Democracy Gains in Teamsters

Three court-appointed administrators with enormous power over the scandal-plagued Teamsters Union have made remarkable progress in their effort to democratize the giant organization and eliminate the pervasive influence that organized crime has had on it for nearly half a century.

The gains have not come easily. The international officers have been waging an expensive legal fight to block almost every move the outside administrators make--even those moves most of the officers themselves liked and had agreed to accept last year in a court consent decree.

It is unclear why the top officers decided to spend millions of the union’s dollars vainly fighting the administrators, who several officers privately admit are generally doing a good if costly job.

Some say the legal battle has been pushed by the union’s feisty president, William McCarthy, who was infuriated by the presence of the administrators. But most of the Teamsters’ 18 highest officers, including McCarthy, signed the unprecedented consent decree to avoid court trials of a few of them on corruption charges and the rest on charges that they permitted corruption in the union.

The administrators were empowered to oust corrupt leaders, including those found to have underworld ties; to supervise operations of the union, and to conduct scrupulously honest elections. Much of their goal has been achieved.

Now several of the officers have quietly joined forces to implement a plausible plan they hope will retain the gains made under the administrators and still help them keep their well-paid positions.

The informal inside group is said to be willing to continue cleaning up the union by creating an ethical practices committee under the effective court-appointed investigating officer, Charles Carberry.

The group is also reportedly ready to continue government-conducted elections of local union delegates to the international conventions, probably with the second administrator, Michael Holland, who is now doing it under the consent decree. However, they want to scrap their previous acceptance of a secret ballot referendum procedure that would give each of the 1.4 million members the chance to vote directly for top union officers. They expect that delegates to next summer’s convention will reject the referendum, unless the court intervenes.

First, though, they have to quell the furious power struggle raging among the officers and reach a consensus on a candidate for the presidency and a single slate of candidates for the other top offices. They expect to achieve their unity goal before the union’s international executive board meets in two weeks in Palm Beach, Fla.

If they can unite their forces and scuttle the referendum, they will reduce the already slim chance of a victory by Ron Carey, the dissident reform candidate whose hope for success rests in part on a continued split among the current leaders and on his vigorous, direct appeal to the members.

Even without new, attractive leaders like Carey, the union is not what it was a year ago when the administrators were appointed by U.S. District Judge David Edelstein.

Carberry, the administrator named to clean up corruption, has taken action against 40 officials at the national and local levels, and his cleanup effort is continuing. Half of the members of the old executive board have either been removed or left voluntarily.

Although government investigators say some remaining officials are still linked to the underworld, the grip that mobsters had on the union has been badly weakened and will soon be broken entirely if the cleanup continues.

The other encouraging news comes from Holland, the administrator in charge of democratizing the union. He says the procedure now being used to elect delegates to the Teamsters’ convention next July is “the best I have ever seen.”

Judge Edelstein said the election system that Holland put in place means “the coming of the light of freedom to this dark union.”

Carey agrees, saying the system for electing convention delegates is “honest, and now it is up to the members to elect him and make sure corruption is never again tolerated in the Teamsters, as it has been for so long.”

He is struggling, though, to defeat the attempt to kill the promised referendum election and instead allow delegates to elect officers at the convention in Orlando, Fla., next June 24-28.

Like almost all unions, the Teamsters have traditionally elected their officers at conventions. Carey and others say that may be fine for other unions but not for Teamster conventions, which have always been dominated by local officers, who are delegates because of their positions.

The local officers are strongly influenced by entrenched national leaders whose power stems from their ability to dole out jobs and other forms of patronage.

However, even in fairly conducted elections, delegates are expected to once again include most of the local officers because they seem to be popular with their own members.

McCarthy, 71, has indicated that he wants to keep his job, but that won’t be easy if the inside group can agree on a consensus candidate. McCarthy apparently isn’t being considered.

Among several incumbents said to be in the running are vice presidents Arnie Weinmeister, Walter Shea, R. V. Durham, Mike Riley and Weldon Mathis, the union’s general secretary, who narrowly lost to McCarthy in 1988, when the executive board named a successor to the late Jackie Presser.

But neither the public fight for power that is so rare in the Teamsters nor the move to back out of the nationwide referendum can diminish the impressive gains already made to reform the country’s largest union.