How Black Workers Challenged the Mafia
Melrose Linen was a hellhole in 1980. A large commercial laundry surrounded by cemeteries in the industrial wastelands of the northeast side of Detroit, serving the city’s elite hotels, restaurants, and factories; turning out truckloads of clean tablecloths, napkins, sheets, towels, uniforms, and all manner of linen daily. 120 Black workers, mostly women, unloaded, cleaned and pressed the laundry, toiled in barbaric conditions, earning the minimum wage of $3.10 per hour. The owners of the company, Tony and Jack Tocco, did very well. But the workers did not: Josephine Mason was a laundry worker who was regularly exposed to the extreme heat in the plant. Anne Grice was a towel and napkin cleaning machine operator. Marlene Hearn was a clerk. Here is how they described the conditions:
Josephine Mason: “Sweat rolls down your face in there. You get tired. It gets so hot some people get burned by the steam. I went out on maternity leave. They hired me back, but without my seniority. You see what I’m sayin’? You get lint in your hair, mouth, nose, everything. We ain’t got no Blue Cross or nothin’. You work down here all them years and what you got for it?”
Anne Grice: “In there it’s like slavery all over again… We’re right, why should we be afraid?”
Marlene Hearn: “We’re human, we’re not animals.”
While the workers walked, car pooled, or rode the ghost buses of the Detroit Transit Authority through their neighborhoods before dawn to get to work, Jack and Tony, and their sons, drove their luxury cars to work from their exclusive Grosse Pointe suburban enclave, just over the eastern border of Detroit. The day-to-day running of the plant was left to Tony and his younger son and nephew, William and Vito, and according to the workers, they were a big part of the problem.
While the workers toiled in the furnace-like heat of the laundry on steaming summer days that made Death Valley seem like a temperate paradise, Tony and his son, relatives, and the other supervisors luxuriated in air-conditioned offices at the front of the facility, eating their meals and sipping their cool drinks in comfort while workers were lucky to get a bathroom break or time to rest and gobble down their bag lunches and drink from thermoses in brain sucking heat and humidity.
That’s why, in July of 1980, the workers of Melrose Linen chose to stand up and organize a union.
The ULU Organizing Team
I was one of the four organizers: two Black organizers, two white organizers, one woman. We stumbled across the Melrose Linen workers in mid-July of 1980 while workers were gathered around a coffee truck in the parking lot. As contacts were made at the truck, it was clear workers were very excited and wanted to organize.
There were rumors that laundries were mob run and one or two workers had mentioned that the owners or their ancestors had been mobsters. Why would we be intimidated by some rumored “Godfather shit,” as one of our organizers called it, and run away from these workers who wanted to organize their union? What could they do to these fired up workers that we hadn’t seen before from the biggest low wage corporations we had been organizing? We were about to find out.
We all worked with United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 222 in Detroit, a small independent union founded two years before by the national community organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to organize workers like these low wage workers: majority Black and Brown and overwhelmingly female that were employed the fast-growing service economy of the late 20th century: laundries, fast food, healthcare, hospitality, low-wage sweatshops, you name it. Industries that traditional unions would not, could not, or did not organize either because of racism, sexism, or the lack of skill or will.
Some of members of the citywide Fastfood worker organizing committee, some of whom organized the only unionized fast food restaurant in the US at the time.
No sooner had we gotten back to the office after the shift change, than workers were calling us, wanting to know when we were going to help them organize!
We could sense the excitement and energy and took a risk in calling an organizing committee (OC) meeting for the upcoming Friday at offices we shared with Detroit ACORN in the basement of the old YWCA building in downtown Detroit. From our contact work, phone calls, and house visits with workers, we guessed that Melrose had about 120 workers toiling in their laundry.
The Organizing Committee
Marlene, Josephine, and Anne were leaders in the drive, who we met in the Melrose parking lot at the coffee truck or who we house-visited. They and their coworkers had done their jobs well –– calling other workers, buttonholing them on breaks, and getting them to commit to come to the OC meeting.
In most organizing drives, we were lucky if we could get 10% to the first OC. In this case, that would mean 12 of the approximately 120 workers. But at the first Melrose OC, over 60 workers –– or more than 50% of the workforce: almost unheard of! Coming off shift by the carload, they jammed into the basement offices we shared with Detroit ACORN. And many that had to work the nightshift and couldn’t attend committed their support to other workers.
When it came time to say “why we need a union,” everyone spoke up –– there were a lot of issues:
Marlene Hearn: “Dirty linen… we sort the linen from the hotels and restaurants downtown into bins for the laundry… sheets, towels, handcloths, and more… you would be amazed at what we find in there, … we handlin’ all that with the unsanitary conditions… rats runnin’ around, roaches, maggots, all in there… it’s disgustin’!”
Opal Smith: “…and the supervisors, they talk to you any old way… ’Hey baby this and hey baby that,’ and they try to put they hands on you like they own you… they was harassin’ this one young girl and talkin’ dirty, sayin’ what they wanted to do to her, she started a cryin’… I told them to leave that young girl alone, but they just laugh… the girl say she need the money but she just up and quit… and Toccos sons, Billy and Vito are the worst…”
Jim Howell: “Two years ago there was some talk about starting a union here. But everyone didn’t want it. They was afraid of losin’ their jobs. Now it seems like nobody cares.”
Workers discussed the issues and why they wanted a union and then discussed how they could sign up over 70%, or 80 plus workers on union authorization cards and as members. We collected union authorization cards and signed up those who wanted to be members as members of ULU222, collecting the $5 joining fee and $5 per month. Everyone signed a card so we had just over a majority of the 120 workers signed up already: again, also almost unheard of. Workers took cards and agreed to sign up co-workers for the union over the weekend.
Everyone was so excited that we had just over 60 and were sure they could sign up at least another 20 to blow through our goal of 70%, or 84 workers.
They also discussed their options: They could collect cards, file them at the Labor Board and wait months for a union election. Or, if they were strong enough, pull a recognition strike, stop the cleaning process of linen from all across Detroit, and force voluntary recognition by the employer. They voted to do a recognition action at the company on Monday morning as workers came into the laundry and demanded that the Toccos recognize our union. If they said no, but our turnout and card strength showed we were strong enough, we would escalate to a recognition strike and refuse to go back into the building until the Toccos agreed to recognize our union. The vote was unanimous to move ahead.
Problems at The Debrief
But there were some troubling questions that came up at the meeting and the organizer debrief afterwards. The drivers, who would be key to shutting down the company, were all white men. They used to have a union but decertified the Teamsters several years back and now they were paid all in cash under the table –– $500 per week. $500 per week in 1980 would be worth just under $2000 per week in 2024 or over $100,000 per year, tax free. How and why could the company afford to pay the white drivers that much but pay all the production workers only minimum wage? Besides the blatant racism of having very well-paid all-white drivers in a supermajority Black city with a supermajority Black labor force, why had they gotten rid of the Teamsters and why were they paid in cash?
Then there were the mob rumors. Some of the younger workers said that they’d heard that the Toccos were big time mobsters. But the older workers said no, that the boss himself, Tony Tocco, had told them that his father or grandfather had some relationship to the mob but that he and his brother Jack, the real big boss, were actually legitimate business people and had degrees in business from some college and were operating legitimate businesses like Melrose.
Anthony “Tony” Tocco (left) ran Melrose Linen day-to-day in 1980 with his relatives in supervisory positions.
The Godfather movies had just come out and popular culture had everyone paranoically seeing the Mafia behind everything. There was even a Detroit street gang called the “Coney Oney’s,” a play on the Corleone crime family from the Godfather books and movies. No one was sure that the Toccos were mob, we chalked it up to rumor and left it at that.
Besides, we had over half the unit signed up and were on our way to blowing through our 70% goal, these folks were ready to go through brick walls to win their union. We had a great group of leaders and workers, over half the shop! They had just voted to organize a strike, so why should we stand in their way?
Although ULU was barely two years old and represented only a few hundred workers in four locals (Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, New York), we were aggressively organizing in fast food, hotels, healthcare, and food service industries and were well-versed in the sophisticated union busting tactics of these low wage employers. We had won and lost our fair share of organizing drives against major corporations.
If we were able to fight and win against those global, multinational service industries, why wouldn’t we be able to win in commercial laundries?
So, we were on our way and feeling good.
The G Men Arrive
We met with two special agents at our office on a hot Saturday morning, two days before our planned recognition action on the Toccos on Monday morning. They said they were from the FBI’s “Detroit Organized Crime Strike Force” and had some information about the Toccos that they wanted to share with us. After discussing it amongst ourselves and the national ULU staff and our national pro bono attorney, we had decided to meet with them since we didn’t have anything to hide, and getting a little intel on the Toccos couldn't hurt.
These special agents fit my preconception of FBI agents –– both Irish Catholics from the Midwest, who had attended school at Catholic colleges and universities: Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s favorite recruiting grounds. One looked like an interior lineman for Notre Dame, which it turned out he had been, the other looked like a world-weary G-man who should have retired already.
They told us a lot: that Tony Tocco was the brother of Giacomo “Black Jack” Tocco, who was the reputed reigning Mafia don in Detroit and had been for the past several years after some of the old timers had gone to prison, the grave, or retired to warmer climes. Jack and Tony’s father had been William “Black Bill” Tocco, and was one of the reputed leaders and founders of the Detroit Mob, which they called “La Cosa Nostra” or “The Partnership.” Black Bill and his cohorts allegedly performed many of the murders for the mob and shot, stabbed, tortured, and stole their way to the top of the mob hierarchy in Detroit.
They said that Melrose was one of a number of legitimate businesses that the Detroit mob owned and that it was rumored that they not only cleaned laundry there but also cleaned money from loan sharking, drug trafficking, gambling, labor racketeering, and more. They said that Jack in particular was a pretty rough customer and none were against using their muscle whenever they wanted or needed.
We gave the FBI nothing in return, but that didn’t stop them from asking: they wanted us to “wear a wire” and get Jack, Tony, or the whole family on tape, threatening us so they could put them away for good. We respectfully declined the offer to wear a wire and escorted the agents out, but promised to “keep in touch” as the drive proceeded. They gave us their cards and beeper numbers just in case and warned us to be careful, the Toccos play for keeps.
We had a good laugh afterward about their requests, but we still didn’t realize the gravity of the situation. We didn’t know Tocco, but we knew the FBI and their track record with unions, the anti-war movement, and other progressive organizations was pretty terrible. Here were the Toccos, breaking every labor and employment law on the books, and the FBI was only concerned with getting us to wear a wire, oblivious to the blatant injustices daily visited on 120 Black and mostly women workers on the job at Toccos’ laundry.
It was dark and raining the following Monday morning, July 28th, 1980, as we assembled for our Recognition action on the boss outside the employee entrance off the parking lot of Melrose Linen. It was a beautiful faceoff: we had close to 80 of the estimated 120 workers outside the laundry, arrayed in an informal gauntlet. Most had come dressed in their work clothes: blue jeans, shirts, hair wrapped in doo rags or hair scarves; carrying their food bags and water bottles, wrapped in jackets, or holding picket signs over their heads to block the rain. No one could go in or out without going through our lines. Despite the pouring rain, only a handful of laundry workers went into the laundry, the rest remained outside with the organizing committee attendees and other supporters or stayed home in solidarity. We waited for Tony Tocco to arrive.
The only outsider was a reporter from the Detroit Free Press, a college friend of our head organizer, busily scribbling down notes as he talked with the workers. Eventually, Tony Tocco, and his supervisors, walked through the gauntlet, mostly silent, except for Tony who yelled at us on his way through:
“You know, this is not the right way to go about this. I don’t want to see anyone lose his job. But how do you expect me to do anything for you? You can’t take a man and put him up against a wall with a gun and say, “Let’s talk.” I’m gonna operate my business. No one has had the courtesy to talk to me about all this… No one came to me like a man… If you people do not report to me immediately, you’ll be replaced by other people.”
Who put a gun to his head? We thought. Why did he say that?
Over the next few hours, Tony and his lawyer with family entourage came out again to alternately cajole and threaten everyone to get back to work.
It didn’t work. Josephine Mason ridiculed the Toccos: “We aren’t going to melt,” she yelled.
After an impromptu worker discussion and unanimous vote to strike, Marlene summed it up: “The only reason we shouldn’t go in is that we have to make him hurt. Let’s stay out!”
And stay out we did. No one went inside.
We Shut It Down – The Toccos call the Cops!
After voting to strike and setting up our picket lines on the sidewalk entrances to Melrose’s parking lot and front door, no one could get in or out of the facility. We had music, dancing, songs and chants, and the noise and activity alone was off-putting to anyone who was thinking of crossing our lines.
One of Toccos older supervisors and his buddies guarding the front door tried mimicking the workers’ dancing and singing, insulting the workers, and throwing the N-word out like it was nothing. This was met with a string of expletives from our picket line back at him and his crew.
The Toccos then started hardball: calling temp agencies to send out replacement workers to take our folks’ jobs. But when the temps arrived, we were able to turn around a lot of them, educate them on the sidewalk, and convince them to go home and not to scab.
“Shut It Down!” The whole family came to this ULU picket line in Detroit in 1980. Shown here, the son of one the organizers.
We were so effective that Tocco started calling the cops on US! It must have been a bad day for these alleged mobsters.
The company’s coffee truck even tried to cross our picket line, but we stopped it and told the young driver to leave, causing Tony Tocco to again call the cops.
Our fears were starting to become realized when the sergeant of the watch for that area of the city pulled us to the side after the coffee truck incident and asked us this question:
“Do you know who THE MAN is?”
Yes, we answered, we were familiar with the expression, “The Man.”
Then he said, “Well you oughta’ know then, that TOCCO really is THE MAN in this city. And if there’s any more funny business on this picket line, I ain’t coming out again to stop anything from jumping off! So, cut the Bullshit! You hear what I’m saying?”
Yes, we said. We understood.
We had always heard that Detroit cops were corrupt, but this was the first time we experienced it on one of our picket lines and the sergeant was confident enough to say it to our faces.
That was not a good sign, and another signal that Tocco and Melrose Linen were a different kind of company.
I started thinking, maybe this Godfather shit is for real?!
Jack Tocco Arrives
Word must have worked its way up the food chain, because another luxury car pulled up and workers screamed: “The Big Boss is here –– that’s Jack Tocco.”
Jack exited his vehicle next to the laundry door grimacing, his ruggedly handsome face portraying only disgust. One of his supervisors, rumored to be his son, Billy, came out to greet him with a hug, but he was met with a vicious slap across the face from Jack. He was clearly not happy about their performance running the laundry and wanted to make an example as he raked his open fist, anchored by a heavy gold ring, across his son’s face and pushed his way passed him into the block house of the laundry.
Jack’s mug shot from his arrest later in 1996 on federal racketeering charges.
One of the organizers whispered in my ear: “This really is Godfather shit! Jack’s not happy and is sending a message to the workers and his supervisors that he’s going to shake things up!”
The sergeant’s warning and now Jack’s arrival, plus the meeting with the FBI, was revealing to us that maybe Melrose really was a mob operation.
Then the FBI called again. They told us that they had gotten word from one of their informants on the inside that they had followed our head organizer to a spot where he was picking up food and that they were going to whack him there, but decided against it because there were too many witnesses.
They also told us that the Toccos had put the word out on the street that they needed “soldiers” –– lots of them –– to show up tomorrow at the laundry, and he was paying top dollar. And lastly, they told us that they knew where we all lived and that we better not go back to our homes tonight because they might show up there, so we should try to find some safe houses to hide out in for the duration of the strike.
Our excitement over our first day’s success in pulling almost all of the workers out on strike, shutting down the laundry operation, and watching while the dirty laundry piled up was met with the nightmare that our worst fears were coming true: the Toccos really were mob and they were gearing up for a fight.
As we bedded down in our safe houses for the night, the Toccos started executing their campaign.
Union busting, Mob Style
By the time we gathered at the Melrose parking lot the next day, we were knee deep in the Toccos’ union busting campaign, but didn’t know it yet.
There was hysteria on the picket line as workers met up and related how Toccos thugs had followed some of them home the night before: slowly following our leaders in their muscle cars as they walked through the neighborhood, Tony’s and Jack’s guys made a show for all the neighborhood to see.
Then, once home, the soldiers parked right outside the leaders’ house or apartment, sat there, and stared vacantly at them as they went inside. Large, tough-looking white men with sunglasses and cigarettes, leisure suits, and styled hair, with bulges under their suits, who didn’t fit in the neighborhood and didn’t care. Flexing just to send the message: “we know where you and your family live and you better back off this union if you know what’s good for you.” They stayed long enough that the message was sent. Other goons worked the phones, called people, whispered threats and hung up, or just hung up. Or they called people and told them they better get back to work or they’ll be fired and never work again.
Some workers were unfazed, but most who had been victims of the harassment and intimidation were upset. Some screamed in their huddles: “I don’t want them to kill my babies! I’m willing to fight, but they come to my house and scare me and my family, that’s where I draw the line… don’t want to lose my babies!”
Then the muscle assembled. There must have been 30 or 40 of them: big dudes, weight lifters, muscles rippling, prison tattoos all up and down their arms, wearing shades or perching them on top of their heads, gold chains and rings, lining up on either side of Tony and his sons, sizing up our crowd. It was starting to feel like a movie only this was for real.
Our folks were on the line: singing and chanting, checking out the muscle as they lined up in the lot, with a noticeably smaller number than we had the day before, though still a decent-sized turnout. We tried to intercept the temp agency workers as they came in to replace our folks. We tried to talk with them as they walked up or were dropped off out front. But unlike the day before, where we could talk to them and turn them around, this time the Toccos thugs were determined to get them through the line. His henchmen, two and three at a time, ran to greet the temps and told them that they were paying over $6.00 an hour –– double what Tocco had been paying before the strike. The thugs escorted them through our lines and pushed our folks out of the way.
We were used to some of the toughest corporate union-busting campaigns from huge corporations like McDonald’s and Burger King. But this was a whole new model, straight from the descendants of the Detroit Mob.
The Third Day – Day of Decision
Monday had been our’s. Tuesday Toccos soldiers had made their day. By the morning of the third day the strike was almost over.
On Wednesday morning, the workers assembled on the sidewalk outside the laundry and voted to go back to work if Tocco would agree to take back workers and commit to no retaliation. When that message was sent, Tony Tocco agreed and said to our head organizer: “Someday, we’ll have a cup a coffee and have a good laugh about all this.” That someday never happened.
Losing a strike is soul-crushing, but jobs were hard to come by in Detroit in 1980: massive layoffs were occurring throughout the auto industry, so even though some didn’t want to go back, many had no other choices. The workers who wanted to, went back to work. Another group of workers refused to go back. Some who wanted to fight to the bitter end also left, never to return. They had had their fill of life in the Melrose Inferno and, after making their stand and risking their job and life, they wanted no more of it. They would work anywhere but Melrose.
The FBI eventually stopped calling. Their chance to use the Melrose workers’ strike as pawns in their drive to get us to wear a wire and entrap the Toccos was not to be.
Me, I was totally dispirited. I had lost my first fast food election a few months before the Melrose strike, and then getting so totally defeated by the Toccos’ overwhelming campaign sent me into a tailspin. I had wanted to fight to the end, go out in a blaze of glory with the few workers who still wanted to stay out and continue to strike Melrose. In the post-strike debriefs and discussions, I argued that we should not have given up, that we could have kept people out and forced the Toccos to deal. Thankfully, I had good, more experienced organizers to argue out my issues and see what we were really up against: total power.
There was no way we could have won. The Toccos’ campaign had an effect: workers were not showing up to the picket line, were being followed home, harassed, intimidated, putting their jobs and maybe lives at risk by defying the Toccos in the first place.
Because of the Toccos’ total power in the situation, they had intimidated many of our leaders and members and some organizers, not with verbal threats or even real physical violence, instead they used a more insidious violence: following people home, replacing workers with temp workers, bringing muscle to the picket line –– sending a message with raw power. They didn’t have to say anything, they were showing what could happen and what violence they could do.
They even had the press: we were only able to get one newspaper to cover our strike, though the coverage was several days late. The Toccos had a history of suing anyone who accused them of being mobsters and that reputation or threats kept the press, always reluctant to run positive stories about unions in the best of times, off of covering our strike.
They also had the police in their pocket and the police sergeant made clear that if anything more happened on the picket line, they were going to let the Toccos’ soldiers do what they wanted. The machinery of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that was supposed to correct Unfair Labor Practices (ULP’s) by employers like the Toccos, all rested on the premise of having a live body to testify against them –– really many live bodies to testify against the Toccos: no live bodies, no case, we lose. By their tactics of harassment and intimidation, the Toccos were making clear that there would be no live bodies. That is raw power and that is what defeated us.
Going Forward: The Mob, The FBI, The Union, and The Aftermath
In 1983, I opened up Chicago ULU Local 880 with my partner Madeline who opened up Chicago ACORN. I used many of the valuable training and lessons I learned in my early Detroit organizing losses and victories to found and helped build local 880 into the largest union local in Chicago, Illinois, and the Midwest.
The Toccos? They evaded the law for another 15 years or so, until in 1996 one of their family members, rumored to be one of their drivers, went over to the FBI and spilled his guts. When I read the news articles, I wondered if he was one of the soldiers in the parking lot that morning 40 years before, who had now turned on Jack and Tony. The FBI ended up indicting the Toccos. Tony got off and didn’t spend one day in jail, but Jack served two years in prison, and died in 2014, also a free man. Some of the press articles about Jack’s death even said that he was somehow involved in the disappearance and rumored murder of Jimmy Hoffa, one of the most well-known labor leader rubouts in US history.
A year or so after the Melrose strike, two FBI agents visited the offices of the Claretians, a religious order of priests who had funded our low wage organizing with small grants. They met with Father Tom Joyce, the director of their Social Action Fund. They questioned Fr. Joyce and then dropped what they thought was their hammer: “Did he know that ULU was using Claretian money to organize fast food workers in Detroit?” Insinuating that such funding and organizing was illegal and thinking that they could intimidate Fr. Joyce and the Claretians from future funding. Fr. Joyce replied: “I didn’t know that, but I certainly hope so –– they need a Union!”
He then informed the agents that the Claretian Social Action Fund could support low wage worker organizing and was within the law doing so and ushered the flustered agents to the door. Fr. Joyce later told us that he thought Ray Kroc, the CEO of McDonald’s, had pulled strings and gotten Reagan’s FBI to make some visits in order to intimidate some of the funders of our organizing.
Several months after the Melrose defeat, while organizing unemployed workers in Detroit with ULU, I ran into one of the workers from Melrose at an unemployment office on the east side of Detroit. He was one of the few men who worked there and was applying for unemployment himself. He recognized me from the picket line and we got to talking. I winced as he recalled the Melrose strike with me and braced myself as I thought he’d badmouth the union. Instead, he said in a positive tone of voice:
“That was something wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it really was,” I agreed.
After a few moments of thought he followed up with, “We really showed them, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” I agreed, “we sure did.”
What I saw as a negative and wanted to forget, he remembered fondly as a just and righteous fight where the workers stood up to the Toccos, the most powerful mob family in Detroit, and for a minute shut them down –– at least for the first day.
Over the years I wondered who was worse: The Tocco mob with their soldiers ready to crush workers’ organizing or J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and their mob of special agents eager to destroy social movements, use us as pawns to take down the Toccos, and then later trying to crush our organizing by visiting and attempting to intimidate our funders? It’s not an easy one to answer: total mob evil vs. total government evil.
I finally concluded that they were both equally evil. It was the workers who were the real heroes. It was the workers who risked everything to take on both the mob and the FBI in their fight for social and economic justice and dignity and respect on the job.
[Portside moderator: Also of interest --
How American Dockworkers Fought Apartheid in South Africa
Peter Cole
Jacobin
Forty years ago today, San Francisco dockworkers struck a blow against apartheid by refusing to unload cargo from South Africa. That kind of international worker solidarity is badly needed today to end Israeli genocide and apartheid.
November 24, 2024]
Keith Kelleher was the founder of ULU Local 880 (1983-5), then SEIU Local 880 (1985-2008) and then president (2008-2017) of SEIU Healthcare Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas (HCIIMK). Once the smallest local union, it is now the largest local union in Chicago, Cook
The mission of The Forge is to elevate the strategy and practice of organizing through the sharing of ideas, methods, history, and inspiration, and by building connection and community among organizers and between sectors of the progressive movement.