Teamsters’ Election: Honest but Tainted

Democracy is running rampant in the Teamsters union. But if the 1.5 million members believe what the candidates for top office are saying about each other, it’s hard to see how any will be elected.

Most of the charges being hurled with increasing fury are false or exaggerated. Yet, despite the hyperbole and regardless of who is victorious, the members and their union ultimately will be the winners--even though the unprecedented battle now raging is terribly divisive and costly.

Court-appointed administrators are closely monitoring the union’s election and its other actions. This includes micromanagement of its expenses, ranging from the use of first-class airline tickets to the $1,400 purchase of a refrigerator “from a store that is known to be expensive,” as the chief administrator, Frederick Lacey, put it.

This distressing government control, however, will give the Teamsters something no other organization of any kind has: a government and court certification that it held a perfectly fair election among candidates carefully screened to keep out the unsavory.

But assurances of an honest election seem to have encouraged dirty campaigning by the candidates that should serve anti-union employers well.

It is reminiscent of those last-century political battles, when cartoonist Thomas Nast was depicting the corrupt New York Tammany political machine as a bloated-belly tiger greedily licking his chops after eating a political enemy.

The Teamsters union magazine, distributed monthly to all members, is filled with full-color ads in which the candidates furiously accuse one another--not just of incompetence, but of lying and corruption overlooked by government investigators.

Ron Carey, running as a reform candidate, justifiably denounces the six-figure salaries of some Teamster leaders, even though the highest-paid ones take far less than the average top corporate executive. But the Carey ad slams his political foes with a cartoon picturing them as hogs feasting on membership dues.

The candidates are spending well over $4 million to pay for their campaigns as they race across the United States and Canada wooing votes from individual members.

Secret ballots for the referendum election go out next month to all members and will be counted Dec. 10. This one-member, one-vote referendum contrasts with the convention system used in the past by the Teamsters and still used by most other unions.

Under that system, locals elect delegates to national conventions and the delegates then elect top officers.

The referendum has the advantage of forcing candidates to contact members in person, by direct mail or by ads in the union’s own publication, the Teamster.

Maybe other national and international unions should voluntarily decide to use the referendum method to choose their top officers. It would bring them, too, in closer touch with their widely scattered members.

But that won’t be easy or cheap, as proven by the court-ordered Teamsters referendum. And it isn’t even necessary in most unions, because they are led by honest officers chosen democratically by members elected at the local level as delegates to their conventions.

However, the history of corruption among many top Teamster leaders--and their domination of local union officers and convention delegates--made the Teamster referendum almost essential, because few members ever made any serious attempt to demand their democratic rights.

Unfortunately, however, the referendum is just part of a much broader and dangerous legal process. The positive side of that process has been the resignation or removal from office of more than a hundred officers accused of corruption or “bringing reproach upon the union,” which is forbidden by that odd phrase in the Teamsters’ constitution.

But the basic idea of complete government rule over a union or any other private organization is wrong, even if it helps get rid of corruption. Total government control is better than strong organized crime influence, but neither should be tolerated.

Government control will be sharply curtailed after new officers take over. But overall supervision of the union will continue indefinitely under an independent review board with vast powers. Its members will include one chosen by the U.S. attorney general, one by the union and a third picked by those two.

The board will have a sizable staff of investigators and attorneys who will pursue allegations of corruption and generally oversee all of the union’s activities--at union expense.

If the review board even approaches the degree of control exercised by the present court-appointed administrators, the Teamsters will not have the independence from government that is a hallmark of a free society.

The Teamsters’ election process is a different matter. The only thing the rival candidates seem to agree on is that the court-appointed election administrator, Michael Holland, is doing an irreproachable job. And none have raised any objection to the court consent decree requiring him or his successor to run the union’s next election in 1996.

If President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert, were alive today, I would hope they would be denouncing complete government control of the Teamsters or any other organization.

On the other hand, surely they would be pleased to know that their years of efforts to democratize and clean out corruption in the Teamsters are finally showing results.

As a senator, John Kennedy helped lead a revealing investigation of the union’s ties to the underworld in the 1960s. Robert Kennedy, as U.S. attorney, later prosecuted former Teamster President James R. Hoffa, sending him to federal prison for five years for fraud and jury tampering.

It is just an historical postscript, but it might be said that, at last, what has been called the “Blood Feud” between the tragedy-struck Kennedys and the Teamsters is over. At least as of now, the Kennedys have won, even though their victory is tainted by the perilous role the government has played in it.