BY DANNY BOOHER AND FRANK FORRESTAL
CHICAGO - In the past week government "overseers" have
delivered several blows against the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters (IBT). The latest includes "internal union
charges" filed by the government-appointed Independent Review
Board on November 25 against Teamsters president Ronald Carey.
This came just hours after Carey announced he was taking a
leave of absence, saying it was "in the best interest of the
membership and the reform movement."
The day before, the U.S. Justice Department announced it had appointed an "independent auditor" to oversee the Teamsters' finances. This move represents a significant expansion of intervention in the union, following the government's decision on November 17 to disqualify Carey from running for office in the upcoming rerun elections. U.S. officials are also considering barring James Hoffa, Carey's main opponent, from seeking the union's top post. With 1.4 million members, the IBT is the largest union in the United States.
The recent rulings are part of counterblows by the Clinton administration and the employers to the widely acknowledged strike victory by the Teamsters against UPS, the largest national parcel delivery company. "It seems to me that the government has bigger motives than just dealing with financial mishandling," said Eugene Phillips, a 25-year veteran UPS Teamster driver from Chicago. "Don't forget this is all happening right after our victory at UPS," said the member of Teamsters Local 705.
The November 17 ruling by Kenneth Conboy, a former judge assigned as a federal "overseer," found that Carey participated in a conspiracy to divert members' dues to his campaign for reelection as president of the Teamsters union.
Conboy said Carey allowed "$735,000 of I.B.T. general treasury funds to be used to further his campaign." Posing as a guardian of democracy, Conboy said Carey's "behavior, which severely and negatively impacted the democratic process in the I.B.T., constitutes the type of conduct that warrants disqualification under the rules." Carey narrowly defeated Hoffa last year. Another federal overseer, Barbara Zack Quindel, who has since resigned her position, overturned the election results last August, asserting that Carey misused union funds.
History of government intervention
As part of avoiding racketeering charges in 1989, the union
signed a consent decree allowing the government to oversee its
affairs. In all, there are six "independent auditors"
intervening in the Teamsters' business. They include U.S.
district judge David Edelstein and Manhattan U.S. attorney Mary
Jo White, who were appointed as part of the 1989 racketeering
settlement; Election Officer Benetta Mansfield; Election
Appeals Master Kenneth Conboy; the Independent Review Board,
which includes former FBI director William Webster; and the
recently appointed Independent Financial Auditor Martin Levy, a
former FBI analyst.
Conboy's 74-page decision also implicates Richard Trumka, secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO and former head of the United Mine Workers of America; Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; and Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Conboy accused Trumka of raising $50,000 for Carey. In response to a government subpoena, Trumka invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and has refused to testify. The FBI has already seized five computer disks from Trumka's office.
Hoffa has welcomed the government's moves against Carey, and continues to press for Carey's complete removal from the union. Meanwhile, Mansfield is seeking a postponement of the election to allow more time to investigate Hoffa's campaign finances. Conboy, who works along side Mansfield, is asking for more resources from the FBI to conduct the investigation.
Carey's supporters praised the move, hoping that Hoffa too would be disqualified. "Let's hope that they do the same kind of investigation, from congressional committees to the FBI .. that has been done on Carey," said Ken Paff, a Carey supporter and leader of Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in Manhattan is considering indicting the union president for taking part "in a conspiracy to divert union money from the Teamsters' treasury," according to the New York Times. Gere Nash, who was Carey's campaign manager, and two of his consultants have pleaded guilty to conspiring to raise illegal funds.
Teamsters officials acquiesced to the establishment of financial control over the union. A similar auditor was installed with the consent decree in 1989, but was annulled after Carey was first elected union president in 1991. Under the new agreement, the union cannot spend any money, transfer any property, or enter into any contract other than a collective bargaining agreement without first notifying the monitor and receiving his express approval. The one exception is for regular payments like rent and salaries.
The agreement also grants the government monitor "unrestricted access to all I.B.T. books, records and offices," and states that "unreasonable failure to cooperate" can lead to being expelled from the union. Earlier in November, Mansfield ordered that the mailing of the December issue of the union's magazine, The Teamster, be postponed. She claimed that distributing the magazine would be misleading, since it reported on the elections she is attempting to have suspended pending the investigation of Hoffa.
`Government is violating our rights'
In interviews with Teamsters around the country, there is a
lot of discussion about the issues. "We don't see this as a
good situation," said Phillips, the UPS driver in Chicago. "The
government is violating our right to control our union. We
should not give up our right to oversee our finances or the
running of our union. This handcuffs us."
At the recent convention of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union in Cleveland, Frank Villa from Local 630 in Los Angeles said he thought the government's actions would create more obstacles for the labor movement. "The government is trying to slow us down after the UPS strike," he said.
Villa talked about recent battles by labor in California, including the victorious BART transit strike in San Francisco. "Business didn't want a repeat of the UPS strike," he said. Villa said it was a mistake in the first place to let the government intervene in the union. "But corruption gave the government the opportunity to intervene."
Reginald Nelson, a part-time UPS worker with seven years' seniority in Atlanta and a member of Teamsters Local 528, commented, "Maybe the government wasn't neutral, as they say they were, during our strike." Nelson said that company- employee relations at UPS are "bad. UPS is still subcontracting work out. They cut the combination jobs and made more part-time jobs."
Houston Lampkin, also a UPS worker and member of Local 528, said the provisions in the new contract haven't been implemented. "What's with the pay raise we were supposed to get? Workers were really banking on getting that raise by now," he said. "Where are the extra hours for part-timers like myself? We were supposed to go from three to four work days. There are lots of angry workers here."
"It's a scary thought when you let someone else run your house. It means you're not in control," said Juan Campos, a UPS driver and member of Local 705 in Chicago.
Right now the Teamsters are in the middle of negotiations with Anheuser-Busch, which employs some 8,000 union members at a dozen breweries in the United States. Negotiations will also be getting under way soon by some 100,000 long-haul Teamster drivers. "We have a lot of things we want to do to make a bigger and stronger union," Phillips said. "We have new members who have joined the union since we won against UPS. We have workers who come to our union hall and want the Teamsters to organize them." He said Federal Express workers and workers at Overnite Transportation want to join the union. But when they read all the negative publicity, they "pull back," he said. "I believe this is want the government wants."
Danny Booher and Frank Forrestal are members of United Transportation Union Local 1449. Dan Fein in Atlanta, Cappy Kidd in Chicago, and Tony Prince in Cleveland contributed to this article.