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 dele-

gates and international officers. A UD ‘s comments were sub-

mitted 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 re-

ports filed by independent committees—reports that must re-

veal 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 de-

stroy 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 pay-

ments 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 domina-

tion 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 doz-

ens of other ways become actively involved in the struggle to

make their union more democratic and effective in represent-

ing their interests at the bargaining table. Long before the fed-

eral government began using civil RICO as a tool for reform-

ing 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, in-

cluding 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 rea-

son, 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 unaccept-

able result....

The long history of threats, intimidation, violence and eco-

nomic 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 Team-

sters who obtain work through union-run hiring halls, but un-

ion power to threaten members’ jobs as a means of suppress-

ing dissent is also easily accomplished through the grievance

procedure. TDU members, who are often critical of their un-

ion’s performance in collective bargaining and contract en-

forcement, 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 em-

ployer to manufacture grounds for firing the worker in ques-

tion, 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

Union Democracy Review’

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

Fax:

(718)855-6799

Subscriptions:

$15 individual, $30 organizations

Contributions are tax deductible. Union Democracy Review aims

to promote the principles and practices of internal union democ-

racy in the North American labor movement. Toward this end, it

makes its pages available for discussion.

June 2000

2

Union Democracy Review