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Teamster reform turnabout after 19 years?
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Nineteen years ago at the 1981 Teamster convention one of the rare Teamsters for a Democratic Union delegates, Diana Kilmury, arose and, standing her ground, called for establishing an ethical practices committee to consider charges of corruption and racketeering in the union. In his book, Collision, Ken Crowe records what followed: “The twenty-two hundred delegates exploded in rage, screaming, howling, booing this woman who dared to impugn the integrity of their union....If fear was churning her insides, Kilmury didn’t show it.” Then—one, two, three—the detested motion was shouted down.
a free hand to repress his
critics.
And this time, without screaming and howling, the differences were discussed publicly by partisans of both sides in civilized fashion at the AUD conference on April 8. That change in mood shows how far the Teamsters union and its reformers have progressed in those 19 years.
In 1981, when Kilmury spoke out, the Teamster establishment, heavily infiltrated by racketeers, was footloose and fancy free. Unencumbered by any codes or oversight, they were free to indulge their appetite for money and power. Any ethical code, even the most toothless and benign, would have been an aspersion on the quality of their character and, even more important, a limitation on the exercise of their fiscal ingenuity. Faced by the choice between an ethical practices code or nothing at all, their decision was never in doubt: hoots and boos for that maniac who would even mention the subject.
But by 2000, the scene has changed, and the choice is now
quite different. In effect, a drastic code has already been im
posed by a federal judge: An Independent Review Board appointed by the court, independent, that is, from the union power structure and outside its control, has purged the union of scores of individual crooks and organized racketeers and, to an important degree,
has protected members from retaliation
for criticizing their officials. Court-appointed officers ran the elections for international officers and guaranteed an honest count. Court-appointed investigators continue on the alert for malefactors. This existing enforcement machinery remains free
of control by union officials and independent of union politics.
The choice is no longer an ethical code vs. freewheeling but between an actual government-imposed monitorship, tried and effective, on the one hand, or a Hoffa-endorsed plan on
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the other. The adoption of the Hoffa plan could be the first step toward eliminating the tested government monitorship. That difference between 1981 and 2000 explains why there are no boos and screams to shout down the Hoffa plan but welcome tolerance from the union establishment, and explains why Kilmury and TDU, the original proponents of an ethical practices committee, are skeptical.
The controversy revolves around several related issues: Will Hoffa’s proposed code be adequate even as a statement of good
intentions? Even more important, will it include an effective enforcement mechanism? In any event, would it be prudent
now to lift the
government monitorship?
this, he was correct. It is inconceivable that so crass a set of notions could ever pass muster by Stier and make its
way
into any finished public document. But it is revealing of the frank leanings of its sponsors. Money and power press on
their minds. And, in fact, these proposals were missing from a later
and more elaborate and sophisticated draft. The new draft simply noted that salaries should be “appropriate” and not high enough to jeopardize an affiliate’s ability to pay its bills.
The code, then, would leave open such delicate salary questions. That kind of omission, or flexibility, means that the actual application of principles elucidated in the codes will depend upon the enforcement mechanism.
In distinguishing right from wrong, the draft is an excellent guide to good conduct: It is wrong to accept bribes and kickbacks, the rights of members should be respected, conflicts of interest should be avoided, there should be fiduciary responsibility, fair elections, toleration of dissent, fair hiring halls, informed and fair contract ratification. All explained in convincing detail. One can quibble here and there over a formulation. There are omissions: nothing about the election of stewards and business agents. Still, if the labor moment, and the Teamsters,
could be induced to follow these moral commandments, the world would be a better place. But enforcement? There’s the rub.
Lofty
guiding principles are one thing. Enforcement is quite another. A law which
prescribed that justice and harmony
should prevail in
the world would be praiseworthy but not
much good without an enforcement mechanism. In the Teamsters union today enforcement is at least as
important as the
continued on page 8
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their similars still dominate the union.
But how the scene has distributed copies of an early draft memo that had been prechanged! Now, James Hoffa,
Jr. proposes to establish, not only pared by
one subcommittee of the RISE task force (RISE is the a kind of ethical practices committee, but an elaborate pro- acronym title of the Hoffa program.) In some of its suggestions
gram of conferences and codes aimed to prove that the union for
the code, the memo was startling: it proposed that there be intends to act against organized crime. But this time, TDU, no limits on officers’ pay, that multiple salaries be permitted, some of its same members or their similars, are skeptical, in- that nepotism remain unrestricted, that no-show jobs, while sisting that the Hoffa plan is frowned upon, be permissible. a public relations ploy really
“Have we
forgotten that this union was sub-
Ed Stier, who devised the ba
rent government monitorship
jected to monitorship
precisely
because
it
was
ics that this memo was only a
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by murderers, crooks, and extortionists?”
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June2000
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Union Democracy Review
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