Socialist Action /March 1999
Teamsters Notebook
By CHARLES WALKER
I thought the government's case against Ron Carey could not possibly
get any phonier, but I was wrong. On Feb. 5, government prosecutors wrote
Carey's lawyers that Jere Nash, the key witness against Carey, recently
confessed that he defrauded the union using a billings scam.
"Nash acknowledged that, when previously questioned by the government
regarding these expenses, he intentionally withheld information about the
scheme, and falsely denied any role in the billing of expenses."
The letter also stated, "I am bringing this to your attention in
connection with your pending appeals of Mr. Carey's ... discipline by the
Independent Review Board."
Nash, Carey's professional campaign manager in 1996, provided the principal
"evidence" against Carey. Nash claimed that in a phone call lasting
only a very few minutes he had informed Carey that he intended to raise
donations for the Carey Slate election campaign from political advocacy
groups (such as the National Council of Senior Citizens) that the Teamsters
had helped financially.
The court-appointed election officer barred Carey from the 1998 rerun
election, and then the so-called Independent Review Board ousted Carey from
the union, even though the board admitted that there was no evidence that
Carey knew about the money-laundering scheme.
In short, Nash was stealing from the union prior to his money-swapping
scheme, and then lied about it while he cut a deal with the government in
exchange for his testimony implicating Carey. Nash's latest confession would
reduce Nash's credibility to zero with probably all juries-and Carey would
walk away vindicated.
But Carey can't appeal to a jury. He must appeal to judges who already
upheld his removal from the election, even though they said that other judges
looking at the same evidence might not have barred Carey!
I have previously written that the Hoffa faction will control all facets
of the 2001 election. I have since learned that, under the Consent Decree,
the U.S. Labor Department has the option of monitoring that election. The
Labor Department (at its expense) may choose to monitor only the vote count,
or it may monitor the election as extensively as it did the previous election
officers.
Moreover, I was startled to learn that Michael Cherkasky, a former prosecutor
and the present Election Officer, has been pushing a so-called theory of
"accretion." I understand Cherkasky is claiming that the Consent
Decree permits the government to increase (accrete) its permanent rights
over the union, simply due to the precedent set by the government's actions
up to this point.
If so, it's unclear when or if ever the union will be free of federal
rule over its international union elections. Which means that the government
could continue indefinitely to set aside election results and bar candidates,
as it did Ron Carey.
Of course, if the Feds choose not to exercise their authority over the
election procedures, then the rank and file will still face an uphill fight
to get a fair election from the union's entrenched bureaucracy, which has
opposed majority rule on contracts, rank-and-file delegate elections, and
unionwide elections.
United Parcel Service (UPS) is welching on its word to 280,000 Teamsters
to provide 2000 new full-time jobs a year for five years, following the
1997 national strike.
One Chicago local union struck UPS over the supervisors doing bargaining
unit work. But the rest of the union has spurned job actions that exact
a price, choosing instead to file a grievance.
Now the ranks are awaiting an arbitrator's decision due in the spring.
Wall Street analysts predict that UPS "will post all-time revenue approaching
$26 billion this year."
The Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) reports that Hoffa Jr. has
selected the next head of the union's Parcel Division, which includes the
UPS workers. TDU says that Hoffa's choice, Dick Heck, is "notoriously
pro-management. He refused to participate in the Feb. 7, 1994, over-70 lbs.
strike. During the UPS negotiations in 1997 he was an anti-strike voice
on the national committee."
Traffic World, a corporate publication, reports that when a trucking
boss heard that it took two elections at a price tag of $25 million to get
Hoffa Jr. into office, the boss snorted, "I think we could have gotten
him a lot cheaper."
Hoffa's election is a setback for militants and labor activists, but
it doesn't mean that the bureaucracy will be able to turn the clock fully
back to where it was before Carey's 1991 election.
For one thing, there will not be a return to requiring a two-thirds vote
to reject a contract. That means that national rank-and-file campaigns to
reject concessionary contracts will once again be major events inside the
union.
And the officialdom will not be able to abolish the international union
elections. That means that militants and reformers will have a chance to
rally the ranks like Carey and TDU did in 1991 and defeat the Hoffa faction.
Of course, the officialdom will try to make up for lost time. For example,
a California Teamster paper reports that "Vice-President Mack will
continue to preside over Local 70 and Joint Council 7, dividing his responsibilities
between Northern California and Washington, D.C."
The paper didn't report that Mack will also continue to find enough time
to serve as an official of the Teamsters western multibillion-dollar pension
fund.
Some hardworking Teamsters might ask how Mack can handle all that work,
seeing that there's only 24 hours in a day. But far fewer Teamsters will
be asking why Mack wants to collect more than one paycheck, even in his
enviable tax bracket.
Socialist Action /March 1999 |