Word: mob
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...LABOR RACKETEERING has no price tag, but obviously nets the Mob many millions. It takes
...nevertheless pays the "union organizers" the workers' initiation fees and monthly dues. In another variation, the bogus union settles for "sweetheart" contracts that are grossly unfair to the workers it is supposed to represent. The difference between what a legitimate union might win for the workers and what the Mob union actually obtains is split between the mobsters and the company owners. In one such contract, writes Donald Cressey in his definitive work, Theft of the Nation, the president of a paper local won his union only one paid holiday a year: Passover. His membership was exclusively Puerto Rican...
...other ways as well, union racketeering can be as profitable to a company as it is to the Mob. Once the gangsters have taken over a union?they find their easiest prey in unskilled and semiskilled occupations?they can guarantee both labor peace and a competitive edge over other companies in wages and benefits. There is, of course, a fee, but that is often lower for the businessman than the real costs of strikes or higher wages...
Once brought under the Mob's umbrella, a business almost always ceases to operate legitimately. If it is a restaurant ?favorite targets?or a nightclub, it buys coal or oil from one LCN affiliate, rents linen from another, ships garbage out through still another. Its entertainers, parking-lot attendants and even its hat check girls must always be approved by the Mob?and sometimes they must kick back part of what they take in. When the gangsters were big in Las Vegas, they sometimes used skimmed cash to supplement the fees paid to featured performers. The under-the-table...
...Sicilians from another area, going so far as to take Neapolitans as allies. A particularly bloody period in 1930-31 called the Castellammarese War (the town of Castellammare del Golfo was home to one of the factions) killed about 60 gangsters. Thus the factions agreed to unite behind the Mob's modern founding father, Salvatore Maranzano...