AUD objects to Teamster election rules

A UD has filed objections to the rules proposed by the Teamster union for its 2000/2001 election of convention delegates and international officers. A UD ‘s comments were submitted by Michael Goldberg. The most egregious of the rules would require that the names of all union members who make campaign contributions be made public, a rule which would obviously subject critics of the ruling regime to retaliation. Portions of A UD ‘s statement on this subject follow:

[One] unjustified and dangerous departure from past prac tice in the proposed election rules...would enable candidates for international office to obtain copies of the contribution reports filed by independent committees—reports that must reveal the identities of all Teamsters who have contributed to these committees....[It] threatens to cripple Teamsters for a Democratic Union and [has] the devastating potential to destroy it as a vital force for reform and democracy in the IBT. (TDU, in other words, would have to provide James Hoffa with a complete list of its members, since [TDU] dues payments would presumably be considered contributions under the proposed rules.)

The proposed election rules would accomplish what years of trying by the likes of Frank Fitzsimmons, Roy Williams, Jackie Presser, and their mob allies could not—the elimination of TDU as an effective force for change and democracy in the IBT. It is hard to believe the proponents of the proposed rules did not have that in mind, but even if they did not, they cannot deny the foreseeable effect their proposed rules would have on TDU. Adoption of these rules would make a mockery of the Consent Decree and of all the progress that has been achieved under it, and that cannot be permitted to happen....

For 25 years, TDU has been an important agent for reform in the IBT. Through TDU’s courageous efforts, beginning in the darkest days of organized crime’s infiltration and domination of the IBT, thousands of rank and file Teamsters have been educated about their rights to speak at union meetings, run for union office, publish newsletters, propose amendments to local bylaws, participate in contract campaigns, and in dozens of other ways become actively involved in the struggle to make their union more democratic and effective in representing their interests at the bargaining table. Long before the federal government began using civil RICO as a tool for reforming the union, TDU was calling for the direct rank and file

election of the IBT’s top officers, and for other changes like elected shop stewards and an end to the common practice of top union officials collecting multiple salaries and multiple pensions by simultaneously holding two, three, or four union positions each one of which was supposedly a full-time job....

TDU’s existence has been critical to the success that has been achieved thus far under the 1989 Consent Decree. Indeed the very reforms incorporated into the Consent Decree were developed in close cooperation with TDU and were proposed by federal prosecutors....

In the years before the Consent Decree, the IBT’s “Old Guard” leadership fully recognized the threat TDU proposed to their continued domination of the union, and they resorted to all types of repressive and intimidating tactics to frighten members away from TDU, if not to drive it out of existence completely. They did everything from telling reformers from the podium of the IBT’s 1976 convention that they could “Go to hell,” to threatening and carrying out beatings and even murders of reformers and political rivals, denying them fair representation in contractual grievance procedures or access to jobs through union-run hiring halls, and violently attacking a TDU national convention. Indeed, some of those actions, including the attack on TDU’s convention were among the RICO predicate acts upon which the government’s litigation leading to the Consent Decree were based....

TDU opposed the election of the IBT’s current leadership and has been a persistent critic of many of their policies and actions since they won the 1998 rerun election. For that reason, the IBT’s current leaders have the same incentives and motivations as the pre-Consent Decree Old Guard had to see TDU weakened or destroyed. Any such motivation is of course denied by the IBT’s present leadership, but the election rules proposed by that leadership, whatever their intent, will, if adopted, have the inevitable effect of furthering that unacceptable result....

The long history of threats, intimidation, violence and economic retaliation against dissenters and reformers in the Teamsters is well documented and cannot be ignored.... Economic retaliation against dissenters is particularly easy to accomplish in the IBT. This is especially true for those Teamsters who obtain work through union-run hiring halls, but union power to threaten members’ jobs as a means of suppressing dissent is also easily accomplished through the grievance procedure. TDU members, who are often critical of their union’s performance in collective bargairling and contract enforcement, are particularly vulnerable to this threat because they are likely to be thorns in the side of management as well as the union. In such cases, it is often possible for the employer to manufacture grounds for firing the worker in question, confident that the union will not aggressively pursue the grievance, if it does not sabotage it outright.

The incumbent Hoffa administration has made no secret of its hostility to TDU, and rank and file reformers have good reason to fear retaliation if their membership in TDU were disclosed to the union. The AUD has reason to believe that

continued on page 12

~im~ ~eøto~4~ ~‘eu~ee~’

No. 130

Published by:

500 State Street

Brooklyn NY 11217

Phone (718) 855-6650

Herman Benson, Editor

Carl Biers, Executive Director

June, 2000

Association for Union Democracy www.uniondemocracy.org

E-mail:aud@igc.org

Contributions are tax deductible. Union Democracy Review aims to promote the principles and practices of internal union democracy in the North American labor movement. Toward this end, it makes its pages available for discussion.

June 2000

7

Union Democracy Review