Socialist Action /February 1999
Hoffa's Election Win Challenged by Leedham
By CHARLES WALKER
Many rank-and-file Teamsters think that James Hoffa has been running
the union ever since he won the presidential election on Dec. 5. Actually,
Hoffa has not been allowed to take office.
At present, the international union is under the control of lame-duck
officers who daily consult with Hoffa and his aides. The officers are holdovers
from the Ron Carey administration.
Most of Carey's loyalists quit the headquarters staff during the last
six months of 1998. The few Carey loyalists that remain are under the thumb
of Tom Sever, the union's acting president. Sever is a run-of-the-mill business
unionist who was careful not to clash with Carey.
According to one Hoffa slate source, Hoffa expected to take office Jan.
4. Now, the source says, the Hoffa faction guesses it may not take office
until late February, or early March-or even later. That's because the court-appointed
Election Officer must formally "certify" the election, before
the election results are official.
Michael Cherkasky, the Election Officer, has not explained to the union's
ranks his delay in certifying Hoffa's election, but most observers agree
that the delay is largely a result of post-election protests filed by Tom
Leedham, the reformer who finished second, behind Hoffa.
The protests allege "a pattern of misuse of local union and joint
council resources by union officials supportive of Mr. Hoffa ... and various
schemes to classify retirees as members, intimidation of members, and the
consequences of an employer denying campaigners access (to work sites)."
The Leedham protests also criticize Cherkasky for responding to Leedham's
protests with "remedial action which was ineffective and often ordered
well after its remedial impact might serve some purpose."
Leedham's many protests signify that the government's attack on rank-and-file
democracy didn't end with the government's ouster of Ron Carey. Indeed,
Leedham's protests show that the court's control of the election procedures
is itself an obstacle to the ranks' retaking control of the union from the
long-entrenched authoritarian bureaucracy.
The Leedham objections note that Cherkasky denied Ron Carey's 1997 protest,
asking that Hoffa be disqualified from the rerun election. But at the same
time, Cherkasky found that Hoffa committed fraud in filing false campaign
finance reports and that Hoffa lied to cover up nearly $200,000 in unlawful
employer contributions.
Leedham argues that Cherkasky should not certify Hoffa until the court-appointed
administrative board that ousted Carey has cleared Hoffa of pending corruption
charges based on Hoffa's fraudulent election activities.
"If Mr. Hoffa is implicated and his eligibility to hold office is
at issue," Leedham says, then "the ballot tabulation for the entire
Hoffa Slate must be called into question."
Leedham warns that "to allow Hoffa to become president ... will
only guarantee the indefinite perpetuation of government oversight, with
all the implications for continuing intrusions into self-rule that necessarily
follow, instead of encouraging the dismantling of government oversight."
Leedham has got to be burned up over Cherkasky's decision to reduce oversight
over election activities in the local unions, Cherkasky's untimely remedies
to offset some critical Hoffa campaign violations, and Cherkasky's appalling
screw-up of mailing out late a special edition of the union's magazine containing
the candidates' campaign materials.
Leedham holds that Cherkasky's failure to get the union's magazine out
in time may have affected the votes of 11,000 Canadians and the votes from
Hawaii.
Leedham states that he relied on the magazine to get his campaign message
out to the entire 1.4 million Teamsters so to "assist in some slight
leveling of the playing field," since a unionwide mailing was financially
prohibitive for Leedham's rank-and-file campaign.
Leedham also cites an instance where a company denied the Leedham campaign-but
not pro-Hoffa union officials-access to 400 workers. Leedham protested,
but apparently Cherkasky stalled for three months.
According to Leedham, the lack of access may have cost his slate the
election in the tight Southern vice-presidential races.
Leedham also says that Cherkasky didn't respond to all of Leedham' s
formal protests. For example, Cherkasky ignored Leedham's request to know
whether Hoffa paid the $167,000 fine levied against Hoffa for accepting
an illegal employer contribution in the same amount.
Obviously, if Hoffa hadn't paid the fine, then Hoffa could use the money
to hurt Leedham. As it was, Leedham reportedly was outspent by six to one,
if not much, much more. Though he doesn't say so outright, Leedham must
think that on balance Cherkasky's actions and inactions helped Hoffa at
Leedham's and the members' expense.
Hoffa's troubles also include charges filed against three of his newly
elected vice presidents by the court-appointed Independent Review Board
(IRB), which has the power to oust them from the union, as it did Ron Carey
in 1998.
The IRB has charged Vice President J.D. Potter with lying about an illegal
$5,000 cash donation to Hoffa. Jim Santangelo, a West Coast vice president,
is charged with several instances of lining his pockets with members' dues
money, as well as making illegal loans from the union's till that have never
been repaid.
A third vice president, Tom O'Connell, is charged with lying to cover-up
his hiring of a felon to run Hoffa's New York campaign. Hiring the felon
is not a violation of the election rules, but lying about it is.
Hoffa was found by the Cherkasky to have been part of the cover-up and
was fined $7500 and O'Connell was fined $12,685. If O'Connell also is disciplined
by the IRB for the election violations, then, says the Leedham camp, Hoffa
should expect to get no less a penalty than O'Connell. In other words, if
O'Connell is ousted, Hoffa should be gone too!
Meanwhile, Hoffa continues his attacks on Leedham; Leedham' s allies,
the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU); and Ron Carey.
Leedham's heavy vote, despite Hoffa's widespread support in the officialdom,
has got to have Hoffa worried, if not scared about facing Leedham in 2001.
If so, then Hoffa is not going to let up on the reform camp.
Hoffa and the officaldom at large can be expected to try and keep their
control over the ranks by continuing to slander Leedham, TDU, and, of course,
Ron Carey. Right after Hoffa's election was announced, The New York Times
reported that Hoffa said his union critics were "linked to the most
corrupt Ron Carey administration we've ever seen."
More recently, Hoffa's publicists told the press and the members that
TDU and Leedham "remain silent in the face of the massive criminal
conspiracy centered on their former leader, Ron Carey."
Undoubtedly, Hoffa and the officialdom have convinced some otherwise
straight-thinking union members that Carey robbed the members blind to further
his own ambitions, and that Leedham and TDU are no better. Since many Teamsters
probably know nothing more about the government' s expulsion of Carey than
what's appeared in the daily press, or what their officials have told them,
they can't be blamed if they believe that Carey, Leedham, and TDU can't
be trusted.
The wonder is that so many members saw through Hoffa's Big Lie campaign
and continue to view the reformers as their leaders. Certainly that could
not have been predicted if it had been known in advance that Carey would
limit himself to a courtroom defense, separated from his rank-and-file base;
and that TDU and Leedham would fail to refute vigorously Hoffa's systematic
slanders.
At this late date, there are probably even TDU members who do not know
that the IRB, despite many months of digging into the money-laundering scheme,
failed to find that Carey had a hand in the crime.
They probably don't know that the wimpy appeals court that rejected Carey'
s appeal admitted that a different judge looking at the same facts might
have reached a different conclusion than did Kenneth Conboy, the corporation
lawyer who barred Carey from the election and his certain victory over Hoffa
and the old guard.
Hoffa is using the government's frame-up of Carey to support his lies
about Leedham and TDU. As long as Hoffa's lies seem to work at all, he'll
work overtime to mislead and confuse the members by persistently repeating
that there was a "massive criminal element around Ron Carey and his
corrupt administration," that included Leedham and TDU.
That's to be expected. What shouldn't be expected is that Hoffa will
not face an organized counter-campaign by the central TDU leadership and
Leedham that tells the members how the rank-and-file got a raw deal from
the government when Carey was barred from the election and then expelled
from the union.
Up to now, TDU leaders have argued that Carey was out of the picture
and to take up the miscarriage of justice handed the members was a side
road leading to irrelevancy.
If they are wrong, then it's time for other TDUers to say that aggressively
refuting Hoffa's lies that TDUers, Leedham, and Ron Carey are all crooks
is part of the main highway to enhancing the members' trust in the reform
movement and once again retaking the international union from the bureaucracy.
Socialist Action /February 1999 |