Reconciliation Will Benefit Both Unions
The decision of the leaders of the 1.6-million-member Teamsters Union to rejoin the 12.6-million-member AFL-CIO is indeed another significant milestone in labor history, and it will bring some pragmatic gains for all of labor and relatively few negative effects.
The negative is the probability that at least some of the Teamsters’ image as a mob-connected union will rub off on the AFL-CIO.
But the Teamsters’ “homecoming” to America’s only federation of labor unions after a 30-year separation will not do serious image harm and will not result in any major upheaval or even substantive change within the labor movement.
It might cause some company executives to worry a bit about dealing with a strengthened House of Labor, as the AFL-CIO calls itself, but the reaffiliation will upset few union-management relationships.
The fact is that the separation itself was far from a complete divorce. Generally, Teamsters and most AFL-CIO affiliates remained “best friends” during the long separation. That means that, although the reconciliation may be sweet, even dramatic, it will not require major adjustments by either side.
When the Teamsters were ousted from the federation in 1957, they did not become pariahs among unionists, as many labor leaders, like the late AFL-CIO President George Meany, hoped and expected.
Meany thundered against the corruption and mob connections of top Teamster leaders, especially James R. Hoffa, then the union’s president. Hoffa was finally sent to prison and, after doing time there for a few years, was pardoned by President Richard M. Nixon, only to later disappear mysteriously, a presumed murder victim of mobsters.
Meany argued for ouster of the Teamsters from the federation in 1957, saying it would offer Teamster members a chance to “get away from corrupt control. We have got to free them from this dictatorship.”
There was a furious debate then within the federation about both the morality and the effectiveness of ousting a union led by mob-linked officials from the House of Labor. The answer then was a resounding, “Yes, kick them out.”
However, at last week’s AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Miami Beach, there was no public debate--and little in private--on these issues. There was little talk either about recent charges by the Justice Department that the Teamsters’ top leadership is still firmly under the control of organized crime--an accusation that mirrored the AFL-CIO charges three decades ago.
In 1959, the nation’s law enforcement agencies were equipped by tough provisions in the Landrum-Griffin Act enabling them to stamp out corruption in unions. The consensus last week among federation officers at Miami Beach was that now it is the job of the government, not the federation, to deal with allegations of crime in unions and industry.
With good reason, AFL-CIO leaders are now more afraid of the Reagan Administration’s plan to put the entire Teamsters Union under a government trusteeship than of any mob ties some Teamsters still may have. The plan--by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, himself a target of a federal grand jury investigation of his ties with the scandal-plagued Wedtech Corp.--is a disaster.
Meese wants to make the Teamsters a government-controlled union to save it from alleged mob control. That sounds somewhat like the American artillery official who told an Associated Press reporter after shells had wiped out half the village of Ben Tre during the Vietnam War that, “We had to destroy it in order to save it (from Communist control).”
Ironically, Ronald Reagan and his allies had warmly embraced the Teamsters when the union endorsed Reagan for president in both 1980 and 1984.
The Teamster-AFL-CIO reconciliation last week was initiated two weeks ago by Teamster President Jackie Presser, with the approval of his union’s other officers. He was belatedly responding to an invitation extended to the Teamsters in 1979 by AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland when Kirkland first took office.
At that time, Kirkland was just facing reality: The ouster did not clean up the Teamsters, and AFL-CIO affiliates did not ostracize them.
Presser’s motives in accepting the longstanding invitation to come back to the AFL-CIO stemmed, in part, from the threatened government takeover of his union. But others say he wanted to cap his career with something more honorable than the acquittal he expects, but may not get, from his federal court trial beginning next February on charges of racketeering and embezzlement.
And he probably wanted--and received--some positive recognition that could help him psychologically and, indirectly, physically, with his serious health problems. At age 61, Presser has had a multiple-bypass heart operation; part of one cancerous lung has been removed, and he weighs well over 300 pounds.
Despite Presser’s delay, the long years of the Teamsters’ exile did not interrupt the close, day-to-day working alliances between the Teamsters and most of the powerful, pragmatic and generally conservative AFL-CIO construction unions. The Teamsters remained members in good standing of all but a handful of local-level AFL-CIO building trades councils around the country.
During the exile, reasonably close ties were also maintained with the influential AFL-CIO Industrial Union Department, which is made up, for the most part, of the more liberal affiliates of the federation.
And the legislative goals of the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters remained almost identical in Congress and at the state and local levels.
Republican Endorsements
Also, the Teamsters’ ouster didn’t really affect the political actions of the AFL-CIO affiliates or of the Teamsters. More than 90% of the political candidates endorsed by the AFL-CIO are Democrats who were also supported by the Teamsters.
The disgraceful exceptions were the endorsements by the Teamsters of Presidents Nixon and Reagan, since the two Republicans are no friends of unions.
They presumably won Teamster support because Democratic administrations, including that of John F. Kennedy, were pushing corruption charges against Teamster presidents while the Republicans were courting them for political support.
The greatest impact of the Teamster ouster was felt in jurisdictional disputes.
AFL-CIO affiliated unions used to fight one another furiously in organizing campaigns, but those jurisdictional wars were largely eliminated when the AFL-CIO set up machinery to resolve them peacefully in about 1960.
However, the exiled Teamsters were not covered by the federation’s peace plan, and so jurisdictional wars continued between the Teamsters and a handful of the 89 AFL-CIO affiliates.
Perhaps the most beneficial effect of reaffiliation will be the expected curbing of those relatively few battles that cost both sides millions of dollars each year.
But even the seriousness of jurisdictional fights between the Teamsters and AFL-CIO unions need to be put in perspective. They should be halted, of course, but it is even more important for all unions to work harder than ever to persuade their members not to cross legitimate picket lines of other unions.
More AFL-CIO members than Teamsters cross picket lines of other AFL-CIO members, and the return of the Teamsters to the federation will not toughen up that Achilles’ heel of all of organized labor: a lack of true labor unity. Another potential benefit of reaffiliation is increased political cooperation between the federation and the Teamsters Union, with its well-financed campaign chest. They should become more effective as they pool funds and work together than they were operating separate, if parallel, political action campaigns.
The Teamsters’ reaffiliation will be useful, but it is not comparable in significance to the 1955 merger of the old American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
That truly momentous event in labor history united two strong, bitterly feuding labor federations that represented basically different viewpoints on everything from political orientation to fundamental structure of unions.
The 1955 merger not only ended much of that feuding but marked a dramatic change in the structure and political orientation of unions in this country, because they were largely able to reconcile their differing views when they united their forces.
Nothing nearly as dramatic as that happened last week in Miami Beach, although the gains for both the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters could be substantial.
And who knows? Perhaps when they are inside the essentially honest, mob-free AFL-CIO, the decent men and women who make up the vast majority of the Teamsters Union may find it easier to clean out the corrupt elements in their union than then did when they were outside the House of Labor.
