4 Teamsters Regional Sections Are Abolished : Labor: The divisions were accused of wasting money. Dissidents say they’ll go to court today to fight the move.
As its leaders continued to feud, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Thursday abolished four regional divisions that have been accused of wasting millions of dollars a year on lavish executive salaries and perks.
Teamsters officials in Washington called the decision a “major step toward democratic reform,” but dissidents said it was a move to weaken opposition to President Ron Carey and his policies. Carey’s opponents said they would go to federal court in New York today to seek an injunction to prevent enforcement of the vote by the union governing board.
“I think it’s tragic,” said Los Angeles union official Michael J. Riley, who earned $175,000 a year as head of the Teamsters’ 350,000-member Western Conference, one of the four area conferences that will be disbanded. “He is now operating the most undemocratic union in the country.”
The battle over the conferences has been one of several problems that have rocked the 1.4-million member union and threatened to undermine Carey and his efforts to reform it.
Earlier this year, Carey suffered a stinging defeat when members voted down his proposal to raise dues 25% to increase the union strike fund. The fund was depleted after the union launched a strike lasting 23 days against several long-haul trucking firms in April.
The Teamsters’ general executive board, which is dominated by Carey supporters, voted 14 to 3 on Thursday to revoke the charters of the Eastern, Central, Southern and Western conferences, which have handled regional contract talks, organizing and grievance procedures. Board members representing the union’s two Canadian conferences abstained, the union said.
The decision will “provide greater freedom to reform the process for resolving members’ grievances about unfair firings and mistreatment on the job,” a union statement said. “Area conference leaders, who were not elected by the membership nor accountable for their actions, controlled many of the grievance panels.”
Carey has made the elimination of the conferences a priority in the three years since he was elected president on a reform platform. Despite a combined budget of $15 million, the conferences employed only 13 full-time workers, who provided services related to contract negotiations and contract enforcement, top union officials said. Much of the money was used to pay administration costs and fund “extra salaries and pensions for officials who already had full-time jobs as local union leaders,” the union statement said.
“The days of $300,000 salaries, lavish pensions for union officials and luxury vacations at members’ expense are over,” Carey said in a statement. “Our union will be stronger without this extra layer of bureaucracy.” Carey said he will maintain “any worthwhile services that were provided by the area conferences.”
More than $11 million in union money earmarked for the conferences will go back to locals. About $3 million the international union paid to the conferences will be used in the international’s trade divisions and departments to improve member services.
Regional leaders will remain in charge of local and joint union councils. Riley, for example, will remain head of the Southern California Teamsters Joint Council and Local 986.