Backroom Bargaining: Racketeering and Rebellion in New York City’s Labor Unions

Backroom Bargaining: Racketeering and Rebellion in New York City’s Labor Unions, by Jane LaTour (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago and Springfield, 2026)

Jane LaTour, in her posthumous book Backroom Bargaining, has taken a mighty swing at filling a gap in Labor History. In her book, Latour covers unionists—officers and rank-and- file alike—who put their jobs and their lives on the line to make their unions less corrupt and more democratic. Among the cast of characters who she profiles are Burton Hall, a labor attorney and tireless advocate for union democracy and Herman Benson, founder of the Association for Union Democracy and a lifelong ally of what he famously termed “the lone union reformer”. LaTour half-jokingly refers to Hall and Benson as a secular archbishop and a secular rabbi, respectively. The first comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable in organized labor, while the second cultivates and maintains a network of union democracy scholars, litigators, and activists, all in the name of a stronger labor movement. As Herman stated:

“They and all the others who organized against the official labor leadership were never motivated by a mood of antiunionism. Quite the contrary. They were loyal oppositionists who criticized the labor establishment because they wanted a stronger and more effective labor movement, one that would stand up more aggressively against employers and defend workers’ interests in the nation. At bottom, their discontent within the union reflected their discontent with the position of workers in the country. In other words, they were insurgents inside their labor movement because they wanted their labor movement to be an effective insurgent force in the nation.”

Front and center in the book is the struggle within the Painters union to make that labor organization more democratic and, thus, more responsive to its membership’s grievances. In the years after World War II, a growing number of rank-and-file members of the Painters union (famously in New York City and San Francisco) were impatient with the pernicious brew of corruption on the one hand and fecklessness on the other. Painters were required to work in dangerous conditions with little respite and practically no Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or Respiratory Protection (RPE) to guard them from the toxic fumes they were breathing in or even exposure to mercury. Legendary dissidents like Dan French (eventually elected as a business agent in local 848 and doyen of the “Rank-and-File Club”) and Frank Schonfeld (eventual Secretary-Treasurer of District 9 of the Painters Union) are profiled by LaTour, given due credit for their courage in taking on the powers that be in the union. This was no small task, and the consequences of such behavior could be catastrophic. In 1966, West Coast dissidents in the Painters union Dow Wilson and Lloyd Green were both murdered in quick succession for the “crime” of challenging the status quo. 

Many roadblocks faced by reformers in the Painters union were confronted by like-minded members of the NYC District Council of Carpenters. Like the Painters, rank-and-file NYDCC members encountered corruption and organized crime involvement in internal union affairs within the union leadership. Frank McMurray and Michael Murphy were two such members who endured blackballing and threats to their health and well-being from unknown parties allied with corrupt officers. Like the Painters, Carpenters’ reformers took their lives into their hands if they challenged the power elite. In 1978, Willie Nordstrom, president of UBC local 488 was shot to death near his home in the Bronx for organizing a successful reform-minded presidential campaign and attempting to further enfranchise minority workers in the union. Murder, racketeering, and violations of internal union democracy led members like Murphy to form Carpenters for a Stronger Union (CSU) in 1981. CSU members would agitate for greater guarantees of union democracy and transparency by printing periodicals exposing corruption and financial malfeasance among the NYDCC officer class, speaking out at local meetings, launching leadership campaigns against entrenched incumbents, and (when necessary) pursuing litigation against the administration. In 1990, Murphy testified about this and his own hardships for New York City’s Commission on Human Rights. As Murphy would later reflect, “It ain’t been easy but it ain’t never been dull.”

Frank McMurray, a fellow activist with CSU, was in part inspired by the reform movement in the National Maritime Union, a movement LaTour also covered in a later chapter of her book. NMU members likewise spread the gospel of union democracy surreptitiously through their publication North Star (an inspiration for CSU’s publications On the Level and The Rusty Nail) and would eventually challenge Joseph Curran’s administration in the 1966 NMU presidential election. James Morrissey, an officer in the NMU disturbed by the union leadership’s inflated salaries and their swift suppression of internal dissent, ran for secretary-treasurer that year against the incumbent administration on a platform of strengthened union democracy and more financial and administrative transparency. Although defeated, he challenged the election’s validity with Burt Hall’s help, citing the union’s violations of basic democratic norms throughout the process. Morrissey succeeded in convincing the Department of Labor to enforce a rerun election, but Curran triumphed in that race as well. Despite a physical assault shortly after his defeat, Morrissey continued to hound the incumbent Administration for its sins through litigation. Eventually, Curran himself resigned as President due to numerous lawsuits over his misuse of union funds.

Another focus in the book is the continual struggle of the Teamster Reformers. PROD, for instance (which would later merge with Safety committee to form TDU, Teamsters for a Democratic Union) is profiled by LaTour in earnest as constantly battling corruption and autocracy in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. At that time, Teamster dissidents faced not only leadership apathy and hostility but also physical threats from organized crime. For a time, both TDU and PROD collaborated to fight corruption and autocracy within the Teamsters. PROD, given its legal pedigree, tended to fight legal battles when necessary and TDU, given its origins in the rank-and-file IBT membership specialized more in organizing, giving individual union members a banner to rally around. As Clyde Summers said, in his article Democracy in a One Party State, “Criticism of incumbent officers or current policies by a solitary member or small groups (my italics) serve as a flag around which others who are discontented or persuaded may rally.” In 1979, PROD and TDU merged, retaining TDU’s name. Importantly, though, the new TDU continued to fight in the courts to enforce the IBT membership’s rights, in addition to the shop floor. This two-pronged strategy was essential given the manifold problems Teamster reformers faced: fighting both organized crime’s influence and the lack of democracy in the union. 

Throughout Backroom Bargaining, trade unionists of all stripes (painters, mariners, utility workers, et al.) are given an opportunity to tell their respective stories of combating autocracy and corruption in the labor movement. Numerous authors have given in depth analyses of the reform movements in the Teamsters (see Michael Goldberg’s At the Intersection of Labor Law and Rank-and-File Activism) or the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (see David Whiteley’sIn Peace and War), but Jane LaTour has done the trade union movement a great service by showing the breadth of the union democracy movement across the spectrum of organized labor and the common courage of those who made it possible.  A common lament regarding reformers enforcing their democratic rights as union members—whether through internal remedies, the Department of Labor, the courts or public opinion—is that such activism splits the labor movement and gives its true opponents a cudgel with which to beat it down even further. LaTour puts that argument to rest; “The need to protect the trade unions from attacks by the business council and other sources of extreme anti-organized-labor animus are real. However, labor hiding its head in the sand and turning a blind eye to the fact that corruption is grinding down their members is an inadequate and harmful response, one that weakens rather than protects the labor movement. It accomplishes nothing useful.”

Reviewed by Samuel Borgos, editor of Union Democracy Review and a member of the Professional Staff Congress–CUNY.