Reform Candidate Strengthens as
Vote Nears
Leedham emerges as viable rival for
front-runner Hoffa
By Diane E. Lewis, Boston Globe Staff
ATERTOWN - In
the 12 years since he joined the Teamsters, Bob Bonsignore has seen his union split in two
and watched its national leadership unravel. Now, the 44-year-old UPS driver is banking on
a reform candidate to make it whole.
"I'm tired of the old way of running
things," he said, minutes before pulling his United Parcel Service truck out of a
garage here. "I don't want to go back there. So, I'm for
Leedham."
Five months after launching a campaign for
president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against James P. Hoffa,
47-year-old Thomas Leedham has emerged in the final lap of the race as a
viable candidate, causing some experts to wonder whether the union's reform arm, Teamsters
for a Democratic Union (TDU), just might catapult the Oregon labor leader into
the top job.
After noting that an upset once seemed unlikely,
at least one observer pointed to former Teamsters President Ron Carey's unexpected victory
over R.V. Durham in the 1991-1992 race as an indication that another
reformer could win.
"You have to remember that when Carey first
ran he had people on his slate who had never held a union elective office, but they were
truckers, and they had the TDU behind them," said
Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
"The Teamsters are volatile. We were surprised in 1991 when Carey won. We could be surprised again in 1998."
Added Rick Hurd, a labor professor at Cornell
University, "Anything could happen in a mail-in election where only 30 percent of the
members vote and where one candidate is relying on his father's past reputation and the
other is building on a grass-roots network."
With union mail ballot counting scheduled to begin Thursday,
Hoffa, 58, of Detroit, and Leedham, of Portland, Ore.,
are in the home stretch of an election that will determine the future of the nation's
biggest private-sector union. Leedham heads the union's 400,000-member warehouse division.
Hoffa, the son of the late Teamsters president, James Riddle Hoffa, is a labor lawyer.
A third candidate, John Metz, 59, of St. Louis,
has done little national campaigning and is widely regarded by union observers as a long
shot in the race.
Whoever wins will have to shore up a near-bankrupt
union treasury, and prepare to go toe-to-toe with United Parcel Service, which has yet to
honor its promise to make 10,000 part-time workers full-time employees.
UPS said below-average volume stemming from last year's 15-day Teamsters strike made it
impossible to honor the contract. The Teamsters said UPS was simply taking advantage of a union in disarray.
With only a week left before the counting begins, Hoffa and
Leedham are making a final effort to capture the seat vacated by Carey, who was barred
from running and expelled from the union after aides embezzled more than
$750,000 from the union treasury.
As son of the late James R. Hoffa, who was jailed for embezzling
money from the union's pension fund, Hoffa has gained national media
attention and the support of union officials in the
Midwest, New York, and San Francisco. He has promised to increase the union treasury, but
says he won't reveal how until he's elected. He has also said he would work to heal deep
political divisions in the union's ranks.
Hoffa has never held a union office or an ongoing full-time job as a Teamsters member, but he said his work as a legal
adviser to union officials and members gave him experience. "I've worked closely with
members over the years," he said in a recent interview. "I've helped them win
their grievances, and I've been there for them when they needed help."
"Unquestionably, Hoffa has
garnered support from leaders, but the reformers have real strength, too," said
Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "If
the question is, `Is Hoffa the front-runner?' I would say, `Yes.' He has the money, and he
has a strong infrastructure. At the same time, there is real discontent
among members and that could be a problem."
Leedham, who used to load pallets for a living,
was behind union lobbying efforts to persuade the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration to develop an ergonomics standard to prevent injuries brought on by sorting
packages, loading trucks, typing, and other repetitive motions.
Regarded as a close friend of the 20-year-old
reform movement, Leedham is the only candidate from the West Coast. An international vice
president since 1992, he is an official at Local 206 in Portland, Ore.
Leedham's slate, called "Rank & File Power," lists
several women, including trucker Diana Kilmury, an international vice president from
Canada and co-chairwoman of the TDU. The Teamsters now boast some 300,000 female members, but they are scattered throughout the union and have not organized a
political voting bloc. Still, Leedham is counting on votes from women, minorities, and
rank-and-file members.
"Our campaign platform excites people,"
he said during a last-minute trip through New England last month. "It calls for
putting rank-and-file members on all national negotiating committees and grievance panels.
It also calls for rank-and file committees to watchdog Teamsters union
pension funds."
Meanwhile, Leedham's backers pointed to a rash
of local Teamsters elections as an indication that members were backing the reform
candidates. Earlier this year, for example, Dane Passo, the 45-year-old
leader of Hoffa's campaign in Chicago, lost control of Local 705 to a reformer. The local,
a powerhouse with 18,000 members, boasts a pension fund with just under
$1 billion.
Last year, another reformer won control of an
11,000-member flight attendants' local in California, displacing a longtime Hoffa
supporter.
"Several weeks ago, Richard Nelson, head of
the Teamsters freight division, ran for re-election to the presidency of
his local in Oklahoma City and lost 2-1 after Hoffa wrote a letter of endorsement,"
maintained Kenneth Paff, a founder of TDU in Detroit.
In September, the Hoffa Now! campaign polled
union members, but did not release the results, prompting opponents to question whether
Hoffa had rallied sufficient membership support to win the presidency.
Anticipating a low turnout,
both sides have been manning telephone banks in a last-minute push to get the vote out.
Only 33 percent of the union's members voted in 1996. This year, the two campaigns are
hoping last-minute telephone calls will prompt more members to participate.
At the UPS site in Watertown, union drivers stood near idled
trucks and contemplated the election. "Most of the people out here
and at UPS sites around the state are pretty much backing Leedham," said union
steward Tim Madden. "Believe me, the votes are here."
But if Leedham is believed to have garnered most of the UPS vote
as well as the votes of women and warehouse workers, Hoffa is banking on support from both
traditional and moderate Teamsters who oppose the reformers' progressive ideas.
Will Hoffa win the election? "I don't think anybody has the
foggiest idea right now," said UMass labor historian Thomas Juravich, author of the
book "Commonwealth of Toil."
"The Teamsters union has gone through more changes than most go through in a hundred years," Juravich said. "Given the current political climate, who knows who will win? I personally believe it is still an open race."
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Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.