TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062491/0624201.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.6 KB | 81 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 38

"The Members Have Been Hurt So Badly"



    Local 272 of the Teamsters in New York City was a classic case
of how the Mob infiltrated the Brotherhood. This local controls
the labor at roughly 85% of the city's 900 parking facilities
and comprises 4,600 workers, most of them black or Hispanic.
After a 20-year reign as the group's president, Cirino (Speed)
Salerno was ousted last September by the Teamsters' court-
appointed administrator. Salerno, 77, who has been convicted of
extortion in the past, is not a "made" Mafia member. But he
allegedly diverted union money to his brother Anthony (Fat Tony)
Salerno, a former front man of the Genovese clan, who is serving a
sentence of 170 years for racketeering and murder.

    The garage business was a bonanza for the wise guys. The
garage owners allegedly made payoffs to the Mob in exchange for
being allowed to cheat employees out of as much as $70 million
in lost wages and benefits. Cirino Salerno made weekly
deliveries of cash skimmed from the local to his brother's East
Harlem headquarters, according to a former top Genovese soldier,
Vincent (Fish) Cafaro. In a 1987 affidavit, Cafaro, now a
government witness, claimed that "Speed" had the garage industry
"locked up through `sweetheart contracts' with the owners . .
. If someone buys or builds a garage or parking lot in New York
City, you will get a visit from `Speed.' "

    Eugene Bennett, 65, one of the city's few black Teamster
leaders, gained control of the local last autumn after a power
struggle with Salerno's distant cousin Frank and son Robert, a
retired New York City cop. Bennett has investigated and
dismantled the union's skimming arrangement, which operated
through most of the 1980s. While employers were obligated to
make payments on behalf of employees to the local's health and
pension plans, an estimated 1,600 parking-lot attendants were
kept out of the union and its funds, Bennett says. The workers,
most of them illegal aliens from Central and South America, were
paid an illegally low wage of $4 to $7 an hour, in violation of
union-employer contracts.

    Salerno and the garage owners, who apparently faced rising
disgruntlement from the underclass they had created, reached a
new contract in 1989 that began to treat all workers as union
members. But there was a major catch: the new contract
designated two classes of employees, "A" workers and "B"
workers. The lower class consisted of those who had made no
recorded contributions to the local's health and pension plans
during the previous three years. They could now legally be paid
just $6 an hour, or $240 a week, about half the amount that "A"
workers received. In essence, says Bennett, those who had been
cheated before 1989 were being cheated again by being paid
subpar wages as "new" employees.

    Last month a group of former illegal aliens filed a class
action against garages owned by three major chains. Workers say
they were threatened with retaliation just for joining the
suit. The garage owners deny all the charges, while a federal
grand jury is probing the entire matter.

    "I've been in this union 46 years, and the members have
been hurt so badly," says Bennett, who will seek a
vice-presidential post in Orlando next week. "We have boxes full
of heartbreaking stories. We have grown men coming in here and
bursting into tears over how they've been cheated. It's an awful
thing to see, a working man striving to support his family
having to resort to tears."

    -- By Richard Behar