Teamsters

The Teamsters are presented as a labor organization whose local influence carries weight beyond the workplace: control of union relationships can shape access to lucrative construction projects and become currency in criminal negotiations. The novel’s focus is not on the union’s internal structure, but on how its local power is claimed, contested, and offered as part of a wider exchange of favors and protection.

Local Power and Matt Sheehan

Matt Sheehan is described as running the local Teamsters as well as the West Side Longshoreman’s Union. His influence sits within a broader neighborhood network that includes gambling and loan-sharking, but he draws a line at allowing drugs in the neighborhood. The Teamsters are thus associated with Sheehan’s established authority, while his refusal to admit drugs distinguishes that authority from the narcotics business seeking access to it.

The union’s importance is also tied to a major development project. Matt Sheehan controls the construction and Teamsters unions working on the convention center planned for the West Side. The cement contract alone is expected to yield millions in skimmed proceeds, making the project a prize for outside interests as well as a source of leverage for those who can influence its labor arrangements.

Callan’s Offer

Sean Callan attempts to displace Sheehan’s position by promising a competing package of influence. He says his group can deliver a share of the Javits Center, the Teamsters local, and the construction local, offering Sheehan a stake in the project without requiring him to manage the arrangements himself. The proposal also includes ten percent of the shylock money Callan’s group moves on the street, linking union influence to income from other operations.

Callan’s pitch is backed by paperwork from union officers in the Teamsters and construction trades. That detail gives the offer a material basis: he presents access to organized labor not merely as a promise of friendship, but as something he can claim to arrange. His appeal turns on replacing Sheehan’s reliance on his existing position with a broader alliance that offers business, protection, and a share of profits.

Labor as Leverage

The Teamsters’ role in these scenes is defined by the value others attach to control of the local, rather than by any independent action by the union as a whole. Union relationships can help determine who benefits from construction spending, and Callan treats them as assets to be delivered in a negotiation. The convention-center project makes that power concrete: influence over labor connects to control over contracts and the money extracted from them.

At the same time, Sheehan’s drugs-out boundary complicates the idea that local authority is simply a route into the narcotics trade. Callan’s offer is designed to overcome that boundary by presenting an arrangement in which Sheehan can receive a share and protection without personally handling every operation. The Teamsters therefore stand at the intersection of legitimate labor organization, construction profits, and competing criminal claims on neighborhood power.