Columbus Citizen-Journal
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Labor Racketeers Still Infest Unions
WASHINGTON Two decades ago, the late Sen. John
McClellan, D-Ark., the embodiment of righteous wrath, held hearings that shook the labor
movement. He exposed links between labor bosses and crime lords. His investigation led to
the conviction of Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa.
The flamboyant Hoffa has been liquidated,
according to underworld informants, by the mobsters he befriended, and
McClellan has succumbed to old age. But little else has changed. The labor racketeers
still infest the unions.
WE HAVE SOUGHT TO bring the
story of labor racketeering up to date. The Teamsters for example, brought in the former
All-American football player, Daniel Shannon, to clean up its Central States Pension Fund,
which allegedly has made illegal loans to gangsters.
Last year, he testified before the Senate Investigations Committee
about the mobsters he had discovered in the shadows. He blasted Allen
Dorfman, a convicted racketeer, by name. Intelligence documents in our possession describe
Dorfman as "the man to see to get a loan '
SHANNON WAS FORCED to resign as
a pension fund trustee, say our sources, because he dared to stand up to the mob. Now we
have learned that Shannon has received death threats. In view of Hoffa s experience, these
cannot be dismissed lightly.
The Justice Department and Senate Investigations
Committee are conducting a low key investigation of the death threats. The federal
authorities will try to determine whether they are related to Shannon's previous testimony
and are intended to prevent him from testifying again.
SINCE HE IS STILL under Senate subpoena, it would
be a federal crime to prevent him from testifying. Our
sources believe this should defer any underworld hit men. But as a precaution, the
government is protecting him.
We have also been checking into Local 210 of the
International Laborers Union, a brass knuckles local, which controls the construction
industry in Buffalo, N.Y.. We have identified Local 210 as the power base of the late
Stephano Magaddino, who has been named in Senate testimony as the former boss of Buffalo's
"powerful, well-entrenched organized crime syndicate."
THE SYNDICATE'S "principal
remaining source of power," according to the Senate testimony, "is complete
control of a single though important union local." We have determined this is Local 210. It was run by Victor Randaccio whose brother, Freddy, is listed in
federal records as a Mafioso.
A Mafia killer is carried on the union payroll as a
"custodial" worker. "He specializes in enforcer-type
activities and he is believed to have been responsible for some four
unsolved murders." testified Robert Stewart, who heads the federal organized crime
strike force offices in Buffalo and Newark. Earlier, he was "convicted of bank
robbery in 1968 ''
LABOR DEPARTMENT records show he
started out as a "business agent" for the notorious Local 210. But the Labor
Department forced the union to oust him after he was convicted of "making a false
loan application to a federally insured bank." The local immediately rehired him for
two "custodial" jobs, paying him a combined annual salary of $ 18,500
A companion local in Niagara Falls, according to Senate testimony,
is also dominated by an organized crime figure. Without naming the union, Stewart
testified: "There have been persistent rumors over the past five years of
extortionate demands upon industry, acts of property destruction and assorted
misconduct".
"AUTHORITIES HAVE found it impossible,
however, to develop a viable prosecution because the atmosphere of
intimidation is so complete that no one us willing to testify." We have identified
this racketeer-ridden union as Local 91, which is run by Michael
"Butch"' Quarcini.
Stewart summarized the problem in urgent language. "Unless
there is a drastic improvement in the enforcement capabilities of the
federal government," he declared, "the trend created... by the labor
racketeering problem cannot be reversed.''
Footnote: Our associate Marc Smolonsky tried
without success to get comments from the two locals. An attorney for Local 210 said only:
They "didn't know what Stewart was talking about." An official
of Local 91 said: "There is no one here' and I can't talk to you." He refused to
put Smolonsky in touch with anyone else who could speak for the union.