The Nation - News from Feb. 15, 1988

The court-appointed trustee of a mob-dominated Teamsters Union local gave an angry audience of truck drivers the conditions under which their unprecedented federal takeover would be allowed to end. Several hundred members of Teamsters for Liberty, a group supporting former Local 560 President Michael Sciarra, packed a meeting in North Bergen, N.J., some of them screaming obscenities and threats at Edwin Stier, the trustee. Stier’s yearlong three-stage plan for allowing the union to hold its own election of officers calls for a pre-nomination phase through August, followed by nominations and an election with votes counted by Dec. 6. After the election, the trustee will share power with the new officers, said Stier, a former deputy state attorney general and assistant U.S. attorney. Local 560 has been run by a trustee since June, 1986, after a court ruled that it had been controlled by organized crime figures.