Socialist Action /July 2000
Teamsters Notebook
UPS Boss rats out Hoffa
"UPS ... is enjoying a love-fest with Hoffa."
So concludes a reporter after interviewing Thomas Weidermeyer, boss of UPS's
air division, for Traffic WORLD (May 1), a mouthpiece for the trucking industry.
That's no scoop. But the reporter provides evidence
right from the horse's mouth that the days of confrontation and aggravation
at UPS are over. "We are in a period of understanding and cooperation,"
says Weidermeyer. "The internal things-grievances, settlements of disputes-have
all gone well."
As the reporter correctly observes, "That
is just about as close as any labor negotiator says to 'I love you.' Of
course, when grievances go well for the boss, workers have a very different
slant-frequently a four-letter slant-on the outcome.
But love aside, "Jim Hoffa understands business,"
says Weidermeyer. "He understands a very basic tenet of labor. If you
want more members, you've got to want to help make companies grow."
Clearly that means that 'Jim Hoffa' won't harm the goose that lay the golden
eggs, a basic tenet of business unionism.
In other words, 'Jim Hoffa' is expected to help
the UPS bosses beat up on their competition (too bad for the competitors'
workers, unionized or not!) so that the UPS bosses stay increasingly profitable.
And 'Jim Hoffa' is doing as he's expected to do.
Here's a case in point: Weidermeyer complains,
"Our biggest competition is a government agency. When they make a profit,
they don't have to pay taxes."
So now 'Jim Hoffa' is urging the rank and file
to demand that Congress end the post office's 'competitive advantage,' which
"artificially impedes job growth in the private sector industries specializing
in package delivery ... [for] if the Postal Service is permitted to continue
to use profits from its government-granted, first-class mail monopoly to
subsidize the price it charges for other delivery services, then our Teamster
jobs at UPS are in jeopardy."
During Hoffa's election campaign, he stressed the
necessity of building the union's power by adding to the union's treasury.
So if the UPS boss feels that the firm has the upper hand with Hoffa, who
can blame him?
"In the last decade," asserts Weidermeyer,
"all the growth in the Teamsters has been with UPS. Take UPS out and
the Teamsters are a shrinking organization. We have a cooperative effort
[with the union] going on there."
In August 1997, then Teamsters President Ron Carey
led 200,000 UPS strikers, who shut down UPS for the first time in 93 years.
The strike received widespread public support, recalling for some the public's
support for the post-World War II strike wave.
The strike's effects are still felt today, as UPS
unwillingly must create 10,000 new full-time jobs. "[I]t was the Carey-engineered
strike" says the reporter, " that caused UPS to sign onto such
a pledge."
It's no wonder then that "United Parcel Service,
the nation's largest transportation company feels it has taken part in one
of the great trades of all time in labor: James P. 'Jimmy' Hoffa for Ron
Carey as president of the Teamsters union."
-CHARLES WALKER
Hoffa's allies face embezzlement charges
Only a few years ago, Teamsters President James
P. Hoffa was a minor lawyer for some Teamster unions in and around Detroit.
Then Larry Brennan, a veteran Teamster official, who like a number of Teamster
bureaucrats seemed to inherit his union post from his father, hired Hoffa
to be his "administrative assistant."
He signed Hoffa up as a dues-paying member, and
in enough time for Hoffa to become eligible to run against then IBT President
Ron Carey. Now Brennan, Hoffa's benefactor, and some say his mentor, has
been charged by court-appointed monitors with committing embezzlement.
More than that, the monitors have instructed Hoffa
to hold hearings on the charges. If he fails to do so, or if the monitors
are dissatisfied with the outcome, they'll hold their own hearings. In any
case, if Brennan is found guilty, past practice indicates he'll be ousted
from the union for life.
Along with Brennan, five other officers of Brennan's
local union have been charged as part of the alleged stealing. It's not
clear why Hoffa's executive assistant at the international union's headquarters,
who was named as a key person in the scheme, was not charged.
"Incredibly, the bagman in this sordid scheme
to take dues money and use it to buy an election is now the highest appointed
person in the Teamsters union," said TDU leader Ken Paff, in a prepared
statement. If the charges stand up, Hoffa is bound to lose votes in next
year's election. In any case, Hoffa's opponents are certain to make sure
the ranks are fully informed. -C.W.
Hoffa urges Nader on; Nurses union endorses
him
In June Teamsters President told the press that
"no one in the political arena speaks stronger on the issues important
to American working families than Ralph Nader," Green Party presidential
candidate. The union president did not endorse Nader; nor did he say that
the union would endorse him. However Hoffa did call for Nader and Pat Buchanan,
the arch-rightist demagogue, to be included with Al Gore and George W. Bush
in the presidential debates.
During April's Washington, D.C., anti-China trade
actions, Hoffa shared the Teamsters platform with Buchanan, whose racist
speech drew fire from some labor and liberal quarters.
Some observers say that Hoffa and Auto Workers
union president Stephen Yokich are just using Nader to get concessions from
the Democrats. If so, the reputedly "moralistic" Nader hasn't
objected to their ploy.
According to the Washington Post (June 22), "Two
major unions, the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, are using the third-party
presidential bid of Ralph Nader, an outspoken critic of administration trade
policies, to pressure Vice President Gore to take tougher stands on trade
or face the possibility of a divided labor movement on Election Day."
Also in June, the California Nurses Association
(CNA) declared its support for Nader. The union, numbering 31,000 members,
"praised Nader as committed to universal health care, patients' rights
and expanded federal health insurance for Americans" (Associated Press,
June 14).
The nurses union is a founding member of the Labor
Party (LP), and some of its officers are also LP leaders. The LP has popularized
the slogan, "The bosses have two parties, workers need one." In
other words, workers should have no political confidence in the Democrats
and the Republicans and should independently organize politically in defense
of their own social interests.
However, the same news account of the endorsement
indicates that Nader has compromised the union's leaders' declared support
for workers' political independence from the bosses' parties:
"Nader argued his campaign could mobilize
voters to help Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives,
where Republicans only have a six-seat edge. 'Since there are very few Green
Party candidates running for the House or for the Senate, the millions of
votes that we're going to get ... will more likely vote for the Democratic
candidates for the House and Senate and in that respect help the Democrats
gain control of the Congress,' he said."
Obviously, Nader has no reservations about helping
Democrats continue the bipartisan rip-off of workers' muscle and sweat and,
during wartime, blood.
So far, the nurses union is the only the union
endorsing Nader. It seems safe to predict however, that there will be other
unions, and individual union officials who will join the Labor for Nader
effort-and on election day, vote for Nader, and what the hell, while they're
at it, vote for some of the traditional bosses' candidates too. -C.W.
Socialist Action /July 2000 |