Mobsters, Unions, and Feds

Nowhere in the world has organized crime infiltrated labor as effectively as in the United States. From the early 1930s to the assassination of AFL-CIO president Jimmy Hoffa in 1975, the federal government neglected this illicit marriage for most of the twentieth century. Since 1975, the FBI, Department of Justice, and other federal agencies have pursued a relentless battle against labor racketeering in mobbed-up unions all over the country. This struggle continues today. "Mobsters, Unions, and Feds" is the first book to tell the full story of the relationship between organized crime and organized labor, as well as recent federal efforts to clean up unions. One of America's leading experts on the mafia, James B. Jacobs explains how the Cosa Nostra families first gained a foothold in labor during violent struggles between workers and employers in the early twentieth century, then after Prohibition's repeal, made labor racketeering its top priority. Jacobs also outlines the failure of law enforcement to address the problem, especially the inaction of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. Since Hoover's death and Hoffa's murder, the U.S. Department of Justice has aggressively prosecuted many of the mafia's activities using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute. Jacobs places the federal efforts to liberate the unions in the context of this larger war, which has sent hundreds of organized crime members and bosses to prison. There have been some impressive victories - including substantial progress toward liberating the four most racketeer-ridden national unions from the grip of organized crime - but there have been many frustrating defeats in a struggle that continues to this day. The only book to investigate how the mob has distorted American labor history, "Mobsters, Unions, and Fed"s sheds new light on the influence of the mafia in American unions and the extraordinary efforts of law enforcement to erase the shadow that the mob has left on the labor movement.