September 2004 — What if our union is put under a federal RICO monitorship?
It’s been almost twenty years that the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) has been under the threat of a federal supervision to rid it of organized crime, ever since a Senate commission named the ILA as one of the four unions most dominated by organized crime. The other three – Teamsters, Laborers, and Hotel Union – have all already been through court supervision (the Teamsters’s is still in effect). We don’t know when or if the Department of Justice will move against the ILA, but recent racketeering indictments of top ILA officials have prompted press reports that a federal RICO monitorship is coming soon. What will it look like and will it be good for the ILA reform movement? The following Q & A is intended to answer that question and others that have been put to AUD recently by concerned ILA members.
