Indictment Not Only Problem Teamsters Face

For years, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has boasted that it is the biggest, toughest union in the nation.

With 1.6 million members, the Teamsters Union is still the country’s largest. But as 2,100 Teamsters convene for their 23rd constitutional convention here today, the union is beset with many of the same problems that confront the nation’s other labor organizations, compounded by the taint of having four of their last five presidents indicted for various crimes by the federal government.

Concern over President Jackie Presser’s recent indictment on racketeering and embezzling charges is likely to dominate the convention. But a number of delegates are just as worried about other problems that have befallen them in recent years.

300,000 Members Lost

The Teamsters have lost close to 300,000 members since their last convention in 1981 and are down about half a million from their peak in the mid-1970s.

Deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980 led to the loss of about 100,000 members, as more than 70 major trucking firms went out of business, according to the Teamsters’ research department. The rest of the decline is attributable to the general shrinkage of America’s industrial base and the flight of jobs overseas, union officials say.

Union leaders also claim that their efforts to enlist and hold members have been hampered by the generally adverse climate affecting organized labor in the Reagan era, including an unsympathetic National Labor Relations Board.

“We’re operating in the same environment as other unions,” said Vicki Saporta, the union’s organizing director.

Robert Holmes was a Teamster before Saporta was born, and he says the union has come a long way since he met Jimmy Hoffa at a Kroger store loading dock in Detroit during the Depression. But the last few years have been tough, said Holmes, 74, now the union’s second vice president and director of its central conference.

“Deregulation has destroyed the organized trucking industry,” he said.

Some labor observers wouldn’t go that far. But deregulation has undercut union bargaining power and given rise to concession bargaining in trucking, said David Lipsky, a specialist in collective bargaining at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

“You have an industry that’s a lot more competitive and where wages are lower than they would have been (with deregulation),” Lipsky said. “The union has a harder time . . . organizing new workers as a result.”

Local Has Shrunk

Jack Alexander, president of a Teamsters local in Portland, Ore., said his local has shrunk from 3,100 members to 2,000 members as a result of deregulation. And he said more of his members were victims of unnecessary accidents caused by the post-deregulation proliferation of independent truckers’ operating unsafe vehicles.

“The federal government is very ineffective; there are no teeth in the safety laws now,” Alexander said.

“There’s been an 18% increase in accidents in the past year,” said Suzanne Kossan of the Teamsters’ health and safety department. She expressed skepticism about recent pledges to increase road safety enforcement that were made by Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole.

In an attempt to shore up its losses in freight hauling--the union’s historic base--the Teamsters Union has stepped up its organizing activities in other sectors of the labor force. The most successful areas have been among government employees and health care workers, according to Saporta, a Presser appointee with a high profile as the only woman organizing director of an American union.

Many Gains Came Slowly

But she said many of the gains come slowly. For example, Saporta said, it took a concerted, 18-month effort for the Teamsters to secure an initial union contract for 120 South Bend, Ind., school board workers.

And she acknowledged that in “every campaign” where the union is trying to recruit new members, questions are raised about the union’s controversial president, who has been accused of having long-standing ties to organized crime, a charge he denies.

“Basically, I don’t think (that charge) has an impact,” Saporta said. “I don’t think that’s what workers are concerned about.” She said workers are more interested in job security and working conditions.

“Different locals handle it in different ways,” Saporta said, responding to a question about how organizers respond to questions about Presser’s alleged illegal activities. She did not elaborate on this point.

A Dissident Leader

Doug Allen, a Los Angeles delegate who is one of the co-chairmen of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, an 8,000-member dissident group, took issue with Saporta’s views and organizing philosophy in an interview here. He said the union should put more resources into organizing in its traditional areas. “There are a lot of good Teamsters now working for non-union firms that we could recruit,” he said.

Allen and other TDU leaders also said Presser’s indictment is a “cloud that affects the ability of our union to effectively represent its membership and organize new members.” The organization said its goal is to remove the cloud by making changes in the union constitution that would increase democracy in the organization, such as direct secret ballot election of top officers.

The organization is pushing a number of other constitutional amendments here, including doubling the benefits paid to striking workers and limiting the union president’s salary to $125,000. Presser is paid $550,000 a year for four union jobs. This is about five to six times the salary of other international union presidents. Labor Department reports say he also collects about $200,000 in expenses from his various Teamsters jobs.