I’ve been watching Sopranos lately, and a few times they’ve talked about construction jobs, the unions, and getting ‘no show’ jobs (whatever they are) and I realised a lot of Organised Crime I’ve heard about always seems to be tied them, yet I have no idea how it makes so much money for them.
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A no show job is exactly what it sounds like. It is a job where a person is carried on the books as an employee. They get a pay check, they get benefits, and anything else a normal employee gets. They just never show up to work.
For a mafioso that gives them some legit income to report to the government for tax purposes.
A “no show” job is when the criminals are collecting the wages of a non-existant worker. This person exists on paper only, and only for the purposes of embezzlement. A “no work” job is why Vito and Patsi sit around the site all day: they have to be *present* during working hours but do not have to do any actual work
It’s a job for all intents and purposes – clean money – except no work is done.
Besides embezzling money from the contract (potentially a lot), this has obvious benefits for establishing bank accounts and paying taxes. “And where are you primarily getting money for this account? W2 job? Great!”
There’s all sorts of ways and schemes the mob used to skim money off of construction. No show and no work jobs is one of those schemes.
When someone wants to build a large construction project, like say a major condo and shopping complex in North Jersey along the esplanade….you have to hire many different construction contract companies, or “trades”. A different company levels the land, pours the foundation, puts up the walls, electric and plumbing all different companies and different unions. And the mob controls some of those unions and contractor companies. 95% of the people working are legit tradesman making an honest living; but some among them are there to scam money from whomever is paying for the construction work.
A no show job is a job that is on the books of the construction company but the employee isn’t expected to show up. They still get a paycheck every week, health insurance, whatever benefits of the job, but don’t show up to work. Literal money for nothing.
A no work job is a variation where the fake employee does have to be at the job site, usually under a made up title like “safety inspector” or “logistics coordinator” but there is no actual work expected to be done. These are easier to hide the scam because if inspectors show up at the job site, you can at least point to a person who is on the job site. Add to many no shows to a construction contract job and the people paying for it will question why so little actual construction is happening.
These are two of the employment based scams. Mobs will also straight up steal equipment and supplies off a job site (Christopher got in trouble for this on the Sopranos). Also since the mob controls the union they can extort the builder to pay more or face a workers strike.
Mobs also control building supply. In a real life example, the Colombo family held a stranglehold on all concrete use in NYC for the 60s-80s. If you wanted to pour any concrete in a NYC building during those years, you had to pay a tax to the Columbos.
The mafia gains control of key union members in order to pressure the construction company for under the table concessions. Else the Mafia can use the union to halt construction at sites. The average union members receives less than what they should be receiving, while the Mafia itself and the key union leaders under its control gain a payout. Sometimes both the union leadership, and the construction company leadership is in on it.
A ‘no show’ job is legal employment for a member of the Mafia. Allowing them to file an income, and pay taxes for the purposes of making major purchases which can not be hidden from the authorities. Say for example a house. As the name implies, they are not required to actually show up for work.
A ‘no work’ job, is the same as the above. But they ARE required to actually show up for work, but not actually work. Except maybe the most basic of pretend busy work should anyone actually check in.
Tony Soprano has a similar arrangement with ‘Barone Sanitation’ a fictional waste management company. Where he works as a ‘waste management consultant’. Which allows him a legal health insurance, as well as the mansion him and his family live in throughout the series. This is without a doubt his most important racket. You can see how Paulie Walnuts lives in one episode, while he drives expensive cars, goes to fine restaurants and owns expensive suits. Paulie lives in a tiny apartment.
It’s also a bastardization of a loophole that was originally intended for special scenarios. Say, for instance, a lifelong union worker found himself in a situation where he needed to maintain employment even though he should be retiring (wife/child got cancer, catastrophic financial crash, etc): the union would hire the retiree as a “no show” employee, and officially they would be required to do a little paperwork at home….but really, it was just a way to protect a lifelong member from falling through society’s cracks. Obviously didn’t take long for organized crime and opportunism to jump on that.
You don’t have to be in the mafia to land a no-show job. A certain Alaskan politician was doing favors for a major oil concern, and her husband received a no-show job to the tune of around $300,000 a year. The politician was indirectly receiving a bribe/kickback from the oil company via her husband’s no-show job.
There was an investment firm that collapsed, and the founder went on to start a pharmaceutical company. He needed to repay one of his investors, so he gave him a no-show job at the pharmaceutical company and he began drawing a paycheck until he was paid off.
In the case of the Sopranos, the mafia has so much control over the union, they can force the union to do whatever they want. Why not draw a paycheck for doing nothing?
I’ve heard of the mob requiring a daily cash “tax” from workers when sent to desirable construction jobs. Union’s control the labor pool of union contractors, so those contractors are at their mercy
I’ve also heard of mobs owning construction related businesses, specifically equip rental. If they’re cutting corners, they could likely be the low-cost provider. Heard of mob-rumored companies sending sketchy individuals to repair cranes and such on-site without proper PPE, tools, etc
No direct experience with any of this but I’ve heard of it a decent amount of times
Unions are usually corrupt, as is construction.
Bribes, kickbacks, blackmail, threats, and extortion are all used to get money and influence.
For example, to do work on projects, we would be required to buy “tickets” for things. We had to buy “temporary union cards”. We had to hire on staff to sit and do nothing.
Union dues and “donations” are funneled to fat-cat officers and organized crime.
Hazardous waste gets covered by construction debris and dumped cheaply in small, unsuspecting dumps. The president of our town’s Little League had to disappear into the Witness Protection Program after turning state’s evidence in a case.
So the unions are a great tool for the mafia to exploit for a few reasons:
1. Bid Rigging – A lot of industries (construction, road work, garbage collection, stevedoring, etc) are heavily unionized. When the government wants to build a new airport or get companies to collect garbage for the city, they issue a bid. Multiple companies will bid on this. If this is fair, the companies will each indicate how much they will charge, and the govt will choose the best option. However, when the mafia controls the union, they can go to the company owner and say, “You were going to bid for $5 million? Don’t you think it would actually take another 10 workers? I’ve got 10 boys who are looking for work. You should bid for $7 million. No? Would be a shame if all your union workers walked off the job, wouldn’t it? Oh, $7 million sounds good, now? Make it $8 million.” With enough control, you could make sure everyone bids the right amount so the government has no choice but to pay the mafia inflated price.
2. Money Laundering – This is where the no-show job comes in. Christopher makes $250k selling cocaine, but Christopher doesn’t have a real job. If he tells the IRS he only makes $40k a year, the government (who knows he’s connected), may start wondering why Adriana is walking around in a fur coat, Gucci, and a Birken bag. So Tony gets Christopher a job at a unionized work force as a “consultant”. He doesn’t even show up to the job, but the company puts him on the payroll and “pays” him (either the company pays or it’s just a paper trail) $250k a year.
3. Exploitation – related to (1), the mafia looks to exploit the various businesses around town. There’s the protection racket (pay us to “protect” your business or it burns down), but there’s also the workers going on strike, crippling your business.
4. Defrauding the union – Since unions can be large, and a lot of unions have pension funds, which are funded by union members paying dues regularly, and these pension funds don’t have the best oversight, it’s easy to defraud the union by skimming off the pension fund making various “loans” to the mafia.
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