Socialist Action /September 2001
'Forgotten Teamster' Ron Carey Goes
on Trial
Former Teamsters President Ron Carey is at long
last getting his day in court. The nearly four-year delay ended on Aug.
29 in a New York federal courtroom where a jury of nine women and three
men was selected to sit in judgment of a union leader who once seemed destined
to inspire a new tide of labor militancy.
The government's case against Carey largely rests
on the testimony of once trusted aides, who are looking to trade their "good
behavior" on the witness stand for reduced sentences.
The one-time Carey aides were earlier separately
convicted for their part in an illegal fundraising scheme that involved
Teamster dues monies.
Carey has not been accused of participating in
the scheme but he has been charged with lying about his knowledge of what
went on. Carey told a grand jury in 1997 that he had never been told about
the scheme.
If found guilty, Carey, 64, could be imprisoned
for 35 years, a virtual life sentence.
Many rank-and-file Teamsters have long believed
that Carey is being framed up, because he led the hugely popular 1997 strike
against UPS. Following the nationwide strike, the Feds ousted Carey from
the union, preventing him from contesting James P. Hoffa's bid for the union's
top spot.
No doubt Carey is remembered warmly by many rank
and filers. One Teamster told the New York Post that "he [Carey] used
to say he always fights for the forgotten Teamster. Now he's become the
forgotten Teamster."
Carey is certainly not forgotten by his one-time
opponents inside the nation's largest private-sector union. Although Hoffa
won the union's presidency in 1998, he and his cohorts have maintained an
unending propaganda war against Carey.
But Carey might as well be forgotten by some of
his one-time allies. For not surprisingly, careerists and opportunists within
the officialdom who once backed Carey have joined Hoffa. Hoffa's sponsorship
by the union's worst elements has not been an obstacle for them.
Less predictable were the defections of some local
union officers, and even active rank and filers, including some members
of the reform caucus, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), who seemed
committed to Carey's program of union militancy.
Some leading reformers undermined their own cause
when they distanced themselves from Carey. The TDU leadership has never
said clearly whether they believe that Carey is guilty or innocent of the
government's charges.
Truth to tell, Carey failed to call on his supporters,
in and out of TDU's ranks, to take action (perhaps strike action?) to defend
union democracy from the Fed's assault.
At the root of their failure is the adoption of
a strategy of uncritically leaning upon the government to help clear the
way for the ranks' takeover of the profoundly bureaucratized union that
had often been a piggybank for mobsters and wiseguys.
Ironically, it was TDU's dependence on the government's
commitment to virtually guarantee the ranks the right to an impartial election,
as well as the right to vote that turned out to be the slippery slope that
led to their failure to stormily protest the federal monitors' dictum that
the ranks could not vote for Carey, despite his obvious, overwhelming popularity
in the wake of the UPS strike. - C.W.
Socialist Action /September 2001 |