U.S. Reportedly Preparing Racketeering Suit Against Ports' Union

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.

he U.S. government is preparing a civil racketeering lawsuit against the International Longshoremen’s Association union, the New York Times reported Thursday.

Citing government officials, the paper said in a front-page story that it would be an aggressive attempt to remove organized crime’s influence on the ILA, whose 50,000 members work at more than 35 U.S. ports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn, N.Y., hope to use the federal civil racketeering law known as RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, to take over the union and several of its benefit plans, a government official told the Times.

The union has been the subject of a range of inquiries, including Senate hearings in the 1950’s, the Commission on Organized Crime in the 1980’s and lawsuits focusing on individual locals, the paper reported. The 1954 film “On the Waterfront” was based on the ILA.

In a statement released by its counsel, the union said it had cooperated with the investigation, the Times reported.

The ILA said it had carried out reforms, created a code of conduct, set up a hot line to report corruption and hired a former judge and a former prosecutor to oversee its ethical practices, the Times reported.