Federal authorities are preparing to file a sweeping civil racketeering lawsuit against the International Longshoremen's Association, officials who were briefed on the case said yesterday. It would be the government's most aggressive attempt ever to wrest the nation's Atlantic and Gulf Coast docks and the union that represents their workers from what prosecutors say is a half-century of control by two powerful New York mob clans.
Over several decades, the union, which is based in New York and represents 50,000 dockworkers and other employees at three dozen ports from Maine to Texas, came to symbolize organized crime's grip on labor and its exploitation of union members. The 1954 film "On the Waterfront" was based on the union, which over the years has evaded some of the most savvy prosecutors, even as some local union officials were indicted and convicted in the plundering of union funds and related businesses.
The union has also been the subject of a range of inquiries, including Senate hearings in the 1950's, the President's Commission on Organized Crime in the 1980's and lawsuits focusing on individual locals.
But prosecutors in Brooklyn, with evidence developed in a recent series of criminal cases aimed at organized crime on the piers, and with the cooperation of a major waterfront mob figure, hope to succeed where others have failed, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the lawsuit has not yet been filed. Using the federal civil racketeering law known as RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, the government will seek to take over the union and several union benefit plans, one official said.
http://nytimes.com/2005/06/30/nyregion/30longshore.html?hp&ex=1120190400&en=dad347dc1cd5190f&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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