Judge Says Fulton Fish Move Is "Fishy"

Remember when the Fulton Fish Market was going to move to the Bronx in June? And then yesterday? Yeah, that didn't happen.

It seems that part of the planned move meant removing some anti-mafia safe-guards put into place a decade ago. Specifically it meant taking a truck unloading monopoly away from the Laro company and allowing Market dealers to haul their own seafood. While this sounds reasonable at first, taking the Market's history into account one can understand why Justice Carol Edmead would think twice about essentially letting the city put Laro out of business. Does anyone else have the feeling the Market isn't going to move until at least next spring?

Photo by mitigated from flickr.

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By Garth Johnston in News on September 24, 2005 1:32 PM

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George Myers, Jr.

I used to work across the East River dockside for Leaseway who delivered furniture for Abraham & Straus. I worked in archaeology in Manhattan, next to the Fulton Fish Market after furniture went South. I found a 1730's ship, about 100' long working for the consortium's agent Ronson that became National Westminster Bank, in one of the remaining parking lots down there.

Here's what I recall, hopefully politics aside: Former Fed. Rudy Giuliani investigated the market for FIVE years and came up with a misdemeanor against some guy named Cirillo (not one related to me). Then as Mayor he threw the unloaders out for "bidding conspiracy" of some sort, (apparently they all had similar bids and negotiations to keep everyone working, the last actual fishing boat to pull up to the Fulton Fish Market was back in the 1980's I think, they even built a huge million $ refrigeration dockside facility in Brooklyn thinking they'd get the Gloucester b'hoys to sprint for New York rather than Boston) and imposed some rules. In comes a Long Island self-made lawn-mower business guy who gets the contract, and complimentary hi-los from the NY City Commissary which aren't even registered yet to be on the street, they're so new! Turns out however, the rules are already broken, the contractor is in Federal court over charges he's short-shrifted a number of employees and allegedly broke labor law. So the "no one is above the law" "catch 22" is broken on Day 1. The former Teamster unloader operators may still be in court. At the time a former UPS driver (Local 804 the furniture guys were also in) was President of the International Brotherhood Teamsters, Ron Carey, a NYer who ran to clean it up. He's accused of impropriety during his running against Jimmy Hoffa, Jr (a lawyer, his sister a judge) and after the election found innocent of any wrong-doing. As they say, only in New York, only in New York.