‘Teamster Tradition’ May Cloud Brock’s Speech to Union

Teamsters President Jackie Presser may be worried by the prospect of again facing federal labor fraud charges about the time he opens the giant union’s convention in Las Vegas on May 19, but he need not worry about his reelection chances. In fact, scandals involving Teamsters presidents have become something of a tradition in that union, and such scandals have never kept them out of office in the past.

Presser will be back in the national spotlight on Friday, when a Senate investigating subcommittee will open hearings on the FBI’s role in the Justice Department decision not to seek labor fraud charges against him. The charges were recommended by a federal organized crime strike force nine months ago.

The charges were dropped when FBI agents reportedly told the department that Presser had FBI permission to illegally pay “ghost employees” because Presser was acting as a “top-echelon informant.” Now some FBI agents may be charged with making false statements to the department about Presser’s role with the agency.

Also, a federal grand jury in Cleveland is taking testimony this week on whether to revive the proposed labor fraud charges against Presser on grounds that he didn’t really have FBI authorization to pay those “ghost employees.” And another grand jury in Washington is checking on whether FBI agents gave false statements and conspired to obstruct justice in the case.

But both pro- and anti-Presser sources predict that, no matter what comes out of the latest investigations, he will be returned to his $534,000-a-year post--the highest salary of any union leader in the world. He can expect the support of an overwhelming majority of the expected 2,000 delegates at the convention, which comes only once every five years.

What might be called the Teamster Tradition began more than three decades ago, when Dave Beck was the union’s president. After years of an investigation, Beck spent 30 months in federal prison following his conviction in 1959 on charges that he filed fraudulent reports for a tax-exempt agency of the union and used some of the money for his own benefit. President Gerald R. Ford granted him a full pardon in 1975.

Beck was succeeded by James R. Hoffa, who was convicted in 1964 of jury tampering and misusing union funds and was in prison from 1969 until 1971, when President Richard M. Nixon reduced his sentence. Hoffa disappeared mysteriously in 1975 and is believed to have been murdered by underworld thugs.

Frank E. Fitzsimmons, Hoffa’s successor, was under federal investigation but was never indicted on any charges. After Fitzsimmons’s death of cancer, Roy E. Williams became president and upheld the Teamster Tradition with his conviction in 1982 of attempting to bribe Nevada Sen. Howard W. Cannon. Williams is serving a 10-year prison term.

If the charges against Presser are renewed, not only will he remain in office, at least for a while, but he can take some comfort from the fact that in the Teamster Tradition, he has powerful political ties to the White House and President Reagan.

Presser, the nation’s only major labor leader to support Reagan, strongly backed him in his presidential campaigns and has been Reagan’s guest at the White House several times, even after the investigation against Presser began.

Nevertheless, despite the apparently still good relations between Reagan and Presser, there is a guessing game going on in labor circles about what Reagan’s secretary of labor, William E. Brock III, will say in his speech to the Teamsters convention. Some department sources have indicated that Brock will go there as a friend, which might prove embarrassing since, among other things, he has been asked to decide whether the union’s election procedures are legal and fair.

But other sources say Brock’s address may be substantially less cordial than the one delivered in 1976 by the then-secretary of labor, William J. Usery Jr., who created a furor in Congress when he told the union’s convention that “the Teamsters are doing an outstanding job in representing their members” and that he was a friend of the Teamsters’ then-president, Fitzsimmons.

Sen. John Durkin (D-N.H.) called on Usery to consider resigning as labor secretary because his relations with the Teamsters appeared to have compromised the Labor Department’s investigation of the union. Usery refused, insisting that while he “may have been a little more enthusiastic than I should have been” in his remarks to the convention, “I felt then, and I feel now, that my appearance there was proper.”

Usery’s reputation as a man of integrity was not hurt; changes were made, with his guidance, in the management of the pension fund that was being investigated for alleged misuse by union officials. But it was, at best, awkward for Usery, who had to appear before the Senate Labor Committee to explain his speech to the union’s convention. Ford, who was then President, had the political support of the Teamsters.

In view of that precedent, it will be interesting to hear whether, or how, Brock’s speech to the convention in mid-May deals with such controversial issues as the relations between Reagan and Presser, the confusion over Presser’s role as an agent of the FBI, the prospect of new federal charges against Presser, and Brock’s own role as investigator of the union’s election procedure.

He can, as some sources suggest he will, simply talk about such non-controversial issues as the need for improving labor-management relations in the United States. But, while it might be impolite of him as a guest speaker, it would be refreshingly honest if he deals directly and frankly with the more intriguing questions involving Presser and the giant union.

Kudos for NUMMI

The day after Secretary of Labor Brock finishes his potentially embarrassing assignment of addressing the Teamsters convention in Las Vegas, he will fly to Fremont, Calif., for a much easier, more pleasant task: On May 20, he is to commend, as a model for the world, the labor relations between the United Auto Workers and New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), a joint venture of General Motors and Toyota.

Joining Brock will be Usery, who was a pivotal figure in bringing about the innovative NUMMI-UAW agreement. He was hired as a management consultant but has such excellent credentials with organized labor that NUMMI’s decision to hire him was a clear signal that the company wanted to avoid confrontations with the UAW and reach a contract agreement.

Also on hand will be corporate executives, UAW President Owen Bieber and the union’s Western regional director, Bruce Lee, who was also a key player in negotiating the NUMMI contract nearly two years ago after a prolonged shutdown.

Lee expects to help UAW Local 645 negotiators, led by Ray Ruiz, to reach a NUMMI-like agreement in the next couple of weeks with GM in Van Nuys despite opposition from the local’s president, Pete Beltran.

The NUMMI pact deeply involves teams of employees in everything from quality control to determining what they do on the job and when they do it.

Fremont workers have pledges from management that if car sales are down, they will have the substantial protection available to other UAW members at GM. They would receive 90% or more of their base salary during the layoffs. In addition, before workers were laid off, the company would first cut management salaries, lay off managerial employees and bring back to the plant any subcontracted work.

The pact also gives workers the right to stop the production line if they feel they cannot do high-quality work safely, thus allowing them a role in determining production speed. It reduces the number of job classifications to three from 80, and the union is given access to confidential company information. NUMMI pay is about 5% higher than at other GM plants.

Brock will also announce that NUMMI is one of four companies worldwide--the other three are in Europe--to be cited by the International Labor Organization as the best examples of labor-management cooperation. The ILO is putting up $100,000 for a conference to be held in the fall in Turin, Italy, so others can learn more about the labor-management cooperation techniques of the four companies.

Recognition of the high-quality work being done at Fremont is particularly noteworthy because the plant there once was considered one of the most strife-ridden in GM, and a similar system at Van Nuys should help assure continuation of GM’s production there.