-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 4, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Why the government ordered a new Teamster election
After UPS strike victory, bosses move against labor
By Milt Neidenberg
Retired TeamsterThe government's decision to invalidate the December 1996 re-election of Ron Carey as president of the Teamsters should not come as a surprise.
The timing--three days after the union's historic strike victory over United Parcel Service--was no coincidence.
Over 185,000 rank-and-file striking Teamsters brought a worldwide billion-dollar corporation to its knees. It was a turning point for the labor movement.
Those who screamed for a Taft-Hartley injunction to stay the strike for 80 days know it. They represented every Wall Street boardroom and many powerful anti-labor sectors in Washington.
Carey and the Teamsters are now in the strongest position to lead a working-class counter-offensive against the union- busting bosses.
Millions of workers and the public in general supported the Teamsters and the Carey leadership during the 15-day strike. Clearly the momentum is shifting to labor.
The victory will embolden workers--especially low-paid part-time workers--to fight back and ratchet up their demands on the greedy bosses. Women and people of color are concentrated in these jobs.
The Teamster-UPS contract was truly the result of a rebellion of such workers. Now, with their example, courage and militancy will spread.
Increasing numbers of workers will shake off the fear and pessimism built up over the last decades. That's the more profound meaning of the Teamster victory over UPS.
Carey and the union now face a more formidable enemy than the world's biggest shipping company. The government, on behalf of the whole capitalist class, has renewed its war on the Teamsters.
WHY ANOTHER ELECTION?
On Aug. 22 Barbara Zack Quindel, the Justice Department official who had overseen the December Teamster election, declared Carey's re-election to head the 1.4-million-member union invalid.
Why? The reason is clear. With the UPS victory in hand, the Carey leadership--and the organized-labor movement as a whole--is positioned to carry forward the fruits of the UPS victory onward to many millions of low-paid workers.
Carey's strategy, which united these workers with the higher-paid drivers and pilots, sets the formula for the coming battles with the bosses. These organizing drives will be a catalyst for the AFL-CIO organizing drives that are gathering momentum.
Wall Street is very nervous.
Corporate restructuring, driven by the scientific- technological revolution, has created enormous profits, mostly by cutting labor costs. Now low-paid workers want to get some back.
Class battles are sure to come.
Restructuring has put these workers in a strategic position. They are critical to the capitalist process of production and distribution. Competition among the companies is fiercer since computerization introduced on-time delivery of materials and components.
The bosses have become more vulnerable since they eliminated warehouse inventories to drive down costs.
It was predictable that Quindel, appointed by a federal court to investigate the union election, would invalidate Carey's victory. The government need ed a strategy to subvert the organizing drives.
It has nothing to do with the election process or democracy.
The court ordered Quindel to investigate the election. She spent eight months and $22 million to dig up something to justify another Teamster election, with the goal of throwing the union into disarray.
Quindel finally found two hustlers--one a telemarketer, the other an informer cooperating with the government--who schemed to skim off funds, some of which she says went into Carey's election campaign. Quindel affirms that Carey had no knowledge of these funds.
Was Quindel ordered to hold her announcement until the results of the UPS negotiations were known? If UPS had beaten the Teamsters, wouldn't she have let the Carey election stand?
This is retribution for the UPS victory--and an attempt to prevent more of the same.
DIRTY TRICKS AGAINST THE UNION
For all anyone knows, the sleazy characters Quindel says skimmed funds could have been planted by the government. In fact, the whole story reeks of the sort of dirty tricks to undermine workers' struggles for which the FBI and CIA are noted.
Compared to the billions of dollars that big business dished out to Democrats and Republicans during last fall's election campaign, Quindel's charges against Carey are chicken feed. Wall Street pays for slick lobbyists who line the pockets of Republicans and Democrats to win favors from whoever gets elected. They call it soft money.
But they play hardball when it comes to the Teamsters. The government's plan is to divert Carey and the leadership for the next four months. They'll have to spend precious time and energy on yet another re-election campaign.
This will take away from the many opportunities to organize--for example, among the 100,000 Federal Express workers. And that's the whole idea behind Quindel's re- election order.
The government has had the Teamsters in its cross-hairs for decades. The latest episode opened when a "consent decree" was signed in 1989. Under the terms of the consent decree, the federal government directly interferes in the union through an "Independent Review Board."
The consent decree subjected the union to all the penalties of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act--RICO. This law, supposedly directed at mob-connected business operations, has mostly been used against unions.
The consent decree's ostensible purpose was to rid the Teamsters of corruption and promote democracy. Actually, it was designed to block the union from carrying out its primary function--fighting for its members.
The government, after all, represents the other side in the class struggle.
Jackie Presser, then president of the union, signed the decree under a Justice Department threat of jail. Union militants, by the way, have charged that Presser was also an FBI informant, which he never denied.
The 1.4 million Teamsters need to be reminded of this history and of the dangers they and their union now face.
MEDDLING IN UNION AFFAIRS
Ron Carey spent the first five years of his presidency cleaning up the corruption the Justice Department claimed existed. If the review board were really about corruption, Federal Judge David Edelstein, who issued the consent decree, should have long since shut it down.
Instead, the decree has been expanded to grant the judge even more powers. He has changed the entire internal life of the Teamsters. His power is now in its seventh year--and the union has no right to appeal his decisions.
Edelstein has instituted fundamental changes in the Teamsters International Constitution to suit the court's needs. The decree created a three-member board. The administrator, a former federal judge, was given the same rights as the Teamsters president and the General Executive Board.
He can discipline elected union officers and employees. He can appoint trustees to run the local unions. He has veto power over any union expenditure, contracts except those won in collective bargaining, and appointments of union officials and employees of the union.
The decree created an investigations officer who can examine the Teamsters' books and records, attend meetings, seize minutes, and bring in auditors to satisfy his whims.
The decree also created an election officer to supervise the balloting and certify the results of the 1991 and 1996 elections. This was Quindel's role.
GET THE GOV'T OUT!
President Carey cooperated with the government and the judge in the hope that the government would withdraw from its enormous power over the union. He imposed trustees on many locals to satisfy the government.
However, in August 1992, Carey hit back. He issued a news release headlined "Teamster President Carey Blasts Increased Government Control Of Union." He charged "the U.S. District Court" with "unwarranted imposition of increased government control over the union."
Carey noted that two weeks earlier Judge Edelstein had appointed William Webster to the so-called Independent Review Board. Webster is a former head of the CIA--and a board member at Anheuser-Busch, a major employer with which the Teamsters have contracts.
Edelstein rejected Carey's request to remove Webster and ordered the union to honor his appointment. The court further ordered the union to pay the board members $385 an hour with no annual cap, plus paying all the board's expenses--all to be borne by Teamster members through their dues.
The fees the union must pay the board are running into the millions of dollars. It's no wonder the union could pay UPS strikers only $55 a week.
Now Carey could use his August 1992 news release--which called "for the government to let the members and their elected leaders run this union"--as the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. He could educate the members as to why the government invalidated his re-election, and why it did it right after the UPS strike victory.
His theme should be: "Get the government off the Teamsters union's back. Abolish the so-called Independent Review Board and the tyrannical control of Judge Edelstein."
This would clearly differentiate Carey from James P. Hoffa, whose candidacy actually strengthens the government's hand against the union and highlights the corruption issue.
The government's encroachment on the Teamsters union's internal affairs is a danger to the entire labor movement. Just as labor rallied around Carey during the UPS strike, the movement must now mobilize to support Carey's re- election campaign.
There are only two sides here: the union, with Carey at its lead, and the government. If there were any confusion about this, it should have been dispelled Aug. 24 when Hoffa called on Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint a special prosecutor to seek an indictment against Carey.
Labor must defy the government's sabotage effort by stepping up all the organizing campaigns among low-paid workers. That would confound the ruling class's goal of disabling the revitalized Teamsters union and with it organized labor as a whole.
Carey characterized the UPS contract as a victory won on the streets and on the picket lines. Nothing less--in fact, more of the same--is necessary to end the government's interference in the biggest AFL-CIO union.
The government has thrown down the gauntlet. Carey has at least four months to organize a fighting response.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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