Well, from what I can tell, sweetheart deals are the most common form of labor racketeering the mob uses nowadays. A sweetheart deal was among the charges in the Genovese indictment yesterday. Non-union workers were used at the Paramount Hotel project in Manhattan, thereby avoiding payments to the pension and benefit funds of Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers Union Local 7. Not to mention avoiding the higher union wages.

It's really a more "sophisticated" form of racketeering, as opposed to just outright extortion. Because both the mobbed up union officials and the contractor are in on it together. It's a win-win situation for all involved. Of course, the rank-and-file union guys get screwed over.

Raab wrote a good article relating this back in 1999. You can read it at the link below.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/08/nyregi...=all&src=pm

If anyone on this board doesn't have Selwyn Raab's "The Five Families," you should--it's the bible on NY Mafia.

It is a great book, my grandma got it for me for Christmas when i was in college.

Yep, it was the first mob book I ever got. The second was Underboss about Sammy Gravano, I thought that one was good as well.

im getting it. but going to get it for my holiday in portugal in august. does it talk about all the schemes alot and give examples etc? 3 things interesting there. One is that the mob decided to switch to the sweetheart deals. Two that they preferred going into the ten million instead of fifty mill projects. And three that bambino joined with nj family like sopranos!

found an article.could be interesting for some of you.but its very long(34 pages).

Mob Influence at Its Worst: The Case of Local 560

https://rapidshare.com/files/706236306/local531.pdf

Teamsters Local 560, run by Tony Pro back in the day, was probably one of - if not the most - notorious of mob controlled union locals.