The Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union is an independent union for employees of newspapers based in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. [1] In 2009, for the first time in its history, The union affiliated with another, choosing the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. [2] Union members deliver bulk newspapers for the New York Times , New York Post , New York Daily News , Star-Ledger , El Diario , America Oggi , and Wall Street Journal . They also deliver for Hudson County News Company (magazines) and Liberty News, Inc. (periodicals). It represents the National Distributors Alliance (NDA). [1]
The NMDU grew out of the Newsboys' strike of 1899. On October 29, 1901, the union formed. "It was born as a union of horse-and-buggy newspaper deliverymen at the turn of the century, a stepchild of the fledgling labor movement and New York's yellow journalism wars." [3]
In 1945, the NMDU went on strike, so New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia struck back by reading newspaper comics aloud on his Sunday radio show. [4]
From the 1950s through the 1970s, Asher Schwartz [5] of the law firm O'Donnell & Schwartz served as counsel to the union against the National Labor Relations Board and the New York Times. [6] [7] )
In the 1970s, mobster Samuel "Red" Levine was involved with the NMDU:
Formed in the early 1900s, the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union was equal parts Irish, Italian, and Jewish, a reflection of the city's then dominant ethnic groups. Well into the 1970s, Jewish racketeers played a major role in the union. One of them, Red Levine, was reputed to have been one of the assassins of Salvatore Maranzano, the old-school mobster who helped to found America's Cosa Nostra. Law enforcement officials, as well as longtime union members and mob associates (often the same thing in the NMDU) say that Levine cleverly allowed each of the city's five Mafia families to have a piece of the newspaper delivery action, which included bootleg sales of stolen papers as well as loan-sharking and gambling among drivers. [8]
In 1978, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began inquiring into the union's line of business and possible connections to organized crime. A federal grand jury under Robert B. Fiske Jr., United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, began holding hearings. The FBI alleged that allegations that the union's president had demanded payoffs from wholesalers. [9] In 1981, Robert B. Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to paying NMDU officials $37,000 in exchange for favorable treatment in dealings between the union and his companies. He was fined $150,000 as part of the guilty plea. [10] By 1993, that union president was accused [11] and convicted for extortion, racketeering, and other charges. [12]
In the 2000s, Bonanno crime family members and associates involved in the News and Mail Deliverer's Union were incarcerated for racketeering with regard to circulation of the New York Post (see entry on Robert Perrino).
In 2009, the NMDU affiliated for the first time in nearly a century, choosing the 14,000-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters union. [2]
In 2014, the FBI arrest six people associated with the NMDU for conspiring obtain a union job fraudulently for the some of an organized crime underboss. [13]
In 2018, the NMDU accepted a buyout package worth $155,000 each for 70 members to let the Daily News eliminate some 40 delivery routes. [14]
The union defends the rights of its members. It provides a pension plan for retired members and their beneficiaries, as well as a welfare plan for members and their families that include life insurance and death benefits. [1]
Joseph D. Bannon was the union's founding president from 1901 to 1928. [15] Harry Feldman was the union's second president from 1928 to 1935. [16] Joseph Baer was president from 1959 to 1969. [17]
Carl Levy was president from 1969 to 1976. [3] [18] [19] Douglas LaChance was president from 1976 to 1980. [12] Jerry Cronin was a president in 1986. [20] [21] Michael J. Alvino was president from 1989 to 1991. [3] Levy, LaChance, Cronin, and Alvino were all indicted and convicted on corruption charges. [3] [21] [19]
Ronald O'Keefe was union president in 2002. [22]
Currently, Thomas Bentvena serves as president and Charles Setteducato as vice president, secretary, and treasurer. [1]
In 1964, NMDU membership was about 2,700 members. [23] In 1990, NMDU membership was about 3,000 members. [3] In 2009, NMDU membership was about 1,500 members. [2]
In 1991, the New York Times described the union as "tainted with corruption that sent some of its leaders to jail, with father-son nepotism that kept black and Hispanic drivers out of its ranks for decades, and with unswerving self-interest that has sometimes engendered mistrust by fellow unions and, critics say, may even have speeded the death of some ailing newspapers." [3]
James Riddle Hoffa was an American labor union leader who served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) from 1957 until 1971.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), also known as the Teamsters Union, is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of The Team Drivers International Union and The Teamsters National Union, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors. The union has approximately 2.5 million members as of 2020. Formerly known as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, the IBT is a member of the Change to Win Federation and Canadian Labour Congress.
James Phillip Hoffa is an American attorney and labor leader who is the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He is the son of Jimmy Hoffa. James Hoffa was first elected in 1998, and subsequently re-elected in 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016 to five-year terms. In 2018, Hoffa was elected chair of the Road Transport Section of the International Transport Workers' Federation at its quadrennial Congress in Singapore. Hoffa is the second-longest serving General President of the Teamsters Union, after Dan Tobin, who served from 1907 to 1952.
Jackie Presser was an American labor leader and president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1983 until his death in 1988. He was closely connected to organized crime, and allegedly became president of the Teamsters based on the approval and support of the Cleveland Mafia. From 1972 until his death, he was also an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning Mafia influence in the Teamsters union.
The Minneapolis general strike of 1934 grew out of a strike by Teamsters against most of the trucking companies operating in Minneapolis, the major distribution center for the Upper Midwest. The strike began on May 16, 1934 in the Market District. The worst single day was Friday, July 20, called "Bloody Friday", when police shot at strikers in a downtown truck battle, killing two and injuring 67. Ensuing violence lasted periodically throughout the summer. The strike was formally ended on August 22.
Frank Edward Fitzsimmons was an American labor leader. He was acting president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1967 to 1971, and president from 1971 to 1981.
Samuel "Red" Levine was an American mobster, described as head of Lucky Luciano's hit squad of Jewish gangsters.
Francis Joseph Sheeran, also known as "The Irishman", was an American labor union official who was accused of having links to the Bufalino crime family in his capacity as a high-ranking official in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the president of Local 326.
Daniel Joseph Tobin was an American labor leader and president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1907 to 1952. From 1917 to 1928, he was secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor. He served on the federation's Executive Council beginning in 1934, and served until his resignation in 1952.
Ronald Robert Carey was an American labor leader who served as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1991 to 1997. He was the first Teamster General President elected by a direct vote of the membership. He ran for re-election in 1996 and won, but in 1997 federal investigators discovered that the Carey campaign had engaged in an illegal donation kickback scheme to raise more than $700,000 for the 1996 re-election effort. His re-election was overturned, Carey was disqualified from running for Teamsters president again, and he was subsequently expelled from the union for life. Although a federal jury ultimately cleared him of all wrongdoing in the scandal, the lifetime ban remained in place until his death.
Giovanni Ignazio Dioguardi, known as John "Johnny Dio" Dioguardi, was an Italian-American organized crime figure and a labor racketeer. He is known for being involved in the acid attack which led to the blinding of newspaper columnist Victor Riesel, and for his role in creating fake labor union locals to help Jimmy Hoffa become General President of the Teamsters.
Robert Francis Perrino, also known as "Bobby Perrino" was the superintendent of deliveries at the New York Post from the 1970s until 1992, when he was murdered. He was a Bonanno crime family associate of Italian-American descent. Perrino was the leader of "The Post Circulation Crew" which allegedly existed to control the circulation department of New York Post printing press and distribution center by means of extortion, coercion, the falsification of business records, larceny and bribery. The crew also became involved in loan sharking, drug trafficking and the selling of stolen firearms.
Richard Cantarella, also known as Shellackhead, was an American mobster who became a caporegime for the New York City-based Bonanno crime family and later a government witness.
American Standoff is a 2002 American documentary film by Kristi Jacobson which documents much of a strike by the Teamsters against a package delivery company, Overnite Transportation. The film follows the strike from early 2000 to mid-2001.
Cornelius P. Shea was an American labor leader and organized crime figure. He was the founding president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, holding the position from 1903 until 1907. He became involved with the Chicago Outfit, and although he was indicted many times, he usually escaped conviction. After a short prison term for attempted murder removed him from union affairs, Shea was appointed secretary-treasurer of the Mafia-dominated Theatrical Janitors' Union in Chicago.
John Acropolis, was an American labor leader. He served as president of Local 456 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Westchester County, NY from 1946 until his death.
Joseph Paul Glimco was an Italian-American labor leader and well-known organized crime figure based in Chicago. He was considered "Chicago's top labor racketeer" in the 1950s. One high-ranking Chicago Teamsters leader noted in 1954, "He is the mob. When he opens his mouth, it's the syndicate talking". Glimco was active in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and a close associate of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. He was a capo in the Chicago Outfit, an organized crime syndicate, and oversaw the syndicate's labor racketeering efforts. He worked closely with Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo, who led the Chicago Outfit from 1943 to 1957, and Sam "Momo" Giancana, who led the syndicate from 1957 to 1966. A United States Senate committee once claimed that Glimco ran "the nation's most corrupt union".
The Transportation Trades Department, AFL–CIO (TTD) is a constitutionally mandated department of the AFL–CIO. It was founded in February 1990 to provide AFL-CIO-affiliated unions whose members work in the transportation industry or who build transportation infrastructure a unified policy-making voice on transportation issues. TTD had 32 member unions as of August 2017.
John A. Cody was a notorious New York union leader and racketeer. He was the president of the Teamsters union Local 282 between 1976 and 1984, during which time he utilized strikes, extortion and mafia intimidation to bend developers to his will and gained a fearsome reputation within the New York construction industry.
The United Parcel Service strike of 1997, led by International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) President Ron Carey, started on August 4, 1997, and involved over 185,000 teamsters. The strike effectively shut down United Parcel Service (UPS) operations for 16 days and cost UPS hundreds of millions of dollars. The strike was a victory for the union, resulting in a new contract that increased their wages, secured their existing benefits and gave increased job security.
![]() | This article related to a North American labor union or trade union is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |