NCJ Number
95524
Date Published
1983
Length
550 pages
Annotation
Oversight hearings on the Department of Labor's (DOL) Office of Organized Crime and Racketeering (OCR) focused on whether this agency has sufficient powers to rid unions and union-administered pension funds of the influence of organized crime and whether limits placed on OCR employees unnecessarily endanger their lives.
Abstract
On the first day, the committee chairman emphasized that the OCR, with only 74 agents and limited resources and legal powers, is responsible for combating the influence of organized crime in the labor-management field, particularly in the administration of union pension funds. In addition, the lives of many agents and their family members have been threatened. The committee heard a panel of OCR investigators describe their experiences, threats made against them, and other problems encountered. A second panel of OCR investigators from the New York area described an operation's failure due to inadequate law enforcement authority. DOL's Acting Inspector General commented that the witnesses' accounts were typical of the complaints he had heard over the past year. He favored granting agents traditional law enforcement powers. Representatives from the Associated Builders and Contractors, a national association of construction employees, testified in support of OCR agents having the same powers as FBI agents. On the hearing's second day, officials from the Department of Justice defended its policy of granting law enforcement powers to OCR agents only in special circumstances. A panel of State law enforcement officers also testified on this issue. The concluding panel of witnesses, former U.S. prosecuting attorneys, vouched for the quality of work done by the OCR. Witnesses' statements and materials submitted for the record are included.