Building with the Buffalo Boys

It looms on the Buffalo skyline, a 16-story tower of white stone that will some day be the city's new $12.9 million federal office building. For now, it stands as a monument to the power of the Buffalo Mafia. It is unfinished, one year behind schedule and at least two months from completion; the contractor's losses have mounted to $500,000 while 30 Government agencies wait to move in. Reason for the delays: the Mob in Buffalo has a chokehold on Local 210 of the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Laborers' Union of America and, as a result, on the construction of any major building in the city. Past investigations of Local 210 have revealed that union officials held stock in a concrete company that contracted with builders in Buffalo. "Phantom workers" placed on contractors' payrolls were using their bogus employment as alibis when questioned by police. Kickbacks for the privilege of joining Local 210--nine out of ten Buffalo Mafiosi are members--were routine.

The Laborers' Union is a "family" enterprise of the Stefano Magaddino Mob. Its rolls are swelled by the membership of Mafia capos and soldiers; its offices are a haven of bookmakers and shy-locks. The organization's power to call slowdowns and walkouts, to control pilferage and absenteeism, and to enforce threats against contractors runs through the history of the new Government office building.

Trouble at the building site began almost as soon as ground was broken. The Government's general contractor, J.W. Bateson Co., of Dallas, started construction in the fall of 1968. When the work crew arrived from Local 210, a convicted bookie was on hand to serve as union foreman. The union official in charge of keeping time cards for the laborers was 300-lb. Sammy Lagattuta. His stout figure is a familiar one to police. He is at present awaiting trial on a federal charge of loan-sharking conspiracy.

Slow Motion. With such supervisors in charge, the building proceeded at a sluggish pace. One spot check of the building at 8 a.m. lasted 90 minutes and turned up not a single Local 210 laborer at work. Bateson foremen searched the building site in vain for certain workers whose time cards showed that they were on the job. The mystery was somewhat cleared up when FBI agents investigating another case discovered that many of the workers often wandered far away from the building site, tending their more lucrative bookmaking and loan-sharking activities. Pilferage was so widespread that Bateson officials complained the union was "stealing us blind."

When the laborers did deign to stay on the building site, their performance was desultory at best. Chided by a Bateson supervisor for not working, two Mafiosi claimed that the criticism had made them ill and walked off for the rest of the day. Others worked in slow motion. Attempts to dismiss the Mob supervisors resulted in more walkouts as well as threats. In February 1970, with the completion deadline six months away, Bateson officials tried a crackdown. Shortly afterward, a fire flared on the second floor of the building, causing $100,000 in damages before it was finally extinguished. The origin of the blaze was never determined.

Straw Boss. Bateson received a six months' extension of its deadline, but by then it was obvious that what was needed was more practical assistance from Local 210. At the suggestion of Mafiosi already on the payroll, the contractor hired a "job coordinator"--Magaddino Capo John Cammillieri. In his sharply tailored suits, pointed-toe shoes, dark glasses and pinkie ring, Cammillieri was an unlikely looking straw boss for an office building construction gang. But his effect on the work force was immediate and far-reaching. For $7.10 an hour, Cammillieri did with one memo what Bateson foremen had tried to do for two years: he got the laborers to work.

He simply tacked a notice on the bulletin board at Bateson's Buffalo headquarters. In it he stated that the laborers' attendance record was a "disgrace." From then on, wrote Cammillieri, there was to be "no excuse" for missing work--not even illness. "If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work." Additionally, there would be no more leaves of absence for surgery: "We hired you as you are and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we bargained for. Anyone having an operation will be fired immediately." Trips to the rest room had taken too much time away from their work, Cammillieri stated. He set up an alphabetical schedule for using the toilet, complete with a 15-minute limit on the time spent in the lavatories. "If you are unable to go at your time, it will be necessary to wait until the next day when your turn comes again."

Best of Health. The memorandum concluded with an example of Mafia morbidity: "Death (other than your own) is no excuse. If the funeral can be held in the late afternoon, we will be glad to let you off for one hour, provided that your share of the work is ahead." Should one of the workers die, Cammillieri wrote, his demise "will be accepted as an excuse. But we would like two weeks' notice, as we feel it is your duty to teach someone else your job." The grim humor was an adequate hint; Cammillieri is not known as a jokester in Buffalo Mob circles. He closed the notice with the classic Mafia double entendre: "Best of health." The workers had no trouble translating the threat of the Mafioso.

The building is now near completion, though the time lost before Cammillieri's arrival will still make the contractor about eight months behind the extended deadline in finishing the job--at a penalty rate of $917 a day. Federal agencies in Buffalo have been in chaos due to the delays. Leases on present space in other buildings are expiring, and one agency has attempted to move in despite the fact that the building is unfinished. The office workers must pick their way through mud and construction material to reach their still incomplete quarters. The role of the Mafia in the construction of the building--first in slowing down work, then in Cammillieri's speedup--is dismissed with studied ignorance by the contractor. Said Bateson Superintendent Paul Boyd: "Cammillieri kept Local 210 off my back. That alone was worth what we paid him. He did a job for us--but I don't know how he did it."

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