A former shipping terminal operator has sued the International Longshoremen's Association on claims that President Harold Daggett and some other union officials and members are organized crime associates who forced the company off the Newark and Brooklyn docks after it refused to play their waterfront games as reported by Steve Strunsky for The Star-Ledger: "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.'"
The Mafia allegedly "has infested the waterfronts since the 1930s," and it "continues to threaten commerce at U.S. ports" as reported by Alan Rappeport for the Financial Times: "New York waterfront officials contend that 'kickback' schemes and 'no show' jobs are prevalent in almost every terminal. According to some estimates, 40 per cent of the 5,000 people getting paid at the ports are not working."George Barone, a decades-long waterfront enforcer for the Genovese family, testified in the 2003 racketeering trial against reputed Gambino boss Peter Gotti that "in the late 1960s, the Genovese and Gambino crime families carved up the waterfront -- the Gambinos controlled Staten Island and Brooklyn while the Genovese crew owned Manhattan and New Jersey" as then reported by John Marzulli for the Daily News.
