Historically means historically. Your press release is just colorfully conflating historical mob corruption activity with a recent racketeering case involving corrupt UAW officers - there is NO connection to the mob that I can see in the full press release. It’s just run-of-the-mill union-company corruption, not union-company-MOB corruption. Certainly not laudatory, but not exactly organized crime as the term is commonly understood.
What?
And while y’all are having fun piling on did you miss the second part of the OP?
“Does that hamper their ability to affect politics in the US?”
If you were on the outside you’d see how much fun there is in a thread when somebody tries to make a point and so many people rush in with a resounding “no” while making exactly the same points that it seems for a fleeting second that fighting ignorance can actually work.
The answer to the second question is “yes.”
As part one of your thesis is incorrect, it follows that part 2 is also. Since unions aren’t controlled by organized crime (or if you prefer are no longer partially controlled by organized crime) to any appreciable extent, it does not hamper liberal lobbying of the government. Other things do, like maybe people believing unions are controlled by organized crime 
.
And, really - I’m not trying to pile on. Just correct a mistaken impression that I’ve seen expressed before.
A “No” to the first part sort of eliminates the need to discuss the second part, doesn’t it?
So is it the case that every category of institution that has been subject to investigation for organized crime related activities is mobbed up? So … basically government is mobbed up, businesses are mobbed up, everyone is mobbed up.
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.
Ok…
Honestly, I don’t see any of those cites disputing anything I’ve said. 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.
It would except no one has shown otherwise.
I am the only one, so far, who has provided numerous links to unions and organized crime.
Are all unions mobbed up? Certainly not.
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.
Which goes to the original question waaaay back in another thread of what is the answer to the conservative Chamber of Commerce? Back in that thread the answer was, “unions.” But that isn’t much of an answer when unions are largely toothless. So much so even organized crime wants no part of it.
No you haven’t. At least not links in this century.
A union local paying bribes to the national is not organized crime any more than a chip manufacturer paying bribes to a retail or wholesale executive to favor their product against the interests of their employer is “organized crime”
No matter how many times you try to tie it back to something that happened during the Nixon Administration.
Check again.
Sorry you post one link and mischaracterize what it says, I’m not reading any further links you post. You can do the work of showing chapter and verse.
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…Unions are not a US only thing: they are many and varied and almost exclusively nothing more than an organization who are trying to get better pay and conditions.
In the United States itself there are 14,012,000 people in a union, over 10% of the workforce, 33% in the public sector. If all of those people were members of a union controlled by organized crime, I’m pretty sure we would have heard about it by now.
Did you know organized crime is deep into olive oil? I would guess you never heard of it.
I did know this because it’s news in my lifetime.
I thought this thread was about unions and organized crime?
…I’m not exactly seeing anything about unions in your cites. Forcing “more than 100,000 Italians and migrants to work long hours for little pay in fields across the country” doesn’t exactly sound like the actions of a union. It sounds like the exact opposite of what a union is supposed to do.
I will add the asterisk that this whole discussion is extremely American-focused. Labor as an organized political force is much more meaningful and significant outside the US, and the idea that Labor is somehow synonymous with organized crime is bizarre outside the American context, with the exception of Italy.
In the US, not in any practical sense. But here in Europe, this is very much the case. Most countries here use some variation of the “tripartite” model, where there is a discussion group in which employers, labor, and the government (in the European sense) are represented. Note, each country does this a little differently. In some, the model is formalized in law; proposed policies and legislation are reviewed by the tripartite, and they issue a collective statement giving their opinion as to the workability of the proposal, balancing the three parties’ interests. If their collective statement is positive, this can effectively act as lubricant for its passage; if not, then the lawmakers can either reconsider, or can proceed with something they know to be higher-risk and potentially divisive. In other countries, the tripartite is more traditional and implicit, with each entity working separately to study proposals and express their opinions, and lawmakers then considering their views and incorporating them in their negotiations. In some cases, the tripartite’s discussions may actually generate policy proposals of their own, which are then communicated to lawmakers.
Here is one example of a tripartite organization which functions at the EU level:
You will note that the mission statement is vague, and that the responsibilities and authority of the group are not clearly articulated. Like most broad EU efforts, there’s a lot of compromise involved, which results in “softened” language that is intended to be inclusive and avoid alienating the various competing interests, but which is easily mocked by EU critics for being noncommittal to the point of being meaningless.
But the bottom line is that trade unions have a seat at that table. Labor’s interests are represented at the highest level of policymaking discussions. I work at a fintech company, and I am not myself a member of a union, but my company has a labor representative (it’s required by law) to whom I can go if I have complaints about management. In answer to your question, yes, absolutely, here in Europe, unionized labor is seen as a balance against employers when making policy.
And the idea that these European tripartite groups would open a seat at the table for organized crime is absolutely absurd.
So that’s my ultimate point: To whatever extent organized crime may or may not have some level of influence over union activities in the US, please look to our example to realize that this is not at all the norm, and not at all any kind of inevitable consequence of formalizing labor as a political force.
In the US, it’s probably more of a historical artifact, given that the Italian Mafia was heavily represented in organized-crime activities, and the Mafia does have a history in Italy of using labor groups for its ends, so it makes sense that they would import those same familiar tactics across the Atlantic. But that feels to me like a matter of historical correlation and nothing about unionized labor per se.