[lbo-talk] OK, Nathan

[andie nachgeborenen]

It's more complex than that. After Prohibition ended,
the mob had to get into new business. They had some
experience with labor unions anyway -- indeed, in
Chicago the Outfit played both ens against the middle
in the 1920s, protecting dry cleaning workers and milk
delivery workers (among others) from violence from the
bosses while either protecting the bosses from labor
troubles by corrupting the union officials or (in the
case of the dry cleaning business) taking over the
industry. Bosses and union officials who wouldn't play
ended up in the Lake. The mob expanded in Hollywood in
the 1930s, becoming big in the Stagehands and other
supporting craft unions, and had a foothold in the
Teamsters even before Hoffa because of the role of
drivers in Prohibition. Likewise the Longshoremen
(also involved in bootlegging), especially on the East
Coast -- the Reds ran the West Coast Longshoremen. The
mob was never big in auto, rubber, or steel, the
problem there was business unionism, especially after
they kicked the Commies out. The NY mob's hold on the
garment industry was initially through Jewish rather
than Italian hoods. The construction trades were
mainly a post-Prohibition entrepreneurial effort by
the mob.  The post-Lewis mineworkers were viciously
corrupt all on their own until the 1970s.

However, the big expansion into the unions actually
coincides with the end of Prohibition and the New Deal
with its commitment to helping organized labor. 
Unions were, along with wire services and gambling,
the mob's replacement for bootleg liquor -- even at a 
time, especially at a time, when the unions had govt
backing. 

There's a lot less mob influence now, some unions,
notoriously the Laborers, excepted.  However union
corruption, featherbedding, business unionism,
nepotism, etc. remain big problems.

--- Michael Hoover <hooverm at scc-fl.edu> wrote:


> >>> dhenwood at panix.com 02/01/06 1:24 PM >>>
> American unions have a long relationship with 
> organized crime
> Doug
> <<<<<>>>>>
> 
> may not matter much after so many decades, but
> origins 
> of above were in company and state
> repression/violence,
> under such circumstances, unions couldn't very well
> turn
> to government for help, perhaps they should have
> called
> ghostbusters, in any event, 'mob' organizations were
> 
> protection agencies, in effect, hiring themselves
> out (in 
> fact, some had previously "been on" the corporate
> side of 
> the class struggle)...   mh
> 	
> 
> 
> ___________________________________
>
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> 

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