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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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.
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