Copyright 1987 U.P.I.
 
United Press International
August 18, 1987, Tuesday, AM cycle
SECTION: Domestic News

LENGTH: 467 words

HEADLINE: Feds crack Long Island labor racket

BYLINE: By BERNARD CULLEN

DATELINE: NEW YORK

BODY:
Twelve construction union bosses were arrested Tuesday for running what authorities said was a major racketeering enterprise that shook down more than a dozen Long Island companies over the last six years.

Also arrested as a result of a 97-count indictment returned in Brooklyn Monday were executives of eight firms that allegedly cooperated willingly or were forced to cooperate ''through force and violence'' with the operation.

''We made a significant bite in labor racketeering in this area and we are not through,'' Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward said of the joint city-federal investigation.

''This operation put a surcharge on everything that is done in the region's construction industry,'' Ward said.

Union leaders extorted more than $300,000 from at least 12 construction projects in Queens and on Long Island since 1981, said Thomas Sheer, who heads the FBI's New York office.

They ''systematically bled the construction industry through a pattern of extortion, labor bribery and various forms of collusion and fraud,'' said Edward McDonald, head of the Brooklyn Organized Crime Strike Force.

The businesses involved in the operation were threatened with union strife and violence if they refused to make kickbacks and many of the executives involved offered little resistance and chose instead to pass the increased costs of the payoffs on to the public, officials said.

Authorities said the operation was tied to organized crime, but they declined to say what mob families were believed involved in the operation.

''We are trying to do our work in an industry that is the most corrupted by organized crime,'' Sheer said. ''It has been corrupted to the point that free enterprise in the construction industry just does not work.''

Among the targets of the group, he said, was the recent $30 million renovation at Shea Stadium. He said the ring failed in its attempt to loot the project.

Authorities said they wanted the arrests of the eight businessmen to serve as a warning to other firms considering giving in to threats by organized crime.

''We consider people in the construction industry to be victims, but when they either willingly or unwillingly cooperate (with racketeers) they lose that status,'' Sheer said.

Those arrested included Basil ''Bob Cherry'' Cervone, a 75-year-old officer of Mason Tenders Local 13, and his two sons, Joseph Cervone and Basil Robert Cervone Jr. The sons were also officers in the local.

Also indicted were officers and shop stewards from Mason Tenders Local 46, Cement and Concrete Workers Local 20 and Carpenters Local 531.

Authorities said the elder Cervone could be sentenced to up to 368 years in jail and fined up to $1 million if convicted. The other face prison terms of 7 to 108 years and fines of up to $220,000.