Was it only union officials who got wrongly chased, or was it guys driving trucks, too?
They would chase anyone with a union card.
I was a member of 813 for 25 years. Ten of them as a steward, and the last seven as a business agent. Now 813 is predominantly private sanitation, but funeral workers make up more than a third of the local as well.
And then there are very small percentages of other jobs covered through the local. One of them was the car rental employees at the airports (Hertz, Avis, etc.). Long story short, I had to watch a girl who made maybe twelve bucks an hour working as a customer service rep out at JFK, lose her job because her uncle---through fucking marriage---was a made guy.
That's a true story, and there are a LOT more like them. And before Ivy posts an "official" list of chased members (and you know I love ya, kid). You have to know that not all of these cases were official. Many members were given "the choice" to take early retirement and keep their pensions, or go to a hearing and risk losing everything. Well, what do you think most of them did?
And that's why those "official" lists of union members who lost their jobs because of alleged mob ties aren't even close to being accurate. TRUST me on that.
