"The Members Have Been Hurt So Badly"

By RICHARD BEHAR

Local 272 of the Teamsters in New York City was a classic case of how the Mob infiltrated the Brotherhood. This local controls the labor at roughly 85% of the city's 900 parking facilities and comprises 4,600 workers, most of them black or Hispanic. After a 20-year reign as the group's president, Cirino (Speed) Salerno was ousted last September by the Teamsters' court-appointed administrator. Salerno, 77, who has been convicted of extortion in the past, is not a "made" Mafia member. But he allegedly diverted union money to his brother Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, a former front man of the Genovese clan, who is serving a sentence of 170 years for racketeering and murder.

The garage business was a bonanza for the wise guys. The garage owners allegedly made payoffs to the Mob in exchange for being allowed to cheat employees out of as much as $70 million in lost wages and benefits. Cirino Salerno made weekly deliveries of cash skimmed from the local to his brother's East Harlem headquarters, according to a former top Genovese soldier, Vincent (Fish) Cafaro. In a 1987 affidavit, Cafaro, now a government witness, claimed that "Speed" had the garage industry "locked up through 'sweetheart contracts' with the owners . . . If someone buys or builds a garage or parking lot in New York City, you will get a visit from 'Speed.' "

Eugene Bennett, 65, one of the city's few black Teamster leaders, gained control of the local last autumn after a power struggle with Salerno's distant cousin Frank and son Robert, a retired New York City cop. Bennett has investigated and dismantled the union's skimming arrangement, which operated through most of the 1980s. While employers were obligated to make payments on behalf of employees to the local's health and pension plans, an estimated 1,600 parking-lot attendants were kept out of the union and its funds, Bennett says. The workers, most of them illegal aliens from Central and South America, were paid an illegally low wage of $4 to $7 an hour, in violation of union- employer contracts.

Salerno and the garage owners, who apparently faced rising disgruntlement from the underclass they had created, reached a new contract in 1989 that began to treat all workers as union members. But there was a major catch: the new contract designated two classes of employees, "A" workers and "B" workers. The lower class consisted of those who had made no recorded contributions to the local's health and pension plans during the previous three years. They could now legally be paid just $6 an hour, or $240 a week, about half the amount that "A" workers received. In essence, says Bennett, those who had been cheated before 1989 were being cheated again by being paid subpar wages as "new" employees.

Last month a group of former illegal aliens filed a class action against garages owned by three major chains. Workers say they were threatened with retaliation just for joining the suit. The garage owners deny all the charges, while a federal grand jury is probing the entire matter.

"I've been in this union 46 years, and the members have been hurt so badly," says Bennett, who will seek a vice-presidential post in Orlando next week. "We have boxes full of heartbreaking stories. We have grown men coming in here and bursting into tears over how they've been cheated. It's an awful thing to see, a working man striving to support his family having to resort to tears."