Twelve of the recent draft code’s 81 pages deal with enforcement, but the crux of the mechanism is a 45-member International Master Panel consisting of nine members from each of the union’s five regions. To simplify somewhat: three members of each of these panels will act as a hearing board, that is, a trial committee to hear charges under the code.

How are these 45, and those teams of three to be chosen? All Teamsters may apply. Their applications will be reviewed by “a blue-ribbon committee of non-Teamsters appointed by the [Teamster] president with the approval of the GEB.” We note that these blue-ribbon non-Teamsters themselves will never act as the trial committee. From the poll of applicants, they will make recommendations to the IBT president; that ends their role. The president, in turn, may reject any of their recommendations, although he may not appoint any who are not recommended. It is difficult to see how these blue-ribbon citizens can make an intelligent choice from among the mass of applicants. But in any case, their ability to choose is strictly defined.

One third of the final 45 on the master panel must be full time business agents who are not elected officers; one third must be full time paid local officers; and one third rank and file members working full time at the trade. One from each category make up the three-person trial committees. Come weal come woe, the trial procedure is inextricably wound up with the full-time union power structure and therefore with internal politics. The single rank and file member will have to be unusually strong willed against the others.

After all is said and done, the decisions of these trial panels are only recommendations. “Under the IBT Constitution,” the draft code notes, “the GEB [General Executive Board] must ultimately decide the dispute.”

The enforcement process only begins with an outside blue- ribbon committee. But it promptly bows out, leaving enforcement in the hands of the union officialdom and subject to its political and power inclinations.

It is virtually certain that the formal code of conduct that emerges from the RISE task force will be, if not flawless, an excellent handbook for union moralists. Nothing less will gain the support of the program’s sponsor, Ed Stier. The code of conduct, however, is overwhelmed by the weakness of the code of enforcement.

This weakness it shares with the rest of the labor movement. Most unions embody fine declarations of intent in their statement of purpose and constitution: it is wrong to steal; the rights of members must be respected. (The Teamster code spells out these rights in great detail.) But everywhere the machinery of enforcement remains in the hands of a centralized incumbent officialdom which decides questions not on the basis of justice, fair play, and democracy but on the basis of political expediency. Only the United Auto Workers, with its Public Review Board, has created a kind of Supreme Court,

independent of the union establishment, to provide recourse for members against their officials. This principle of independent public review is so distasteful to the Machinists that it has ended the prospect of unity with the Auto Workers.

But what is merely a serious weakness in other unions, is a terrible danger in the Teamsters. Have we forgotten that this union was subjected to court monitorship precisely because it was heavily infiltrated by organized crime, or to put it plainly, by murderers, crooks, and extortionists? Many are gone. Perhaps most, who knows? Nevertheless, TDU, the original proponent of an Ethical Practices Committee, and other rank and file members, are wary of any Hoffa-dominated code because they fear that his election in 1998, even though supported by a majority of the voters, was a setback to reform and a danger for the future. They are convinced that he has already used his power to suppress opposition. Their fear surely deserves at least as much respect as Hoffa’s expression of good intentions.

Those skeptical Teamsters will not forget the last ten years even though those events have been obscured by the 1996 Carey administration campaign fund-raising scandal. In 1991, under the protecting wing of the court, reformers defeated the racketeer-infested old guard and elected Ron Carey. At that tried to put Hoffa forward in opposition to the reformers but failed because he was not a union member. They hired him on their staff and endowed him with membership in preparation for the future. From the moment Carey was elected in 1991, they conducted a drumfire attack on him because he threatened their money and power. By 1996, they succeeded in making Hoffa their candidate and took back the union from the reformers in 1998. Hoffa’s road to power explains the skepticism over any program he sponsors. It would be naive to examine any program without taking that record into account.

Ed Stier is convinced that Hoffa sincerely would like to keep the union free of organized crime influence, which is not unlikely. No self-respecting labor leader wants to submit to any other organized force, certainly not organized crime. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. In any event, Teamster reform involves more than immunity from organized racketeering. It requires protection of the union’s money from legal and semi-legal raids by greedy self-serving officials, a defense of members’ rights, fair elections, the whole range of rights that enable a membership to keep a union decent and democratic. The question is whether the RISE program with an enforcement scheme intertwined with the union officialdom can do that job.

Whether one likes the program or not, the issue remains:

does it radiate enough confidence to justify lifting the existing court oversight? That is the acute question. Hoffa and his many allies are pressing for a reply because he wants the government out. True, the government must not stay on forever. But is now the time to leave?

continued on page 15

time, part of the old guard

Whether one likes the program or not, the issue remains: does it radiate enough confidence to justify lifting the existing court oversight? The government must not stay on forever. But is now the time to leave?

to hold his or her own

June 2000

8

Union Democracy Review