Teamsters Chief Is Still Working for Acceptance : Labor: He talks of reform and organizing trash-hauling workers, but some members scoff at his pledge for a new beginning.

He was elected to lead the local Teamsters Union six months ago, but Scott Dennison is still campaigning.

The 35-year-old former UPS truck driver is still talking about reform and of “cleaning up the image” of Local 186, whose reputation was damaged over the years from bitter infighting and a scandal involving one of its former leaders.

During a recent interview in his Ventura office, Dennison talked about throwing picnics for union members and setting up information booths at the California Strawberry and Cinco de Mayo festivals in Oxnard in May.

“We need to get out there and be visible, to put out a positive image, to let people know we’ve changed, that we’ve cleaned up our act,” he said. “It’s a new beginning.”

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Dennison said his motivation is not only to restore the union’s image but also to boost its membership, which over the past decade has dropped from 4,000 to fewer than 2,000.

Indeed, his talk of reform coincides with the union’s aggressive push to organize truckers at E.J. Harrison & Sons rubbish service, the largest trash hauler in western Ventura County, and at Anderson Rubbish, which serves Simi Valley and Moorpark.

Yet some Teamsters scoff at Dennison’s claim of being a reformer and of his pledge of a new beginning.

They question why Dennison still maintains ties to Marty Fry, who led the union until his imprisonment for embezzling union funds in 1982. They are also critical of Dennison’s hiring of Sten Thordarson, who was convicted along with Fry, as a part-time consultant.

“We thought things were going to be different when Scott was elected,” said one union member, who asked not be identified. “But there’s been no change.”

Dennison acknowledges that he remains friendly with Fry, noting that Fry dropped by the union’s Ventura office recently to congratulate him on doing a good job. As for Thordarson, Dennison said simply, “He’s a go-getter.”

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Making no apologies, Dennison said he sees nothing wrong with his relationship with either man. In fact, he said that Fry, who now lives in Idaho, still maintains a loyal following within the union.

Dennison said some members believe the actions that led to Fry’s conviction and prison sentence are evidence of how strongly Fry supports the union.

In 1978, when Fry led the union, he and other Teamsters organized employees at Redman Moving and Storage Co. in Thousand Oaks. But the company refused to recognize the union and fell victim to threats and violence, which later were linked to Fry and other Teamsters. Vandals slashed more than 100 tires, shot out windows and burned two trucks.

Fry was convicted of embezzling union funds by paying for the gasoline in a car used to follow a Redman truck across the state line for the purpose of setting the truck on fire. No one was hurt in the incident.

Despite Fry’s history, Dennison said that when he campaigned for the secretary-treasurer’s office he found that many union members saw nothing wrong with what Fry had done.

“Everybody I spoke to said he didn’t do it for himself, it was for the union,” Dennison said. As evidence of that support, Dennison points out that Fry, who was released from prison in 1987, lost a reelection bid in 1993 by only a handful of votes.

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“That tells you he has a lot of support out there,” Dennison said. “Knowing that, I wasn’t about to make any enemies.”

Dennison moved from Michigan to San Mateo in 1982, where he worked for the next four years as a truck driver for the local school district. Dennison and his family later moved to Ventura and, through his job as a UPS driver, became a Teamster.

After serving a one-year term as president, Dennison was elected to the local’s highest post of secretary-treasurer last October by a mere 18 votes after an ugly election battle against the union’s previous top official, Dennis Shaw.

Throughout the election, Dennison accused Shaw of misusing union funds and of corruption, while Shaw alleged that Fry was behind Dennison’s campaign to oust him.

Immediately after he was elected, Dennison moved to appoint Fry as a temporary representative for workers in the rock and gravel industry. “We couldn’t get anybody else who knew what was going on in the industry except Mr. Fry,” he said.

Dennison said the appointment was to help him make the transition to secretary-treasurer, and he noted that Fry attended only two meetings on behalf of the workers before he was replaced.

But some union members said Dennison backed off from his appointment of Fry after workers expressed their outrage.

Dennison said, though, that a majority of the workers had told him that they strongly supported Fry’s appointment.

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Still, Dennison is eager to put the past behind. He said the union is more focused on rebuilding its image and in regaining the confidence of all its members.

“I think we’re on the upswing now,” he said. “Because of changes I’ve made, we’re already starting to see things turn around. People are always telling me that they’ve never seen the union more together.”

But some members, who spoke on the condition that their names not be used, said “there is a tremendous amount of dissension among the members” over Dennison’s leadership.

They said that the union is worse off now than it was under Shaw, who ran up tens of thousands of dollars in travel and meal expenses during his four years as secretary-treasurer.

Federal Labor Department records show that Shaw, who earned a base salary of $55,000, charged the union more than $25,000 in expenses in 1993 alone.

“We’re no better off now,” said one union member. “On the contrary, we’re worse off financially, ethically and morally.”

The local has a debt of about $50,000, which some members say is due to increased administrative costs since Dennison took over.

But Dennison attributed the debt to the extravagances of Shaw’s administration.

He acknowledged that he has hired two additional union representatives, bringing the total to four. But he said the funds came mostly from cutbacks in other areas.

For example, he said, since taking over the local he has canceled all union credit cards but his own. “This alone will save about $75,000 a year,” he said.

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Dennison also noted that he recently traded in the office’s trash dumpster for two waste barrels, reducing the monthly trash bill from $144 a month to $14. And, he said, he has cut his own expenses.

“The guys in the office kid me because I bring Spaghetti O’s” for lunch, he said. “We brown-bag it a lot around here.”

More important, Dennison said, he has changed the way the union does business. Unlike previous administrators, he said, he allows workers at individual companies to elect their own shop stewards, rather than appointing them himself.

He said he also takes more time to meet with members. Having worked his way up through the rank-and-file, Dennison said, he has a good understanding of members’ needs and concerns.

“I drove package for eight years,” he said. “My knees and ankles still hurt at night from getting in and out of trucks all day. I understand what it takes.”

Now, Dennison is hoping to expand the union’s membership by organizing workers at the two county trash-hauling companies as well as at Ventura-based Lagomarsino Distributing Co., a beer distributor, and Culligan Industrial Water Treatment.

In addition to better wages and benefits, Dennison said, the union can improve working conditions and on-the-job safety programs.

Jim Harrison, vice president of E.J. Harrison, said he believes his company provides good salaries and benefits for its workers. He said drivers make a minimum of $104 a day, not including commissions and overtime.

“We feel we pay very competitively,” he said.

Harrison said that workers in his family’s business have been organized before, but that they voted to decertify their Teamsters membership in 1979. He said unions have become less popular over the years because workers realize that “you can’t negotiate a contract and solve all your problems.”

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Still, Harrison said he did not know whether his workers would be willing to join the Teamsters. He said union organizers have been aggressively seeking out drivers over the last few weeks.

“They’ve hit us really hard,” he said. “Everywhere our trucks go, they’re there.”

Harrison said company officials and union representatives will meet Tuesday with National Labor Relations Board officials to discuss holding an election at Harrison. Similar negotiations are also going on with officials of Anderson Rubbish, and Dennison is already out talking to workers at G.I. Rubbish in Simi Valley and Gold Coast Recycling in Ventura.

Meanwhile, Dennison is embroiled in a jurisdictional fight with Teamsters Local 986 of Los Angeles, part of a larger battle for power in Southern California within the Teamsters Union.

Dennison recently filed a complaint with labor officials and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters office in Washington, complaining that Local 986 has come into the county to organize workers at the North Ranch Country Club in Thousand Oaks and at the Price Club in Oxnard.

“They’re raiding us,” Dennison said.