Which way for Carey's s
* USA estimation. It is essential to remember that history has demonstrated that those socialists who have not consistently defended democratic rights lose their authority with the working class. In the face of a rightwing assault, we pay a price if we do not speak the truth, even if we wish the facts were different. We simply can't gloss over the evidence.
The disqualification of Carey is a reactionary decision, though for a different reason. It deprives the membership of its hard-won right to vote for the leadership of its own choosing. The effective democratic remedy would have been to re-run the Carey-Hoffa contest, under stringent financing rules to prevent further abuse by either campaign.
In any case, defending Carey "against government intervention" is not only a Herculean task, it is pointing in the wrong direction. The focus needs to be on the master freight contract, which covers 100,000 workers and will expire on March 31, 1998. It may be a more difficult fight than the fight over the UPS contract because there is more than one employer, and no one made a billion dollars in profits, as UPS did.
The union has been organising visible actions and a petition campaign, on the model of the UPS campaign. Almost half of all freight workers submitted surveys to help fashion the Teamsters' bargaining proposals: job security that would limit subcontracting and double breasting (a company operating under another name, which would be, conveniently, non-union); increased pensions; safety issues, and increased income and benefits. The members also understood that organising the non-union shops in the freight industry is a key priority.
For their part, the companies want to avoid a strike, but will also attempt to take advantage of any disunity or weakness they perceive in the union.
TDU, meanwhile, is aggressively organising itself. It is setting up regional offices and it is discussing possible reform candidates for the next election, whenever that will be. It is continuing to challenge the old guard in local elections, and circulating information on Hoffa's long association with Mafia figures. It's monthly newsletter, Convoy Dispatch is spreading information about the campaign for the Master Freight Agreement. The Teamster reform movement is alive and well. * Notes 1. The 1991 election campaign was more of a grassroots effort, but the campaign manager brought in some political consultants, who later provided their services to the IBT in the 1992-96 period. These included political consultant Martin Davis, who was a partner in a direct mail firm, the November Group; Jere Nash, who became Carey's campaign manager in February 1996; and Share Group, Inc., a Boston area telemarketing firm that assisted with fund-raising. Michael Ansara was a partner in
The revolutionary left is divided in its response to the disqualification of Teamster President Ron Carey. We reproduce arguments reflecting both sides in this important strategic debate. Comment #1 Which way for
Carey's supporters?
Charles Walker
In 1989, when Ron Carey asked a Teamsters for a Democratic Union Convention (TDU) for its endorsement, most delegates knew little or nothing about him. But weeks before the convention, the top TDU leadership asked Carey to run for the Teamsters most powerful post, in the wake of the government-imposed
Carey had never shown any particular support for TDU. In fact, he told the 1989 TDU convention before it voted to endorse him that he had never seen the need for TDU in his local union.
But Carey was attractive to the TDU leaders because he was a militant unionist; he bucked the bureaucracy four times when he led local strikes against United Parcel Service (UPS), and he won the affection and loyalty of the 7000 members of New York Teamsters Local 804
During Carey's almost six years as the general president of the Teamsters Union. he continued to be a militant trade unionist — and very often, a very sharp burr under the Teamsters bureaucracy's backside. So much so, that even before Carey gained widespread recognition because of his leadership of the August 1997 UPS strike, he stood out from all other American international union leaders for the same reasons he had stood out as a local union leader.
On Nov. 17, Black Monday, a government election officer ruled that Carey could not be a candidate in the courtordered rerun of the union's 1996 election. Carey challenged the disqualification order, but also took a leave of absence from the presidency.
Erstwhile supporters
Carey's disqualification revealed, or triggered, serious differences among Carey's allies and supporters, inside and out of the Teamsters union.
A number of progressives, including those connected to the radical newsletter Labor Notes, have argued that Carey is politically responsible for the wrongdoings alleged by the government's so-called Independent Review Board (IRB) and by the court-appointed election officer. Not that these allegations have been proven, and despite the obvious bias of the "independent" decision-makers
Rather than challenge the government's right to restrict the members in their choice of leaders, some have chosen this critical time to argue with Carey over his alleged lack of understanding of the notion of bottom-up, rank-and-file control, his appointment of conservatives to important positions within the union, and his hiring of slick consultants with no union background to run his 1996 re-election campaign. Solidarity should be unconditional
Isn't this the time to set aside the debate of what Carey should have done yesterday and focus on what Carey and all partisans of rank-and-file power and democracy ought to be doing today?
Isn't the government's new level of intervention in the Teamsters Union and its threats against other labour leaders the paramount issue at this time?
Should not partisans of workers democracy utilise whatever power they have, including whatever access they have to the popular media, and counterattack the government's undermining of union
Contributors to Labor Notes and The Nation have made an unnecessary rush to judge Carey's alleged complicity in the fund-raising schemes. This judgement is based solely on the so-called evidence against Carey contained in the election officer's written opinion
Writing in The Nation on December 14th, David Moberg argues that the scandal poses risks to the reform movement if Carey persists in trying to save his candidacy. That proposition was not discussed at TDUs recent convention, but probably is shared by some TDU delegates, as well as some of TDU's central
In any event, the top TDU leadership
WHAT WE SIN GO5 the Share Group.
2. www.lw.com/lathamwatkins/teamsters/decision.htm seemed to think that the Carey era is over, and so did not take actions to encourage
Carey to hold out against the government's assault. But judging from the tumultuous reception that the delegates gave Carey, the delegates
upporters?
were prepared to do more than just settle for a contingency game plan for the rerun election. It seems more the likely, that a large majority also would have endorsed a plan to rally the union's ranks against the government's edict that the members did not have the right to freely elect any Teamsters member to any Teamsters office. But such a proposal would have needed the authoritative backing of key TDU leaders, or failing that, Carey
Why Carey and the TDU leadership failed to present such a proposal is not entirely clear. Perhaps Carey has confidence in the legal system? Perhaps he truly believes that the courts are impartial arbiters of fact, and since he's innocent, he ultimately must prevail in the courts.
But while there were no convention votes that clearly indicated a majority sentiment, it appeared that only a small majority of the delegates backed the TDU leadership's view that Carey was not going to win his fight to run in the rerun election. Therefore, the immediate practical task was to consolidate TDU's strength behind another candidate who would build on the reform achievements of the Carey period.
Ken Paff, the principal TDU leader, told the delegates that, "if you are going to take on Corporate America, if you are going to win major strikes, if you are going to start turning the movement around, you better make sure you are not
The truth is that his statement is historically inaccurate. More precisely, his statement is historically silly. No Ameriwho takes on Corporate America is safe. All real leaders are vulnerable. That aside, what is most disturbing is that in the context of the convention, Paff's statement may be read as accepting the other critics ready acceptance of Carey's guilt, chagrin over Carey's piecemeal acceptance of TDU's advanced view of membership participation in unions, and frustration over the prospect that the reform momentum may be slowed. More disturbing still is the TDU leadership's failure to propose actions based on Carey's well- established outlook on militant trade unionism - the quality that brought Carey and TDU together in 1989.
The rerun election has been postponed until the spring. Chances are that it may be
Hopefully, during the interval Carey and the TDU leadership will listen carefully to those who argue that there no contradiction between building a militant reform movement and defending the Teamsters members vital right to choose their leaders. *
Comment #2 The Business Union
"short-cut" - when
will we learn? Kim Moody
It's easy to look at the situation in the Teamsters and write it all off to the usual suspects: Carey became a threat to big business. He not only presided over a profound transformation of a major union situated at the heart of the economy, he took on UPS, won, and set an aggressive new pattern for labour as a whole. So, corporate America, their Republican buddies, and the courts (under pressure or by preference) did him in. No doubt about it, this cast of characters went after Ron Carey like hound dogs after a bleeding fox. Rest assured they're not done yet. They, in one of their many forms, will probably get their teeth into Rich Trumka and maybe others. Some of labour's best will go down, while many of the worst will walk away unscathed and grinning. Corporate America won this one.