The International Longshoremen's Association faces new scrutiny since it was revealed that the president of the struggling union was paid more than half a million dollars last year, according to a story by Steven Greenhouse and William K. Rashbaum of the New York Times.
John Bowers' salary of $587,078 was twice as much as the leaders of unions more than 30 times larger than the longshoremen's group. Bowers' son James, a union vice president, was paid $292,440. The association membership has dropped 26 percent in the past two years to a level of 43,000 while port traffic continues to climb. The union reported a $10 million operating deficit last year.
The federal government has brought a civil racketeering lawsuit against the association, attempting to have a trustee assigned to control it. Federal officials argue that the union has long been tied to the Genovese and Gambino organized crime families in New York and New Jersey. The lawsuit was filed in July 2005.
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About Me
- Thomas Hunt
- Writer, editor, researcher, web publisher, specializing in organized crime history. (Available to assist with historical/genealogical research, writing, editing. Email at tphunt@gmail.com.)
Editor/publisher of crime history journal, Informer; publisher of American Mafia history website Mafiahistory.us; moderator of online forums; author of Wrongly Executed?; coauthor of Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia and DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime; contributor of U.S. Mafia history to Australian-published Mafia: The Necessary Reference to Organized Crime; writer/co-writer of crime history articles for several publications.
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