Unionists, Lawyers and Law Professors Tell Discomfort : U.S. Move Against Teamsters Jolts Labor

When it was disclosed by The Times last week that the Justice Department is contemplating an unprecedented lawsuit to seize control of the Teamsters Union on the grounds that it is under the influence of organized crime, the news sent tremors throughout organized labor.

A host of union leaders, labor lawyers and law professors--including many who are critical of the Teamsters and its current president, Jackie Presser--expressed discomfort with the prospect of a Justice Department takeover.

Some even professed to see ominous parallels to the Polish government’s destruction of the outlawed trade union Solidarity.

Kirkland’s Criticism

“It doesn’t sound to me like the proper relationship between a government and a private institution in a free society,” AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said.

Much of this distress stems from the profound distrust most union leaders have for the Reagan Administration, which they blame in part for their erosion of membership and influence in this decade. Ironically, the Teamsters, the nation’s largest union, was the only major union to support Reagan’s election in 1980 and 1984.

“The mob should not be in the unions. Members should have a way to get rid of the mob. But there are far more pressing problems affecting far more workers that get ignored by the Reagan Administration every day,” said Karen Nussbaum, president of District 925 of the Service Employees International Union.

Even leaders of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the small but vocal dissenting group within the Teamsters, have some reservations about the Justice Department’s proposal.

‘A Few Bad Apples’

“I worry about the government using a few bad apples as an excuse to launch an attack on all trade unionists in this country,” said Linda Gregg, a chairman of the 8,000-member TDU, who was elected president of Teamsters Local 435 in Denver despite opposition by Presser.

Citing the alleged influence of organized crime on the 1.7-million member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a team of Justice Department lawyers, with help from the FBI and the Labor Department, is drafting a lawsuit, based on the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, that would seek to oust the union’s 21-member executive board.

The AFL-CIO expelled the Teamsters in 1957, saying that it was seriously tainted by corruption. Four of the last five Teamsters presidents have been indicted for federal crimes and three were convicted and sent to prison. Presser currently faces charges that he participated in an illegal payroll-padding scheme to use $700,000 of union funds to pay men who did no work for the Teamsters.

Mafia Role Claimed

Additionally, in two recent federal trials, Roy Williams, Presser’s predecessor, said that the Mafia had a role in putting both him and Presser in office, a charge Presser has denied.

In 1985, a presidential commission on organized crime concluded that criminal influence over the Teamsters is “so pervasive . . . that no single remedy is likely to restore even a measure of true union democracy and independent leadership.”

Teamsters leaders responded to the report of the Justice Department proposal last week with a statement asserting that “organized crime has never, does not today and never will control the international union.”

News of the pending action was not universally criticized within labor circles.

‘Aura of Corruption’

“This constant, ongoing aura of corruption that surrounds the Teamsters denigrates the overall image of organized labor,” said William Lucy, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “If labor is to receive the degree of support it’s entitled to, these questions have to be resolved.”

Lucy said if a union was operating in the best interests of its members he would be concerned about government intervention. But he said he thought that is not the case with the Teamsters and that the union currently “is unable to clean itself up.”

Another supporter of Justice Department action is Anthony Mazzocchi, former health and safety director of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers and current head of the Workers Policy Project, a New York-based think tank. “It’s progressed to the point where something has to be done,” Mazzocchi said.

A Union or a Business?

“I don’t think the government should ever intervene in a union,” he said. “I think the government should intervene in a business. One must ask is this a union or a business? At the top the Teamsters have the characteristics of a business, a president (Presser) making $500,000 a year who has unilateral control.”

But more typical were the observations of Steve Nutter, western regional director of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

“We need to step back from whatever real or imagined horrible things are going on in the Teamsters and think what would happen if unions could be placed in trusteeship by the government,” he said. “It’s frightening. Unions are among the very few institutions throughout the world that have been able to force dictatorships to back off and allow democracy to bloom. In this country, trade unions, however much some people think they are anachronistic, stand for democracy and are one of the bulwarks against attempts to undermine democracy.”

Some union officials said their negative reaction was influenced by their skepticism that the Reagan Administration would do anything positive for workers.

Transfer of Wealth

“The policy of the Reagan government is very simple--it’s to transfer wealth from working people to the rich,” said Robert Muhlenkamp, organizing director of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees. “They do it by unemployment, social service cuts, dismantling safety, health, environmental and antitrust laws. Why should we trust them to get their hand on the most powerful workers’ institution--the Teamsters?” he asked.

The Justice Department has not disclosed its specific plans, but sources told Times reporters in Washington last week that the agency would file a civil suit under the RICO act in federal District Court there later this year. If the suit succeeds, the court would appoint trustees who would manage the union in place of the current executive board. The trustees would report to the judge, who would have the authority to continue monitoring the union’s activities for as long as he deems necessary to ensure that it had rooted out criminal elements.

One Local in Trusteeship

The government already has used the RICO law to place one Teamsters local in New Jersey under court-supervised trusteeship. Union City, N.J.-based Local 560 was controlled for 25 years by Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, who is serving a 20-year term for federal labor racketeering violations in Lompoc federal prison.

Clyde Summers, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who served as an expert witness for the government in the Local 560 case, noted that “you would only impose a trusteeship as a last resort in the most extreme situation,” and cautioned that imposing a trusteeship over the entire Teamsters Union would be a considerably more complex undertaking than taking over a local.

“The international is such a large organization . . . that the trustee simply will have to rely on large numbers of union officers, officials which he can’t really closely supervise,” Summers said. “For that reason I think the trusteeship function would be viewed in a narrower fashion” in this case, he said. “What we really want here would be to establish procedures so the democratic process can function. . . . The present electing structure of the Teamsters is such that an opposition has absolutely no chance.”

Voting for ‘Thugs’

In fact, Ken Paff, organizing director of the dissident TDU, suggested in a lengthy letter to the Justice Department last month that any government takeover only last long enough to revise the union election process to provide for one member-one vote. He said in the letter that the RICO law could be used to do this. Currently, top Teamsters officers are chosen by a vote of delegates at a union convention held once every five years. The delegates consist of local union officials.

“Two thousand hand-picked delegates may vote for thugs, but 1.7 million members won’t,” Paff said.

But only once in U.S. history has the government supervised an election for the national officers of a union, Summers said. That came in 1972, three years after W. A. (Tony) Boyle, incumbent president of the United Mine Workers of America, defeated challenger Joseph A. (Jock) Yablonski in an election that was later invalidated.

Shortly after the first election, Yablonski, his wife and daughter were assassinated. In 1972, Arnold Miller, a reform candidate, defeated Boyle and two years later Boyle was convicted of ordering the murders.

A Warning Flag

Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago labor lawyer, said he was sympathetic to a short-term trusteeship, but raised a warning flag about the problematic nature of the Justice Department’s running a national union for any length of time.

“You have the government in charge of collective bargaining on behalf of Teamsters members,” he said. “Teamsters have a big impact on wages, hours and working conditions. There may be a conflict between union goals and government goals. I assume the government will do its best to minimize the conflicts. But a trusteeship could weaken the organization--organizing might be pursued less aggressively,” he said.

Theodore St. Antoine, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, who is considered an expert on union governance, noted that the government had a hand in running the Teamsters for four years after James R. Hoffa won a contested election for the union presidency in 1957. The results of the election were challenged by a group of New York dissidents.

Hoffa Agreed to Monitor

Hoffa settled the suit by agreeing to have a court-appointed monitor supervise the union’s activities for a period of time. Over the next several years, Hoffa and the monitor, Martin F. O’Donoghue, clashed frequently. Eventually, Hoffa’s lawyer got a federal appeals court to negate some of the restrictions O’Donoghue placed on Hoffa. The monitorship was dissolved in 1961, St. Antoine said. Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and sent to a federal prison in 1967. Pardoned in 1971, Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and is presumed to have been murdered.

St. Antoine said the prospect of a Justice Department trusteeship of the Teamsters “is a pretty desperate measure.” He said he thought the remedy for curing problems in the Teamsters is to use regular civil and criminal law processes.

“I don’t see what’s wrong with continuing the route we’ve been following--prosecute the people who are guilty of crimes, put them in jail, that puts them out of office. Eventually they may get the message. . . . It may be frustrating to do it over and over again, (but) there is a danger of overreaction growing out of frustration.”