The city’s dockworkers union wants to stop Gov. Hochul’s plan for a new Waterfront Commission to fight organized-crime corruption.
The Jersey branch of the the International Longshoremen’s Association last year got Garden State Gov. Phil Murphy to shuttter the bi-state Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor; now the New York union hopes to block Hochul’s sequel.
“We are no longer in 1953 with Marlon Brando ‘On the Waterfront,’” fumes ILA spokesman James “Cadillac” McMahon, claiming New York shouldn’t spend $5 million to keep the port clean.
Sorry, Cadillac: Mob influence on the waterfront isn’t dead.
The old commission was central to prosecutions against organized crime in and around local ports, including the 2021 conviction of a Gambino capo on fraud and racketeering charges.
It also ensured fair hiring (of women and minorities), with the ILA accused in recent years of excluding applicants for union membership because of their race, national origin or sex.
Good on Hochul for realizing a cop is still needed to walk the New York Harbor beat.
Five million dollars is a small price to save consumers from paying a mob tax on goods leaving or entering the port, and to keep organized crime from winning a seat in local union councils.
It’s one thing for legislators to stand with unions, quite another to side with the mob: Indeed, New York’s honest unions should be using their Albany sway to back Hochul here, and help keep the labor movement clean.
