I posted this in another thread:
@What_Exit modded (correctly IMHO) that this question needed its own thread. So, here it is.
In the thread that prompted this was a question of what the liberal version of the conservative Chamber of Commerce was. The answer was “unions.”
While I am all for unions and collective bargaining ISTM unions have been largely controlled by organized crime syndicates.
Is that a correct assumption? Does this hamper liberal lobbying of the government?
I’m not especially Pro-Union. I feel like they were out of control in the 70s, but I do think the pendulum has swung too far the other way now and Big Corps don’t have enough checks.
I also don’t see any indication of proof that most unions are controlled by organized crime syndicates. Have you any support for such beliefs?
Yes:
The mission of OCGS includes combating the infiltration by organized criminal groups of labor unions, employer organizations and their affiliated employee benefit plans. OCGS’ Labor-Management Racketeering Unit supports federal criminal prosecution and civil litigation involving labor-management relations, internal labor union affairs, and the operation of employee pension and health care plans in the private sector.
Historically, organized criminal groups such as La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia gained substantial corrupt influence, and even control, over labor unions by creating a climate of fear and intimidation among employers and union members by threats and acts of violence.
SOURCE: INFILTRATED LABOR UNIONS
Noooo. There was a time that certain unions, though by no means all, were “mobbed up” to lesser or greater degrees. But that was more or less systematically dismantled starting in the late 1970’s, just like the Mob were more or less driven out of Las Vegas to be replaced by “legitimate” corporate robber barons 
. The Mafia itself has been vastly weakened and in decline for decades and nothing has risen to take its former, far-from-complete infiltration into organized labor. The Mafia was never very prominent in most public sector unions in the first place because there was less money to be made - there just isn’t/wasn’t as much opportunity for graft and muscle with teachers and civil servants (not none, just less). Meanwhile the private sector unions where they once had locally more direct influence (Teamsters, Longshoremen, Hotel and Restaurant Workers, Laborers and Construction, Autoworkers to some extent) have shrunk dramatically in membership. The synergistic decline in the Mafia (attacked by law enforcement) and private sector unions (attacked by the decline of the industrial economy and the right-wing) has pretty much put an end to that era.
Or at least reduced it to a relatively much lower and even more local level.
I don’t recall reading any newspaper articles along this line this century. I remember reading about Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters as the kind of thing which comes to mind–and that was more than 50 years ago.
No. And no.
There were some notable connections between some union figures and some organized crime figures in particular places, but at those times and places organized crime had influence on a lot of institutions, including law enforcement, government, and business.
The loss of political power of unions and their ability to organize politically is the result of several structural and systematic trends:
The success of all-out political, economic, and social warfare against unions, mostly with the full support of Wall Street, big business, the Chamber of Commerce, and employers generally and including the mainstream media. This includes things like passage of “right to work” laws, political muzzling laws, direct regulation of political spending, the ability to organize, and by refusal to give any teeth to enforcement of labor rights. This also includes an organized anti-union propaganda campaign. Look at for example the all-out attack on public sector unions in Wisconsin in recent years. The legal weakening of unions through court decisions and government policy is extensive and complex.
The general decline of the need for large numbers of employees in industrial sectors that unions had been most successful in organizing.
The rise in service sector employment, and the success in anti-union messaging on many of these people.
The long-term trend of movement of populations away from the frost and rust belt and toward the sun belt, where the history of Jim Crow governments had established a much longer political and legal history of hostility to unions. This includes long term trends of businesses and employers pitting state and local governments against each other in a race to the bottom on things like labor, environmental, public service, tax, and other axes.
The long-term success of the conservative movement in persuading working class whites to vote against their own economic interests by using cultural wedge issues. This helped divide many union leaders from their members.
The result is that unions are smaller, and weaker, and the system is stacked against them in reversing these trends.
Now there is one big thing in labor history that turned out to be a long-term self-injury and that was the long history of racist practices, with many unions refusing to represent non-white workers for decades. This was another way in which labor failed to unite themselves.
Yes. (see above Justice Department take on this)
I’ve worked in management in unionized companies for something like 25 of the last 30 years, so I’ve been in a nominally (and sometimes not so nominally) adversarial position with unions, locals of big nationals in two industries.
I haven’t seen any evidence that they are mobbed up. Maybe decades ago. But even my father was in management of a unionized company and even crossed picket lines on occasion, as have I. Apart from a handful of people calling me a scab, there was no violence threatened or commuted, nor property damage or sabotage. All the kind of things people seem to think is routine for unions.
So…unions have been so de-fanged the mob has no interest anymore?
That cite doesn’t support your premise. And, I would add, the willingness to use that cite as if it did is not a good look.
I have no idea how you get from what I wrote to what you wrote in response. No idea whatsoever.
How so?
Historically, organized criminal groups such as La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia gained substantial corrupt influence, and even control, over labor unions…
Also, are unions today the equivalent of the Chamber of Commerce when it comes to lobbying the government? It was suggested that unions are the flip-side of the Chamber of Commerce. But it does not seem that unions wield the same influence.
As a former union organizer, i can say that if we had had connections to the mob, we’d have had a helluva lot easier time organizing workplaces. But union membership continues to shrink
The Teamsters had some issues in the past, but organized labor is very monitored by the federal government, especially the unions that have had a history playing footsie with organized crime.
If you really wanted to by cynical you could say the mob has been so defanged that the unions have no interest anymore 
.
But it is a combination of union decline (politics and economic environment), mob decline (law enforcement) and mob-union interface decline (law enforcement).
And to state baldly “unions are controlled by organized crime” is painting with a huge brush even back in the day, let alone now. I’m in a union. Nobody is clamoring for our teensy-tiny treasury or the vast (sarcastic) social pressure we can bring to bear (I mean, it’s just about zero). Any mob member dependent on the largess of even our larger labor council would be homeless in a month, starved to death in three.
Not to mention that the vast majority of unions don’t control things like pension funds. That kind of thing only existed in very specific situations.
Public sector unions certainly don’t do anything of the kind. The vast majority of union activists are volunteers who do their union work in addition to their actual work.
So the government is making it up that unions are infiltrated by organized crime?
Did you miss the word “historically”?
No. But that just means unions have been so diminished they are not worth their time.
Under some reasoning that you can’t actually put down in words for us the slow members of the class, because it’s so screamingly obvious.
Connect the dots dude. I mean really, connect the dots for us. It seems like you are seeing gods in the stars.
Has crime disappeared in America? No. Has organized crime disappeared in America? No. Is organized crime involved with unions? Yes. Are unions controlled by organized crime? No.
The question is too big to have an answer. Even back in the day, the answer was maybe and sometimes, which is the literal reading of the sentence that keeps being quoted: “Historically, organized criminal groups such as La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia gained substantial corrupt influence, and even control, over labor unions.” Many unions were not controlled by organized crime. Period.
As others have said, today is not yesterday, because unions are not the powerhouses they once were and because they get too much scrutiny from the feds and other groups. The country itself has changed. New York was the industrial and therefore union capital of America. Most people can’t imagine that was ever true, and it hasn’t been true for decades. The more dispersed industries are, the harder it is for outside forces to gain control. Silicon Valley never will be controlled by organized crime and neither will Wal-mart. Not even casinos are. How many Indians are part of organized crime?
Fighting organized crime will never end, especially in a global economy in which many countries lend themselves to such than the U.S. That should never be confused with specifics.
Last minute add:
Didn’t a dozen people already say that and you fought them on it?