TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062491/0624200.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.8 KB | 229 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 36

LABOR

Revving Up For a Cleanup?


Prodded by racket busters, America's most notorious union is
trucking toward democracy. But will the status quo win the day?

By RICHARD BEHAR


    In a fitting stroke of symbolism, next week's Teamsters
convention will take place in Orlando instead of its familiar
site: Las Vegas -- the magic kingdom that was built illegally
with the union's money. The Teamsters are putting on a new face.
Even the workers at Disney World who walk around wearing Mickey
Mouse or Donald Duck or Pluto costumes are card-carrying members
of the International Brotherhood. More important, the union is
at last cleaning up its act, thanks to the prodding of
court-appointed officers who have forced dozens of Mob-connected
officials out of the union.

    The sweeping change is the result of a deal the government
cut with the Teamsters in 1989 to settle a massive racketeering
suit alleging that the union's leadership had made a "devil's
pact" with the Cosa Nostra. To avoid a costly trial and the
threat of a government trusteeship, Teamsters leaders agreed to
major reforms. If the Orlando convention follows the new rules,
in December the 1.6 million members of the most powerful U.S.
union will freely elect their president and 17-member executive
board for the first time. That's good news for the rank and
file, whose pooh-bahs have been ripping them off for decades.
The bad news is that none of the viable presidential candidates
are completely free of old Teamster associations or
questionable past performances.

    The winner will have the historic challenge of recasting
a union that the President's Commission on Organized Crime in
1986 tagged the "most controlled" by the Mafia, notably by New
York City's Genovese family. Four of the union's past seven
presidents have been indicted on criminal charges; three of them
(Dave Beck, James R. Hoffa and Roy Williams) went to prison.
"The Teamsters are probably the most Mob-controlled union in the
country's history," says Joseph Coffey, a top investigator at
the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. "And they could
still tie the nation up in knots if they wanted to."

    People tend to think only of truckers when they hear the
word Teamster, but the union today embraces workers from all
walks of life -- hospital and brewery laborers, librarians,
schoolteachers, even state troopers and sheriff's deputies --
in more than 600 locals scattered as far as Guam and the Yukon
Territory. Despite a membership erosion caused mostly by
trucking deregulation (the Teamsters peaked in 1978 at 2.3
million), the union boasts the largest U.S. political-action
committee. Last year it raised $10.5 million, nearly twice as
much as the runner-up, the American Medical Association. That
money buys plenty of political influence. More than half the
members of the House of Representatives urged the Justice
Department not to file the racketeering suit that paved the way
for next week's free convention.

    That power has not always translated into prosperity for
the workers, whose paychecks did not even keep up with
inflation throughout the 1980s as their contracts granted huge
concessions to employers. Meanwhile, Teamster leaders enjoyed
free rides on four union-owned jets, and more than 150 officers
reaped six-figure salaries. Aging Teamster president William
(Billy) McCarthy is viewed by many dues-paying members as
corrupt and ineffective. "I don't advocate the death penalty for
anyone, but I think he should be removed from office," says
Susan Jennik, head of the Association for Union Democracy, a
reform group that has monitored the Teamsters since 1969.

    In settling the racketeering suit two years ago, McCarthy
and his cronies agreed to a consent order under which Frederick
Lacey, a former federal judge, was assigned as an overseer to
remove corrupt officials and lead the way to free elections.
Teamster leaders were enjoined from ``knowingly associating"
with mobsters, but McCarthy was officially accused in May of
bringing reproach upon the union by inviting an embezzler and a
Mob-linked Teamster to sit on a convention committee (he
withdrew the nominations). Lacey also vetoed a lucrative
printing contract that McCarthy had handed to his own
son-in-law.

    Old-school Teamsters sometimes grumble that McCarthy sold
them out to the feds to save his own skin. Maybe so, but he and
his cohort have nonetheless spent $12 million of the union's
money to litigate the settlement at each step -- even to the
point of preventing a court-appointed elections officer from
getting office space in their Washington headquarters.

    Whichever candidates come out of the convention with 5% or
more of the delegate votes will be on the ballot in December
for election by the rank and file. (In the past, unelected
delegates chose the president directly.) Of the six men seeking
the top spot, only three have reasonable odds. The front runner,
R.V. Durham, 59, is a national vice president of the Teamsters
who is running with the blessing of McCarthy and a majority of
the executive board. "We're attempting to move this union away
from the status quo," says Durham.

    But Durham is the status quo. Lacey has barred three other
Teamsters from running for lesser posts on Durham's ticket
because of Mob ties, embezzlement and failing to take action
against corruption. While no one has accused Durham of
racketeering, he never challenged the leadership on any issues
of principle until the campaign. Earlier this year Durham voted
against holding a board meeting (a "kangaroo court," he calls
it) to decide whether to investigate McCarthy's involvement in
the printing-contract scandal.

    The other establishment candidate is Walter Shea, who
served as assistant and gatekeeper for four Teamster presidents,
including Roy Williams, who admitted to taking orders from the
Kansas City Mob. Shea, who was named a defendant in the feds'
racketeering case, insists that he did not know about Williams'
Mafia ties. Shea has the backing of a faction led by Joseph (Joe
T.) Trerotola, a powerful and feared Teamster vice president who
was accused last month by a court-appointed officer of failing
to investigate allegations that some of his colleagues are
Mob-linked. Trerotola is fighting the charges.

    The cleanest candidate with a chance of winning the
election, though a slight one, is Ronald Carey, president of a
United Parcel Service local in Queens, N.Y. Carey is widely
regarded as a reformer running with a small power base and a
shoestring campaign chest of $300,000. "The others have access
to all the Teamster resources," he gripes. "They could raise $1
million in one day if they needed to. They think they're in a
corporate country club."

    Critics, however, insist that Carey stood by while his own
local was infiltrated by the Mob. His secretary-treasurer, John
Long, was convicted in 1988 for embezzlement (the conviction was
reversed on procedural grounds). Carey says he did nothing
wrong, but the scandal has raised questions about his ability
to monitor underlings. Last month a major reform group,
Teamsters for a Democratic Union, was censured for making
illegal contributions to Carey's campaign.

    The wild card at the convention will be labor lawyer James
P. Hoffa, 50, son of the legendary Teamster leader who
disappeared in 1975, eight years after he went to jail for jury
tampering. A federal judge barred Hoffa last month from running
for office because he has held a job "in the craft" for only
half of the required two years. Even so, Hoffa aims to line up
enough delegate votes to amend the union's constitution to allow
him to seek the presidency. Meanwhile, jackets emblazoned with
the phrase FRIENDS OF HOFFA, the slogan used by his father, have
begun spreading across the country.

    Hoffa's father may have been a crook, but he looked out
for the members' interests (and paychecks) like no Teamster
president who followed him. He died, most federal agents
believe, because he finally stood up to the Mob after years of
acquiescing. "When Jimmy Jr. walks out on that floor, there will
be a revival that only his father could command," says an FBI
agent who is close to the scene. "Just the mention of his
charismatic name may generate a groundswell of support."

    Hoffa's son has pledged to root out the Mob, and his
attacks on the current Teamster leadership have been fiery. But
last week Hoffa sounded highly conciliatory as he pondered
whether he will have to grovel for support from the Durham or
Shea camps for a rules change to allow him to run. "Everyone's
heart is in the right place," Hoffa says now about his
opponents, sounding more and more like the consummate politician
his father was.

    One thing that deeply troubles reformers about Hoffa is
his unwillingness to accept the evidence that his father was
Mob-tied, an impediment that raises questions about his ability
to see the enemy. "I think Jimmy Jr. is the best man for this
union," says Daniel Sullivan, a union official and a source on
the Mafia for the FBI. "But the evidence on his father is
overwhelming. He knew how to say no to the Mob, but he just
should have started doing it sooner." Hoffa admits that "my
father knew some of these guys ((mobsters)). But I don't accept
any of this stuff about the Mob. I don't have to clear his name.
But we have to restore the greatness of the Hoffa years. It was
the Mob that killed my father, so I'm dedicated to purging it
from the union."

    One difficulty in purging organized crime is that the Mob
remains very efficient at ironing out labor disputes. In 1986,
for example, local Teamster officials brought a beef to former
Philadelphia mobster Nicholas ("the Crow") Caramandi. The
officials, Caramandi recalls today, were upset because a
Laborers Union local was monopolizing certain work at
Philadelphia's Civic Center. The Mob warned the Laborers to back
off, and they did. "If they don't listen, you might have to
whack ((execute)) them, maybe throw someone out a window,"
explains Caramandi, who has since entered the Federal Witness
Protection Program.

    Even though delegates at next week's convention will have
to choose from a slate of flawed candidates, the Teamsters have
come a long way in two years. More than 100 leaders have been
charged with crimes, and nearly half of them have already quit
or been forced out. "I don't think it will ever again be
business as usual," says labor reformer Jennik. Or as
administrator Lacey puts it, "Who emerges victorious is really
not our concern as long as it's done fairly and honestly." In
this case, the uncertainty of the outcome is evidence that
America's most notorious union is well on the road to democracy.