio) Dioguardi-appeared before the committee in the Senate caucus room and rasped out their Fifth Amendment pleas. But the evidence against them was there nonetheless. It added up to another chapter of the story of how mobsters took over segments of the nation's labor movement in the same...
...Johnny Dio's man-eating sharks were everywhere, fanning out among makers of dog food, candy, zippers; they even swarmed around crucifix platers, printers, toilet-seat reconditioners, stone setters. In most instances the "organizers" operated under phony union local charters that were traceable to Dio, and ultimately to Teamster Union Big Shot Jimmy Hoffa...
Peanuts & Promises. Dio, who made a name for himself in his 20s as a strong-arm thug when he and an uncle muscled into the garment trucking industry, worked his way (after a stretch in Sing Sing) up into the labor rackets in a queer way. First he ran a few little dress-manufacturing shops. Then he took over a New York local of the foundering United Auto Workers (A.F.L.). With help from Jimmy Hoffa as well as the union's International Secretary-Treasurer Anthony Doria, Dio surrounded himself with mobsters who had grown tired of robbery, bookmaking...
When anti-Dio elements of the U.A.W.-A.F.L. International's executive board tried to get rid of Dio, Tony Doria fought the action, finally arranged for the union to buy Dio's resignation. The price, cash on the barrelhead: $16,000. Dio took the money-and like a feudal prince, took his locals too. He moved over to the Teamsters and began trying to grab the New York Teamster leadership for ambitious Jimmy Hoffa...