LABOUR-U.S.: Teamster Election Boosts Reformers, but Mob Still Lurks

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Dec 17 1996 (IPS) - The largest private-sector union in the United States dealt a major blow to the mafia by re-electing a reformist president, but the union still faces challenges from corrupt “old-guard” elements, union analysts argue.

“The image of union leaders has for years been one of a ‘fat cat’ with a lot of salaries, or a corrupt union boss with mafia ties,” says Carl Biers, director of the Association for Union Democracy, a Brooklyn-based union reform group. The re-election this week of Teamster President Ron Carey, he argues, “could help change that image.”

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), a union representing 1.4 million truckers, drivers, garbage collectors and parcel carriers, voted narrowly in favour of Carey, who has struck hard at union corruption. Carey beat James Hoffa Jr — the son of the late Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa — by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent out of some half a million votes cast, according to final results declared Saturday.

Carey’s victory, his second in five years, came after a bitter struggle between Carey’s multiracial, pro-reform backers and a Teamster “old guard” that has repeatedly been accused of collusion with organised crime. Hoffa may have lost his race, but that old guard may still cause problems for reformers, Biers warns.

“There’s still certainly many officials at different levels who tolerared the presence of organised crime in the past,” he argues. “Many of those leaders supported Hoffa. There will certainly be a resistance to Carey’s efforts to democratise the Teamsters from them.”

Carey’s efforts to dump corrupt union bosses and eliminate extra salaries and pensions have been resisted by the old guard since he first rode the reform tide to power, with the help of the anti-corruption Teamsters for a Democratic Union, in 1991.

“His first term was extremely difficult, since the old guard fought him from day one, even in day-to-day operation of the union and negotiations of contracts,” says Ron Carver, director of the IBT’s office of strategic campaigns. “All their efforts were aimed at weakening him in order to have a better shot at winning this election.”

But with their second defeat, Carver predicts that some of the old-guard bosses will set aside that struggle. “Some of them are so corrupt that they see no other role than protecting their fiefdoms and perks,” he says. “But we’re now confident that some leaders will now get on to the business of building a union.”

“We’re moving out of the station,” Carey warned Hoffa’s supporters after the election results were announced Saturday. “The station and the train are about reform, about cleaning up corruption. If he wants to get on that train and be supportive, then we encourage that and welcome that.”

But some union analysts worry that, in order to win his second election, Carey may have to bring into his fold Teamster heads who are not going to enforce a reform agenda.

“I think that victory was only possible as the result of a lot of compromises with the more conservative leaders,” says Robert Fitch, a former union organiser and author of ‘The Assassination of New York’. “That undermines the possibility of future change.”

Fitch says that, on the Eastern coast — including New York, Carey’s hometown and union base — the incumbent was able to secure his margin of victory by cutting deals with some of the old guard. Between those leaders and some conservative Carey backers, he says, the Teamsters’ executive council could slow any future reforms.

“I think any major changes are going to be very difficult for Carey to make in terms of democratising,” Fitch contends.

Still, he adds, the victory was a crucial one for union reform as a whole. “Imagine what would have happened if Hoffa had won,” he says. “Union reform would be totally dead. The argument would have been, ‘The members don’t want democracy’.”

That possibility had haunted Carey’s camp, which had to fend off charges that it had not won good workplace contracts and had relinquished too much power to the federal government. Because of its history of ties to organised crime, the IBT has had many locals put under trusteeship, in which leaders linked to corruption were ousted and their locals placed temporarily under central control.

Under Carey, 67 locals out of more than 560 are currently under trusteeship, Carver estimates — far fewer, he adds, than the Hoffa camp has claimed.

At the same time, many of the old-guard leaders resented Carey’s efforts to bring African Americans, Latinos and women into the Teamsters. “Carey’s supporters are really a rainbow,” Fitch says. “Hoffa’s supporters are all white.”

But neither racial resentments nor bitterness over the trusteeships swung the union to Hoffa, whose father was a famed Teamster boss before he faced corruption scandals and eventually disappeared. Hoffa’s backers also outspent Carey by five-to-two to no avail, in an election in which both sides spent some six million dollars collectively.

The victory bolsters not just Carey, but also strengthens reformers in the main U.S. labour coalition, the American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL- CIO), Biers argues. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney depends on Teamster support, without which he could never have been elected himself, he says.

“I think the election is very important for the entire progressive movement,” Carver adds. “Carey has achieved affiliations with international trade union bodies, women, minority organisations, environmental organisations.” Without healthy trade unions, those progressive groups would face an uphill struggle, he says.

By extension, the success of Sweeney and Carey — both of whom have come out strongly for the Democratic Party — boosts U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat who received heavy union support during his own successful re-election bid this year. Previous Teamster heads, like indicted former President Jackie Presser, had backed the Republican Party.

“Clinton would have been in very bad shape” if Carey had lost, Fitch says. “He wouldn’t have been able to rely on the support of the AFL-CIO anymore.”

Indeed, the importance of Carey’s victory to the Clinton administration can be seen in the amount the government spent on organising and monitoring the election, Fitch notes — 23 million dollars, nearly four times as much as the campaigns themselves. “If they didn’t do it, the Mob would have stolen the election,” he says of the extensive elections monitoring.