NJ Amazon union petition withdrawn by labor group with alleged past mob links

A labor union with alleged past links to the mob has withdrawn its petition to unionize a New Jersey Amazon facility, the National Labor Relations Board said Tuesday. 

Local 713 of the International Brotherhood of Trade Unions had been looking to represent 200 workers at an Amazon delivery station in Bayonne. 

The group — which is not affiliated with the upstart Amazon Labor Union that successfully unionized a much larger Staten Island warehouse earlier this month — had gathered signatures from at least 30% of eligible employees in Bayonne, NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado told The Post on Monday. 

The NLRB was in the process of scheduling a union election when the labor group withdrew its request on Tuesday, according to Blado. 

“The union withdrew the petition for Amazon in New Jersey and the Regional Director will approve the withdrawal,” she said.

Steven Kern, an attorney who represents the IBOTU, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

The withdrawal comes one day after The Post reported on past allegations of shady practices against IBOTU officials.

In 2012, federal prosecutors alleged that the group’s ex-treasurer, Robert Scalza, had enlisted a Genovese capo to threaten a rival trade union that was trying to unionize a Long Island chocolate factory. 

Scalza later pleaded guilty to extortion conspiracy charges, served six months house arrest and was temporarily barred from union activity, the New York Daily News reported in 2014. 

Scalza then returned to the IBOTU in 2019 and raked in a whopping $341,000 that year, according to the union’s tax forms. 

Kern told The Post on Monday that Scalza no longer worked with the union. 

The IBOTU’s ex-President Peter Hasho has also been accused of corruption. In 2003, he was indicted for allegedly helping steal cash from a union welfare fund but a jury later cleared him of the charges.

He was also arrested and arraigned in a separate alleged union bribery scheme, the New York Times reported in 1975, although the outcome from that case is unclear from available court archives.

Tax filings show that Hasho served as the union’s “Pres Emeritus” and took home compensation worth more than $1 million in 2018 and $810,000 in 2019 before he died in September 2021. 

Two other IBOTU officials, Perry and Richard Scalza, joined the union after they were kicked out of the rival International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 819 in 1994 for letting friends and family join the union to score cheap health insurance, labor magazine In These Times reported in 2011.

It’s unclear whether the Scalzas still work at the IBOTU. Richard was not listed on the union’s most recently available tax filing from 2019, but Perry was listed as a vice president of the union and took home $95,200.

Amazon declined to comment.