# Are Unions controlled by organized crime? Does that hamper their ability to affect politics in the US? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 13, 2022, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832 "2022-11-13T04:13:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/41 "2022-11-13T19:01:36Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Check again. Okay. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > - [Labor Racketeering: The Mafia and the Unions (From Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, P 229-282, 2003, Michael Tonry, ed., – See NCJ- 202743)](https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/labor-racketeering-mafia-and-unions-crime-and-justice-review) Cite is nineteen years old, and is talking about the influence of organized crime on labor unions in the previous century. > [@](#): > > - [Organized Crime and Organized Labor](https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/organized-crime-and-organized-labor) Cite is from _1977_. > [@](#): > > - [Labor Racketeering: The Mafia and the Unions](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1147700) Literally the same cite as the first one you posted. Conclusion: **Mighty\_Mouse** was correct. Those are some seriously garbage cites. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/42 "2022-11-13T19:10:33Z")
You seem to have looked up into the night sky and seen that there are a couple of bears, a pair of twins, an archer, a bull, and a few other creatures up there. You are flabbergasted that when we look up there all we see are a random arrangement of stars. In other words you are showing us something that doesn’t support your conclusion, unless you assume the conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/43 "2022-11-13T19:22:25Z")
The only unions I have a great deal of experience with are teachers’ unions. I’ve seen no evidence they have any connection with organized crime. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/44 "2022-11-13T19:50:07Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Are unions mobbed up today? Maybe not but because they have been stripped of so much power there is no profit for them that is worth the effort. Then you agree that the answer to your question is “no”. You’ve learned that and more because many people were polite enough to give a reason supporting that answer. In fact, you were given that answer in the other thread. > [@US Midterm Election watch along thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-midterm-election-watch-along-thread/974619/904): > > The Democrats used to have the superior ground game. It was spearheaded by the unions. Anti-unionism since the Reagan era has worked wonders. @Acsenray also thoughtfully expanded on that post here in post #6, whose completeness made the rest of the thread redundant. As for the lobbying aspects, OpenSecrets reports that total [federal lobbying](https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying) ran about $3.8 billion in 2021. Of that $66 million was from the [U.S. Chamber of Commerce](https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2021&id=D000019798). No question that’s a significant sum of money, but it’s less that 2% of the total. You need to look at the overall split in [lobbying between business and other groups](https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/business-labor-ideological). Business is a proton to labor’s electron. Why? They have all the money. The mob at its very biggest in history controlled less money than any individual major bank or corporation. Their power has always been muscle. The muscle economy is long gone. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/45 "2022-11-14T17:22:32Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > There is one that says that Federal intervention has been a qualified failure…but it was written in 1977, when things were a wee bit different than they are today. Yep. I have noticed that for some folks, something that was in the late 70s was just a few years back in their minds, but that is 45 years ago. Since then, Scorsese has directed like 4 movies showing the (rise and) fall of the mafia 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/46 "2022-11-14T17:29:44Z")
No one controls everything, few control anything. The markets matter more than the media, the magnates, the mob, the ministers, the mayors and their municipalities, the music, the materialistic, the majors, the medics, the magistrates, the military, the munificent, the mean, the miserly, the moderates, the militiamen, the manufacturers, the modernizers, the meddlesome, the Machiavellis, the malfunctioning, the misunderstood, the monitors, the monarchs, the mystics, the mistaken and most of their milieu. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/47 "2022-11-14T20:50:30Z")
When we wake up from our national nightmare will we be muttering, “Anti-M, Anti-M…”? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/48 "2022-11-14T21:09:34Z")
An amazing application of absolutely awesome amounts of abjectly aggravating alliteration. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/49 "2022-11-14T23:59:57Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > And while y’all are having fun piling on did you miss the second part of the OP? I’m the president of my local educators’ union, and while I’ve been president we’ve grown more than any other local in my state. My sole compensation for this is invitations to ever more meetings after-hours; in fact, I’m online right now at 6:55 pm because at 7 pm I’ve got a Zoom call I’m getting on with other educators across the nation to talk about a community schools initiative. This isn’t “piling on,” this is “sick of this calumny.” Can you at least admit that the first word in your title should have been “were,” because you don’t have any PRESENT cites whatsoever that significant organized crime presence exists in unions? Let’s start with that, with recognizing that in this millennium there has been vanishingly little interaction between organized crime and unions, that the Venn diagram of tech sector, organized crime, and unions has its biggest crossover between the first two. Once we recognize that this is almost 100% a solved problem, we can got to a modified version of the second part: do anti-union forces, including business owners, spread scurrilous rumors about unions and organized crime in order to keep workers from improving their pay and working conditions? That’d be a much more interesting question to answer. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/50 "2022-11-15T00:07:22Z")
Your sole good cite, from OCGS, has this illuminating snippet: > [@](#): > > During the period from 2017 to 2021, the Labor-Management Racketeering Unit worked with the United States Attorney’s Office in Detroit to charge and obtain guilty pleas from the Fiat-Chrysler Association (FCA), officials of the FCA, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union involving more than $3.5 million in illegal payments and gifts from the FCA to officials of the UAW. As a result of those and other guilty pleas involving abuse of union funds, the UAW agreed to be subject to court-approved officers as part of an anti-fraud consent decree directed at the removal of corruption within the UAW. Note: FCA is Chrysler. [Here are more details on this case](https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/fca-us-llc-pleads-guilty-making-illegal-payments-uaw-officials). The one example from the past five years that the government agency responsible for fighting organized crime in unions brings up is control of a union **by a multinational corporation**. The 21st-century organized crime isn’t the Mafia, it’s giant corporations. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/51 "2022-11-15T00:27:41Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > The 21st-century organized crime isn’t the Mafia, it’s giant corporations. Imagine if every entity that had associations with multinational corporations were barred from participating in electoral politics. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/52 "2022-11-15T00:33:40Z")
You’re such a tease. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/53 "2022-11-15T00:34:48Z")
[Batting my eyelashes] ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/54 "2022-11-15T01:35:16Z")
Get a room, you two! ---
**Author:** ![DeadTreasSecretaries](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deadtreassecretaries/32/4817_2.png) [@DeadTreasSecretaries](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadTreasSecretaries)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/55 "2022-11-15T01:51:25Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I’m the president of my local educators’ union, and while I’ve been president we’ve grown more than any other local in my state. My sole compensation for this is invitations to ever more meetings after-hours; in fact, I’m online right now at 6:55 pm because at 7 pm I’ve got a Zoom call I’m getting on with other educators across the nation to talk about a community schools initiative. This isn’t “piling on,” this is “sick of this calumny.” Well that just doesn’t add up. Obviously the real payments are under the table. (this is sarcasm) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/56 "2022-11-15T01:55:33Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > calumny This word needs to be highlighted. It’s part of the all-out war against unions I mentioned above. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/57 "2022-11-15T02:12:48Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > Get a room, you two! Jealous ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/58 "2022-11-15T21:14:18Z")
There’s probably no major media operation that loathes unions more than the _Wall St. Journal_ (at least, its editorial board) and even they don’t accuse modern unions of being “controlled by organized crime”. They confine themselves to seeing near-universal union corruption, fraud and undue political influence. The improper influence allegation would seem to contradict the idea of organized crime control, unless legislative bodies are also in massive thrall to criminal entities. 🤯 ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2022, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/59 "2022-11-16T22:33:15Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I must be mobbed up, because at some point in history someone who was in a position similar to mine was investigated for organized crime activities. I thought you were joking at first, but the way you’re holding that violin case close to your body makes me think you might be mobbed up. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2022, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832/60 "2022-11-16T23:11:21Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > the way you’re holding that violin case close to your body makes me think you might be mobbed up. In fact I have two violin cases. And only one of them has a violin in it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-unions-controlled-by-organized-crime-does-that-hamper-their-ability-to-affect-politics-in-the-us/974832.md?page=4)