Auditors found that 18% of union dockworkers had ties to the mafia. The union had the accountant closed.

A large body of information shows that the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) union, whose leader rejected 50% pay increases and threatened to “paralyze” the United States unless higher demands were met, has deep and enduring ties to the mafia.

Just a few years ago, the union responded to anti-mob investigations by the New York Harbor Waterfront Commission by successfully lobbying New Jersey politicians to neuter the oversight body, despite uncertainty about whether that was even legal was.

The Waterfront Commission was created in the 1950s to monitor mob activity in shipping ports, and in recent years the International Longshoremen’s Union argued that it should be abolished because it slowed hiring and was no longer needed. But a Daily Wire review of the Commission’s recent annual reports found that the hiring slowdown was due to the fact that almost 1 in 5 of the union’s proposed hires were mafia-related, and 1 in 3 others had ethical barriers to work.

The union often sends what they call “special packages” to gangsters, paying them up to $500,000 for largely no-show work. According to Commission reports, these “special packages” have only grown in recent years. In 2020, 18 longshoremen earned salaries of more than $450,000, 41 earned salaries of $400,000 to $450,000, and 82 earned $350,000 to $400,000.

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“Today, at every terminal in the port, special compensation packages continue to be given to certain ILA longshore workers, the majority of whom are white men associated with organized crime figures or union leaders. “Based on industry reported figures, the Commission has again identified more than 590 individuals who collectively received more than $147.6 million in excessive salaries last year, or for hours they never worked,” the Commission found.

Twenty years ago, current ILA boss Harold Daggett was acquitted of racketeering in a trial related to Mafia ties, in which co-defendant, alleged Genovese capo Larry Ricci, disappeared during the trial and was found dead in the trunk of a car .

Last month, Daggett said that if his demands, which include a ban on automation and raises of 60% to 80%, were not met, “I will cripple you, and you have no idea what that means.” Shipping companies responded to many of the union’s demands Thursday after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris sided with the union and quickly called a “temporary” end to a strike — at least until after the election.

General foreman Paul Moe Sr. was convicted of bank fraud in 2017 for collecting nearly $500,000 in wages while showing up for just eight hours a week. But instead of disowning him, others in the union seemed to go to great lengths to keep sending money to his family.

“Just a week after Moe’s conviction, the NYSA-ILA Employee Benefit Funds contacted his wife – a high school graduate who had not worked in 47 years – and gave her a newly created $70,000 per year job that had never been advertised before. which she had never applied. The same week Moe was arrested, the industry introduced his grandson as a longshoreman. Incredibly, citing a contrived dire labor shortage – the industry actually enlisted the unwitting assistance of the New Jersey Governor’s office in efforts to move Moe’s grandson through the hiring system,” the Commission found.

Longshoreman Peter Boragi earned more than $350,000 a year and would work 25 hours a day some days. The lucrative union-blessed pay may have had to do with ties to the mafia: Boragi submitted a letter of character to the judge on behalf of Louis Romeo, an associate of the Colombo crime family, and visited him in prison. The Commission said that one of the defense’s own witnesses admitted during one of its hearings that “the gang has exercised its control over the port by determining who gets work, who gets what position, and who gets overtime.”

In another case, Genovese family soldier and former dock worker Stephen Depiro was sent to prison for forcing union workers to hand over Christmas bonuses to the mafia. Afterwards, the union continued to refer Depiro family members for jobs. Checker Dock boss Patrick Cicalese, who was paid a “special package” of $487,000 a year, quit his job after wiretaps picked up conversations between him and Depiro and Depiro’s girlfriend.

The Commission’s 2019 report states that the mafia problem is only getting worse, with an “increased number of mafia-related union referrals this year,” including “members of the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno and Bruno-Scarfo organized crime families.”

Gambino associate Anthony Pansini II pleaded guilty to exerting “control over the Brooklyn and Staten Island piers and specifically over the International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL-CIO (ILA) Local 1814 in a conspiracy to control the allocation of union jobs .” The union could have argued that Pansini was a bad apple who victimized the union without her knowledge – except that after Pansini was arrested and the union nominally put him on a barred list, the local president “Pansini’s son, Anthony D . Pansini III, to become a dock worker. He was allowed to ‘cross the line’ and was referred by the union for a job ahead of forty other prequalified union candidates.”

One of the Commission’s most important tasks was to vet new employees proposed by the union before they were given the green light. Many of those interviewed seemed to adopt the mafia anti-rat ethic in these interviews. Pansini III, for example, claimed to be unaware of his father’s ties to the mafia, as well as those of other associates, despite being widely publicized. Meanwhile, the union president who tried to put him on the payroll claimed he did not realize Pansini III was the son of his disgraced predecessor.

A former president of ILA Local 1235, Thomas Leonardis, was also an associate of the Genovese mafia family and was convicted of collecting mafia tribute from union members “on the basis of actual and threatened violence.” The Commission found that records showed Leonardis and another gangster subsequently contacted longshoreman Nicholas Atria from prison.

The papers of the now defunct Commission are full of specific documentation of the mafia’s penetration of the waterfront and the ILA. For example, the union tried to put on the waterfront payroll Michielangelo Palumbo, who had ties to alleged mobsters, including “Frankie Jupiter” Martini, who was convicted of RICO, and another convicted of conspiracy to commit arson.

One of the hired hands was a criminal who hit a victim in the head with a baseball bat and whose uncle was a ‘made man’. Yet another lived in the home of, and shared a credit card with, a Colombo family soldier convicted of extortion.

The Commission also sometimes removed dockworkers from the waterfront after hiring them for mafia ties. Port worker Vito Lavignani left his job after being accused of organized crime associations and stealing a police officer’s phone. Lavignani claimed he was unaware that his associate “Tough Tony” Federici was a capo in the Genovese crime family, and that his associate “Mickey the Leach” Generoso was a Mafia underboss convicted of racketeering.

Another waterfront worker was Joseph Ferdico, who worked for seven years for Anthony Calabrese, a convicted racketeer and Bonanno soldier. In April 2019, a port warehouseman was suspended for possession of an improvised explosive device.

Access to international ports enables drug and human trafficking. In February 2019, $77 million worth of cocaine was seized at the port. A man accused of promoting prostitution after a Waterfront Commission investigation “claimed to have ‘extended’ women from Colombia to work in his brothels.”

Union ‘auditors’ can have huge salaries and potential for abuse. Checker John Riccobono was removed from ports after the Commission discovered he attended crew dinners where the Gambino crime family discussed cases and communicated with Gambino capo “Sonny” Juliano in prison.

Andrew Marano Jr.’s referral to work as a controller was blocked by the Commission after he claimed he was “not aware at all” that his girlfriend’s father, “Charlie Tuna” Giustra, was in the mafia, despite having dinner with him the night before. went to prison.

In September 2019, former dockworkers were convicted in connection with a loan and gambling scheme involving Genovese soldier Vito Alberti. In 2020, longshoreman James Gunsherfksi Jr. suspended after being arrested for attacking a woman with a frying pan, and longshoreman Robert Florio was suspended after being arrested for allegedly possessing an illegal firearm with a registered serial number.

Attempts to discredit the Waterfront Commission’s work as unnecessary and overly limited only seemed to do the opposite: One of the people who filed a lawsuit claiming that the Commission’s background checks slowed down the hiring of too many people was the son of Pasquale “Pattty the Clubber” Falccetti, Sr., “a capo in the Genovese organized crime family who was convicted multiple times for racketeering conspiracy and waterfront racketeering activities.”

Another who went to court to try to block the Commission’s actions was Frank Ferrera, a so-called handyman with a “special package” of $355,000, who denied knowing anyone in the mafia but who had ties to Falccetti, the Genovese soldier “Little Carm” Della. Cava, and Andrew Gigante, the son of former Genovese boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante.

“Expert testimony at the trial revealed that Gigante had served as a messenger between his father and Falcetti regarding ILA matters,” the Commission said, with a judge noting “the unchallenged power exercised over labor and industry on the waterfront by the Genovese crime family.”

In 2017, the Commission rejected the application of Anthony Battaglia, who wanted to become a ‘maintenance man’. Battaglia is the son of “Sally Hot Dogs” Battaglia, a former Local 1181 president who was sent to prison for taking bribes. The younger Battaglia also had his own history at the center of labor and the Mafia.

New Jersey withdrew from the Bistate Waterfront Commission, leaving only a significantly weaker New York version after lobbying by the ILA. The Democratic Legislature passed a bill to that effect, but Republican Gov. Chris Christie initially vetoed it, saying nothing in the law allowed one state to unilaterally withdraw. But on his last day in office, he signed it. The courts went back and forth on whether the revocation was legal or not until the Supreme Court said it was.

That meant the last public report documenting the ILA’s mafia ties was from 2020. Daggett did not return requests for comment from The Daily Wire.