‘I heard you grow marijuana’: Inside the organization behind Protech Local 33
by C.M. Lewis
Dominic Senese’s car after an alleged mafia assassination attempt in 1988. Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune
Last week, The Daily Beast published a report on “Protech Local 33”—a supposed union that claims to represent workers in California’s growing cannabis industry. According to The Daily Beast’s reporting, signs point toward Protech acting as a “company” or (in labor slang) “yellow” union: something banned under both international and national labor laws.
The story about Protech is astonishing, offering a glimpse into the ways industry lobbies will try to avoid unions even in states with worker-friendly laws. Spreading cannabis legalization has led to a boom in the cannabis industry and to widespread organizing efforts, primarily spearheaded by unions like UFCW and the Teamsters. Previous reports have shown that cannabis organizing has the potential to offer new growth and energy for the labor movement, especially in states like California.
But our investigation, conducted through extensive research through Department of Labor records, court records, IRS records, the Chicago Tribune newspaper archive, and interviews with Chicago labor activists shows that Protech is much more than a company union—and connects back to a long, troubling history of corruption in some segments of organized labor, recently depicted in Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman.
According to The Daily Beast, Protech is allegedly an initiative of the National Production Workers’ Union, or NPWU, an umbrella for affiliates like Truck Drivers Chauffeurs & Warehouse Workers 707, Production Workers Union of Chicago 707, National Production Workers Union Cleveland, and Professional Technical & Clerical 707. Strikewave confirmed the connection: signing up for Protech’s e-mail list generates a welcome email directing individuals to contact jpierruci@npwu.com. According to LM-2 reports filed with the Department of Labor and IRS 990s, Jeffrey Pierucci is a Trustee and the Chief Financial Officer for NPWU.
So what is the NPWU, and is their connection to Protech of interest? To understand that, you have to start in 1988: the year that the president of Teamsters Local 703, Dominic Senese—an alleged former enforcer for Joey Glimco (a Teamsters official and Hoffa ally, depicted in The Irishman by Bo Dietl)—was wounded in an attempted assassination.
“I Heard You Paint Houses”
The attempt on Senese’s life in 1988 set off a chain of events that revealed the level of corruption in Chicago labor—and particularly, the connection between alleged corruption and the NPWU.
By 1988, Dominic Senese had long been a power broker in Teamsters Local 703. His career in the Teamsters began in the 1950s as a Business Agent under the direction of Joey Glimco. According to a Chicago Tribune report published in 1954, Senese first came to police attention in connection to the 1952 in the death of Anthony Baldino. Senese’s role as an alleged Glimco enforcer was simple: "Senese holds the guy's arms and [John T.] Smith works him over."
Scrutiny on Senese didn’t stop with local police. He was called in front of the Senate Rackets Committee in 1959 to testify as a labor official as part of the wide-sweeping McClellan Committee investigation into labor corruption—the precursor to Robert Kennedy’s “Get Hoffa Squad.” Senese was eventually named in the McClellan Committee’s official report.
Police and federal agents said they do not know the motive for the shooting, but speculated that Senese had committed some serious offense in the eyes of top crime syndicate leaders.
They said any attempt to kill Senese would have to have the sanction of the mob bosses, including the semiretired Accardo.
One theory is that the shooting is linked to the bombing last June of a car belonging to Charles Dunne, 45, a top aide to Timothy Bresnahan, business manager of Local 134 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The union represents workers including parimutuel clerks at Chicago-area racetracks.
Chicago Tribune, “TEAMSTERS LEADER WOUNDED,” January 23, 1988
In other words, by the time that the attempt on his life was made, Senese was a known quantity with deep, decades-long alleged connections to organized crime.
The attempt on Senese’s life wasn’t a surprise. He had been warned by the FBI the year before that his life was in danger, and multiple Chicago syndicate hits had occurred in the preceding few years. In the wake of the hit, the Chicago Tribune reported that Senese allegedly made a deal with mafia leaders to avoid a second one; within a year, the trail to his would-be assassins had gone cold. By 1990, the issues in Chicago’s Teamsters had gone too far—and a 1989 consent decree gave the federal government wide powers to address it. A court-appointed administrator ousted Senese, James Vincent Cozzo (Teamsters 786), and Joseph Talerico (Teamsters 727), and Local 703 was placed into trusteeship by the Teamsters. Trusteeship is a nuclear option rarely invoked in organized labor, and is usually only used in instances of outright criminality, corruption, and financial impropriety.
But although the government was cracking down, the Senese family wasn’t done with assassination attempts. After the trusteeship in 1990, Lucien Senese—Dominic’s son, and the Secretary-Treasurer of Local 703—was severely injured in a car bombing. Federal investigators told the Chicago Tribune they believed it to be connected to the continuing power struggle over control of Local 703. It’s at this point where the NPWU—through Dominic’s other son, Joseph V. Senese—enters the picture.
As Teamsters Local 703 underwent court-mandated trusteeship and supervision, Senese loyalists within the union sought to affiliate to National Production Workers’ Union Local 707, an independent union local run by Dominic Senese’s son Joseph V. Senese. In some instances, the National Labor Relations Board intervened on the side of Local 703; however, a settlement agreement seems to have granted NPWU bargaining rights for at least some of Local 703’s former contracts.
Even aside from familial ties, there were warning signs that Local 707 was much the same as 703. According to the Chicago Tribune, Joseph was drawing $150,000 in salary to head the small independent union: approximately $300,000 dollars in inflation-adjusted dollars. Within a year of the split, Joseph was ordered to repay approximately $140,000 to the union after it was found that NPWU officers had improperly directed funds to mob-dominated companies.
In 1992—two short years after the spectacular end of his control of Local 703—Dominic Senese died at the age of 75. Lucien was barred from holding union office, and left partially disabled by the attempt on his life; his lawsuit seeking pension funds was decided by the Seventh Circuit in 2001. His brother Joseph continued to be dogged throughout the 1990s for exorbitant security fees—paid for by the union, and justified as a necessity because of his family’s bloody legacy.
“A Scrappy Chicago Organization”
The story of NPWU after the power struggle over Teamsters’ Local 703 is much harder to tell; sources are scarce.
In 2000, NPWU was implicated in breaking a UNITE strike at Five Star Hotel Laundry, which was launched primarily by young, immigrant women workers who chanted “Si, se puede” on the picket line. Five Star Hotel Laundry abruptly announced that striking employees were now employed by a temporary agency that had a labor agreement with NPWU. At that time, the Chicago Tribune described NPWU as "a scrappy Chicago organization with a reputation for raiding other unions."
The account offered by Mark Meinster, an International Representative for the United Electrical Workers, agrees with the Tribune: "For years, unions in Chicago have been dealing with employers trying to use 707 to keep workers from having a real union. This happens in a variety of industries including hospitality, industrial laundries, food processing and landscaping. They are seen as a rogue outfit by the legitimate labor movement in Chicago."
Investigation of available documentation shows that business ran as usual for NPWU: seemingly for the profit of the Senese family. In 2004, Joseph V. Senese drew a salary of $394,790; by 2015, that number grew to over $500,000 in compensation from NPWU. He wasn’t alone: his son Joseph V. Senese, Jr. became involved in NPWU according to their IRS 990 filings, and in 2015 drew $77,206 in compensation from “related organizations”—meaning their affiliated “union” locals.
By 2017, Joseph V. Senese, Sr. was no longer listed as an officer or employee of NPWU, though his son remained Recording Secretary. Instead, they list James Meltreger, identified in court documents from 2019 as Plan Manager of the NPWU Severance Trust Plan and the NPWU 401(K) Retirement Plan. Searches for James Meltreger reveal little except references to an attorney admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1965, and a James R. Meltreger of Onesto, Giglio, Meltreger Associates, who defended NPWU and Joseph Senese in the 1980s alongside a Patrick Calihan, listed in NLRB documents as the NPWU’s current attorney.
But in spite of Joseph V. Senese, Sr. no longer holding a position with NPWU, their 2017 IRS 990 shows a contract for $266,850 entered into with “Santina Consulting, LLC,” an incorporated entity with little to no public footprint. On a seperate line, they also reported money directed to Senese, Sr. as an “interested person”—in the exact amount as the contract entered into with Santina Consulting, LLC.
Under the surface, NPWU has been busy. A review of National Labor Relations Board cases shows multiple attempts at raids on NPWU dating back over a decade, such as SMART’s raid on Parsec workers in Los Angeles. In 2017, the Teamsters raided NPWU, taking a bargaining unit of 500 BNSF Terminal intermodal operators in Elwood, IL, employed by terminal operator Parsec. Worker unhappiness played a significant role in the campaign. A year later, United Electrical Workers (UE) raided NPWU’s Hallcon unit, successfully winning representation rights for union employees over multiple states.
Union corruption was a major issue for UE during their campaign; a website for potential Hallcon members detailed union corruption, including NPWU’s origins with the Senese family and organized crime. According to Mark Meinster, who is familiar with the campaign, the reason for their focus is simple: "One of the last bastions of company unionism is among railroad contractors."
Erasing the Brush of Corruption
Things have fallen apart for NPWU in the past few years as real unions capitalize on member frustration. Between the Teamsters and UE, two of their major contracts—Parsec and Hallcon—have been cleaned out. Enter Protech Local 33, the NPWU-affiliated company “union” reported by The Daily Beast to be a shell allowing the growing cannabis industry in California to avoid unions at all costs.
Protech is unlikely to change the fortunes of a small, declining “yellow” union dominated by a once-powerful alleged Chicago syndicate family. Regulators in California are already suspicious of them in spite of their success in wooing manufacturers’ associations; The Daily Beast report will bring even more attention to their operations.
But Protech and their parent, NPWU, gesture toward a troubling history within the labor movement: one in which for a small number of unions, organized labor and organized crime go hand in hand. It’s never been a majority of the labor movement, and many high profile labor leaders like Walter Reuther held people like Jimmy Hoffa, their contemporary, in contempt. However, due to federal crackdowns motivated by people like Hoffa, his lieutenants (like Joey Glimco), and their alleged enforcers (like Dominic Senese), labor unions are forced to comply with the annual disclosures mandated by the Labor Management Recording and Disclosure Act, a key outcome of the McClellan Committee investigations.
In many regards, union corruption on an industrial scale seems like past history. Mob-infiltrated Teamsters locals and Laborers locals were very publicly purged of organized crime in high-profile investigations in the 1990s, and federal oversight of the Teamsters produced—through federally-imposed means that even Teamsters dissidents detested—significant reforms, including direct election of Teamsters officials. Now, in the case of Parsec, the Teamsters are part of the solution, clearing out NPWU and alleged mob influence in the rail industry.
But the recent corruption scandals within the United Auto Workers’ and the threat of a federal takeover suggest work remains to be done, and indicates that the threat is—as it was in the case of mob influence—leadership too close to management.
It may seem like history, or the stuff of movies. In The Irishman, Frank Sheeran—the Teamsters official and alleged Bufalino hitman who claims to have killed Hoffa—dies quietly in a nursing home in Philadelphia. But the latest initiative of NPWU, through Protech Local 33, suggests the legacy of the brand of unionism isn't completely gone. Where remnants remain, reform is needed.
C.M. Lewis is an editor of Strikewave and a union activist in Pennsylvania.
Note: A previous version of this article included errors in quotes from the International Representative for UE. They have been corrected.