Just three months ago, Ron Carey was riding high as the most successful union leader in recent U.S. history after his International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) won a two-week strike against the giant United Parcel Service (UPS).

Now, with his image as an anti-corruption labour leader in tatters – and his chances of running for IBT president next year all but over – Carey again is a symbol for organised labour, a leader embattled on all sides.

“The transformation of the Teamsters from a union under the thumb of organised crime, which saw the beatings and murders of dissidents, to one of the cleanest, most democratic and vibrant unions was the work of Ron Carey,” argued Carl Biers, director of the Association of Union Democracy, a New York-based reform group which monitors the labour movement.

Ironically, Biers said, Carey has now been prevented from running again for the presidency, after he was linked to “improper and even illegal activity.” But the union leaders who will benefit from his fall, Biers contended, are exactly the corrupt, Mafia-linked “old guard” leaders whose actions paved the way for the current U.S. government oversight of the Teamsters.

Many old guard leaders, displaced when Carey led a reform slate to victory in 1991, have rejoiced over his current troubles. Former federal judge Kenneth Conboy on Monday disqualified Carey from running in a new Teamster election after ruling that he had diverted more than 700,000 dollars in union funds to groups which in turn funded his 1996 re-election bid.

Carey already had been forced into a re-run of last year’s IBT elections because of the corruption charges. Now that he has been excluded pending an appeal, the clear front-runner for the re-run election scheduled for next year is Carey’s 1996 opponent, James Hoffa Jr.

On Tuesday, Bonetta Mansfield, the government-appointed interim elections officer, asked Judge David Edelstein of the circuit court in New York to suspend the timetable for the new election, citing Judge Conboy’s decision also to investigate the Hoffa campaign for corruption allegations.

The election currently is scheduled to begin with the closing of nominations by Nov. 21 Friday, and the end of secret balloting by the end of March 1998. Because Conboy not only found Carey to have violated campaign financing rules, but also ordered a federal investigation into 1.8 million dollars raised in unindentified contributions for Hoffa’s 1996 campaign, Mansfield has asked for more time.

Currently, added Teamster spokesman Steve Trossman, the only candidates for president in the re-run had been Carey and Hoffa. If Carey’s appeal fails, and if Hoffa’s campaign is also found to have acted improperly, the IBT leadership could be adrift. But Trossman said that there are likely to be many more candidates if the timetable is postponed.

For now, however, Carey’s fall is a sharp blow for labour reformers, who had lauded him for cutting many of the IBT’s ties to organised crime and for slashing the privileges enjoyed by the union’s leaders.

The incumbent IBT president’s woes also come just months after the UPS strike became the first major nationwide victory for U.S. organised labour in two decades and drew attention to the low wages and poor conditions suffered by ‘part-time’ workers.

“The UPS strike was a huge victory for the labour movement,” said Biers. At the same time, he argued, “when Carey took over, he really broke with the old guard’s policy of supporting Republican candidates” like former Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Biers argued that it was significant that Congressional Republicans led the push to investigate the 1996 Hoffa-Carey contest following a year in which the IBT supported Democratic candidates for Congress. “They had never been so involved in Teamster corruption before,” he noted — even during the days of Mafia involvement.

Since the government oversight of the Teamsters paved the way for Carey’s 1991 victory, the Carey camp has engaged in business deals with the federal regulators authorised to monitor it, argued Bob Fitch, a consultant for the Communications Workers of America – exactly the type of wrongdoing the IBT had allowed in the past. “The regulators started working for the regulated,” he said.

As a result, Fitch added, the choice between Hoffa and Carey boiled down to “the difference between having organised crime run the union, and having someone who plays off one Mafioso against another.” Carey, Fitch contended, had worked with some factions of Eastern-based organised crime families, while Hoffa – son of late Teamsters President “Jimmy” Hoffa – has reportedly been linked to Mob elements based in Chicago and the Midwest.

Both men deny allegations that they are corrupt. “I have done nothing wrong, and I will fight (Conboy’s) decision until it is overturned,” Carey said after the judge made announced his ruling.

“They can look at our finances all they want,” Hoffa added after Conboy ordered an investigation into his campaign. “There’s nothing wrong with our finances.”

The campaigns raised some four million dollars each in 1996, said Biers. “You would have to be tremendously naive to believe that either campaign received its money in nickels and dimes from rank-and-file workers,” he argued. Biers said that Hoffa likely would be excluded, as well, if a full investigation is held into his own campaign.

The lesson from the Teamster saga is in many ways the same as that of President Bill Clinton’s own post-election woes: Big money has been funneled into many U.S. elections, and in this case has tainted even reform-friendly union leaders.

In addition to Carey, the financing scandal has snared AFL-CIO treasurer Rich Trumka, who denies any wrongdoing; while another corruption scandal is threatening Labourers’ International leader Arthur Coia. In a further irony, Carey was forced to re-run his election mere weeks after the UPS victory, and was knocked off the ballot just days after organised labour last week pushed Congress to reject the ‘fast-track’ free-trade accord pushed by Clinton.

Labour may have had a good year in 1997 — but Ron Carey hasn’t had time to enjoy it, despite his own crucial role.