ILA, Charged With Racketeering, Attempts to Strong-Arm Shipping Terminal Operator


American Stevedoring alleges International Longshoreman’s Union officials have put the company out of business because of their connection to organized crime schemes.  Steve Strunksy has the story in the Ledger-Times.

A former shipping terminal operator in Newark and Brooklyn is suing the International Logshoremen’s Association for $160 million, charging that leaders of the 65,000-member dockworkers’ union are organized crime associates who forced the company out of business after it refused to go along with their racketeering schemes.

The suit names ILA President Harold Daggett, union subordinates, and several other members of the local shipping community as defendants in the case, asserting that they formed a “Waterfront Group,†that was linked to organized crime, and engaged in extortion, bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and other forms of racketeering.

One of the allegations in the suit by American Stevedoring is that ILA leaders told the company’s chairman, Sabato Catucci, in August 2011 that if he refused to pull up stakes and leave the port he would be carried out “in a box.â€

The suit by American Stevedoring says Daggett, 66, of Sparta, began pressuring Catucci at least as far back as 2005, while Daggett was still president of ILA Local 1804-1 in North Bergen, six year before he was elected the ILA’s international president.

“In or about March 2005, Defendant Daggett began to openly express his desire for American to cease operations in Waterfront Commerce,†the suit states. “He wanted to see Sabato thrown out of the port sector, as he regarded Sabato to be a ‘troublemaker’ who ‘did not know how to give the ILA what it wanted.’â€Â 

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