AFL-CIO, Several Union Heads, Senators Decry U.S. Action; Others Call it Overdue

The Justice Department lawsuit filed against the Teamsters Union on Tuesday is the most sweeping attempt the government has ever made to cleanse a union of alleged corruption and the ramifications are considerable, according to union leaders, political officials and academicians.

The AFL-CIO, a few union presidents and some senators decried the Justice Department action filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, but some union reformers praised the action as long overdue.

“The civil RICO suit filed today against the Teamsters is a clear abuse of the government’s prosecutorial power and is based on legal theories which, if sustained, would undermine a free trade union movement,” said the AFL-CIO’s statement issued from the 14.3-million-member labor federation’s Washington headquarters. “The suit is wholly unprecedented and exceeds RICO’s wide limits.”

But Michael Goldberg, associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, an expert on union corruption, disagreed. “The suit presents a tremendous opportunity to clean up and reform the Teamsters Union--the best opportunity since Jimmy Hoffa took over in 1958,” he said. Hoffa, the former Teamster president, was convicted of federal crimes and has been missing since 1975, the presumed victim of a gangland slaying.

Opposes Long-Term Control

But Goldberg cautioned that long-term government control of the union would be unlikely to work. “If the Justice Department people move in like a surgical strike, remove the bad apples, impose some structural reforms that would make the union more democratic and then quickly hold new elections supervised by the Department of Labor, the suit could be a good thing. But it really has to be the union members themselves who clean up the union,” Goldberg added.

In the short term, the government is asking for the appointment of a court liaison officer to exercise some of the powers of the union president and among other things to review appointments and expenditures. In the long run, the government seeks appointment of a trustee who would supervise new union elections and “bar racketeering activity within the Teamsters until such time as free and fair elections can be held.”

John Climaco, Teamsters general counsel, asserted that the court-appointed liaison officer would have sweeping powers to put Teamster locals in trusteeship. “This is unbelievable. . . . This is an attempt by (U.S. Atty. Rudolph W.) Giuliani to take over all Teamsters locals in the country.

“I can see him doing the same thing to the Laborers Union, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and the International Longshoreman’s Assn.,” he said, referring to three other unions who were identified in the President’s Report on Organized Crime, Business and Labor Unions as having ties to organized crime.

Unprecedented Action

Those who favor the government’s action and those who oppose it agree that it is unprecedented. Five previous cases using the RICO law have been directed against local unions and most of those have encountered considerable resistance.

This suit can be expected to face even greater resistance. The Teamsters, one of the nation’s largest unions and perhaps the wealthiest, will mount stiff legal challenges. And widespread opposition is expected to emanate from the labor movement and numerous officeholders--more than 246 members of Congress and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, have opposed the idea of such a suit publicly.

Two senators quickly attacked the Justice Department suit Tuesday. It sets “a terrible precedent,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. “If there are union officers who are corrupt or are connected with the Mafia, then the government should come down on them with dispatch. But I have great difficulty in the trusteeship of an entire international union.”

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) said: “I think we’re on very, very thin ice here.”

William Wynn, president of the 1.3-million-member United Food & Commercial Workers, said: “Government control of unions is evil, no matter how the government rationalized its action.”

‘Situation Has Deteriorated’

But some elements in the labor movement said that Tuesday’s action pleased them. Herman Benson, president of the Assn. for Union Democracy, a public-interest organization based in Brooklyn, said that he welcomes the suit. “It’s been clear for a long time that if anything is to be done about racketeering in the labor movement in general and making the Teamsters a decent and democratic union, it will require massive government intervention. . . . Just sending another crook to jail doesn’t get you anywhere. The situation has deteriorated to the point where members need help from the government.”

Ken Paff, organizing director of the 8,000-member Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a dissident group that has condemned corruption in the Teamsters and waged court battles to change the union’s election procedures, said:

“What we really want is a supervised, one-member, one-vote election.” He said that is the only way to reform the union. “If a government trustee calls for such an election, it would open up a process that’s been totally unseen in the Teamsters.”

Currently, the Teamster president and the union’s executive board are elected every five years by delegates at the national Teamsters convention. Many of the delegates are officials of Teamsters locals or those who hold other jobs with the union.

Election Method Called Critical

Clyde Summers, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, who is an expert on union democracy, also asserted that the method of electing officers is critical. “It will be very difficult to clean up the Teamsters and get the union on a democratic footing unless you change the whole structure of the election of national officers,” Summers said.

“As long as you have the national officers elected by the national convention, you will never clean up that union because in the very nature of union conventions, the national officers have enormous influence over its operation,” he said.

But Wynn noted in his statement that the Labor Department has approved the Teamsters’ election procedures. “If one government agency can seek new elections under new rules just because it doesn’t like the outcome of elections held under procedures another government previously approved, then what is the point of having elections.”