Many of Jacobs's claims are inaccurate, exaggerated, insufficiently supported, or unclear. Beyond some basic factual errors (e.g., the CIO split from the AFL in 1935, not 1938; Walter Reuther did not succeed John L. Lewis as CIO president), Jacobs asserts, with little or no support, that extensive criminal involvement with unions is unique to America; that Sidney Hillman hired a hit man from Murder Incorporated to influence labor relations; and that labor racketeering in New York City is similar to that in "other U.S. cities with strong union traditions." He also hedges as to the nature of the problem: "most" labor leaders have "accommodated" labor racketeers; but, "there is no suggestion that labor unions are more corrupt, than . . . corporations, government, or the legal profession." A table is titled, "A Sample of Unions Reputed to Have Been Infiltrated by [Criminals] at Some Time." While "a sample" implies more existed, "reputed to be infiltrated" does not mean "infiltrated." Jacobs generalizes about the entire labor movement, but almost all the examples in this table involve five unions—the Teamsters, HERE, the ILA, LIUNA, and the Carpenters. The Teamsters alone account for over half.

     Too often, Jacobs treats sensational, anti-union sources uncritically. The McClellan Committee heard much politically motivated, dubious, and biased testimony on its way to drafting the LMRDA. Labor was right to worry that Congress sought "not an anti-corruption bill, but an anti-labor bill." Jacobs also misses the union perspective. Even well-intentioned reformers typically haven't known or, arguably, cared about building strong unions. Why shouldn't labor have been suspicious when the anti-union Reagan Administration took over the Teamsters? Would any trustee call for a national trucking strike?

     Jacobs's studies of RICO proceedings are more valuable. The government showed that defendants used specified criminal means to influence unions through a pattern of racketeering. Courts ordered the removal of union officials, severing of contacts between unions and organized crime figures, and trusteeships. Jacobs provides chapter-length descriptions of cases involving Teamsters Local 560, New York City's District Council of Carpenters, and "The Four International Unions" (Teamsters, LIUNA, HERE, and the ILA). The Teamster trusteeship was "partially successful," but a "dark shadow" over the union's "commitment to reform" remains. HERE's current president "bears no organized crime taint," but the union is not clearly purged of criminal influence. LIUNA's trusteeship brought "many important successes" but "no sign of union democracy." "The reformers are regarded as ´government men' or ´policemen.'"

     Jacobs counts only five of the twenty RICO trusteeships as entirely or "substantially successful." Still, RICO trusteeships are "the best weapon" for the problem. Jacobs describes what he believed did and did not work, and why. Selecting a good trustee is especially important.

     Some of his proposals could reasonably be debated. Amending the Hobbs Act (1946) to cover union violence regardless of whether a "legitimate union activity or objective" was involved would overturn U.S. v. Enmons (1973), which held that striker violence aimed at furthering legitimate union goals is not criminal extortion. Hobbs Act violations qualify as a predicate offense under RICO. Thus, Jacobs would make picket line violence during a legal strike for better pay—already punishable under state law—a serious federal crime with "draconian punishments" and the gateway to trusteeship. Jacobs's recommendation that union elections be reversed when union violence had occurred, even without a finding that it affected the election, would significantly depart from current law.

     Jacobs also claims that labor racketeering has contributed to declining union density rates because mobbed-up unions tarnished the reputations of clean ones. But if mob involvement has been a constant over the past century, why were the effects on density so significant only in recent decades (as opposed to the deindustrialization, globalization, and employer offenses specific to this period)? Jacobs's suggestion that labor racketeering could explain the lack of "a socialist or socialist-leaning labor movement" in the United States similarly fails to consider alternate explanations.

     For better grounded, more measured studies of the intersection of organized crime and labor, readers should consult works by David Witwer, Andrew Cohen, and Howard Kimmeldorf. For an understanding of RICO litigation against unions, Jacobs's book is a good choice.