Dumb-Ideas-Never-Die-Dept.: U.S. Running Teamsters

The Reagan Administration’s Justice Department has embarked on a reckless course designed, it says colorfully, to “break a devil’s pact” between the Teamsters Union and organized crime.

Based on past and current experiences, the chances of the government succeeding are, at best, slim. And the notion of allowing the government to direct the takeover of a major union or any other private organization in a democratic country is unsavory.

There is also cause for some snickering at the government move since the Teamsters endorsed President Reagan and Vice President George Bush in both the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Were the two politicians unaware of the reputation of many of the union’s top officers who strongly urged the endorsements?

Bush personally went to the Teamsters convention in 1984 to enthusiastically accept the union’s endorsement, declaring firmly that “there is no down side to this.”

Perhaps the oddest comment on the union’s support of Reagan and Bush came last week from the head of the Justice Department, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who was the senior campaign aide to Reagan and is himself deeply involved in legal difficulties.

Meese said the Administration would not have accepted the Teamster endorsement “had this information (about mob ties) been available at the time.”

The remark was strange since the latest government case is not primarily based on new revelations but on more than three decades of investigations and hundreds of convictions of union officials on charges ranging from fraud to murder.

Now the accumulation of all that past evidence of mob ties, plus some new information developed by extensive wiretapping, can be used to get rid of the corrupt elements that still infest the union, the vast majority of whose leaders around the country are honest.

The federal anti-racketeering law is an essential ingredient in the case since it does not require the usual proof of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” for a conviction of a defendant; only a “preponderance of evidence” is needed to obtain a guilty verdict. The reason for the less-strict requirement is that the action is a civil suit, not a criminal indictment.

The law allows leaders of a union, industry or any other group or organization to be ousted and replaced by court-appointed trustees--even if a majority of the leaders are not themselves criminals or have no ties with the underworld. The trustees serve until the government decides that the union is ready for a new election.

The government contends that several of the 18 Teamster officials named in the suit against the union may not be personally corrupt but are still culpable because they “aided and abetted” racketeers by not taking any positive steps to eliminate them from the union. In other words, the honest ones did little, if anything, to oust the rotten apples in their midst.

It might cause considerable consternation if that same standard were applied to the Reagan Administration because many of its leaders did nothing to stop wrongdoing by the rotten apples in their midst.

First test of the most sweeping, but not unprecedented, legal maneuver against the Teamsters is scheduled to start in New York today, when U.S. District Judge David N. Edelstein will be asked for a temporary order to start what promises to be a years-long process to root Mafia influence out of the 1.6-million-member union.

U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani wants quick action to, among other things, get some court “liaison officers” to oversee all of the union’s myriad day-to-day operations at its headquarters in Washington, an enormous chore no matter how intelligent and industrious the liaison officers or, at a later stage, court-appointed trustees, turn out to be.

But the Justice Department move could backfire on the government at any stage if it fails legally on constitutional or technical grounds. If it does fail, then all Teamster officials--both the vast majority who are honest as well as the mob-connected ones--could proclaim, “We’re clean!”

That apparent clean bill of health from the courts would be a serious setback to the decades of government and private Teamster-reform efforts that have recently shown some encouraging signs of progress.

Another key fear is that several of the union’s top officers, including acting President Weldon Mathis, would be convicted and ousted because of “failure to act” against mob influence, even though they have never been accused, much less convicted, of having ties with organized crime.

And men such as Mathis seem to be part of a viable reform movement inside the union.

Even if the government does obtain some convictions, there is little chance that its plan for reforming the union will succeed because, for practical reasons, it will be almost impossible for court-appointed liaison officers or trustees to administer the vast Teamster empire.

Look at what happened when the government moved in a similar fashion against just one New Jersey local of the giant union.

There was no doubt that the 8,500-member Teamsters Local 560 in Union City, N.J., was led for 25 years by corrupt officers under the control of Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, a convicted murderer and Mafia soldier.

Two years ago, a U.S. judge approved the government’s choice of a contentious but honest unionist, Joel R. Jacobson, as trustee to clean out the crooks feeding on Local 560. They had stayed in office for years by using murder, fear and that widely employed political device, patronage.

But after nearly a year of internal union turmoil under Jacobson’s erratic leadership, the racketeers were still in control.

The judge was angry and decided he wanted a cop, not a trade unionist, “to get the mob out of there.” He named a no-nonsense, long-time prosecutor, Edwin H. Stier, as the next trustee of Local 560.

Stier had no previous experience with any union, but he is smart and industrious and incorruptible--apparently an ideal choice for the job.

Last Thursday, a year after taking the post and two years after the government first imposed the trusteeship, Stier was able to say only that he has made “measurable progress” in cleaning up the mess.

“I could not have said that even a month ago,” Stier conceded in an interview, admitting that the mob is still there “on the fringes.” But he believes that there is “a good chance” that when the trusteeship is lifted, democratic elements may be able to win a closely supervised election.

Remember, though, Stier is talking about his new-found hope for success in ending mob control of just one local, and that after two years. It was an enormous struggle to administer that local, not knowing friend from foe. He is in charge of everything from negotiating contracts and processing grievances to handling the union’s daily expenses.

To do that for the entire international union would be almost impossible task, even though few Teamster locals are dominated by criminals. The trustees will have to pay attention to the happenings in every local union in every part of the nation, as the regular officers of any union do, helping them deal with day-to-day problems.

Some people forget that the idea of using outside, court-appointed “monitors” to police the Teamsters didn’t work when it was tried for nearly four years starting in 1957.

James R. Hoffa, who had won a strongly contested election for the presidency of the union, settled a court suit over the election by agreeing to a court-appointed board of monitors. He was named “provisional president.”

Hoffa expected the chief monitor, Martin F. O’Donoghue, to give some benign advice, not to actually try to run the international union, as the government now wants some new monitors to do.

The idea was as dumb then as it is now. It did not work. O’Donoghue had strong ideas of his own about running the union--much like Stier has for Local 560. The O’Donoghue monitorship collapsed after constant personal and legal battles over the degree of authority he had.

After one final court fight, a new election was ordered in 1961 and the charismatic Hoffa won it easily. Most of the members seemed to love him--and the good contracts he helped them win. The monitor was dismissed, and the idea was discarded--until now.

Hoffa lasted a few more years. He was convicted of jury tampering and sent to prison in 1967. Pardoned by President Richard M. Nixon in 1971, he mysteriously disappeared in 1975, a presumed murder victim of mobsters.

The latest government scheme to have an entire union run by court-approved government trustees is a bad idea in itself in a democracy. And it is particularly bad because it is unlikely to work.

The best way to effectively deal with criminals is the traditional one: Indict and convict them on criminal charges.

The wrong way is to oust all of the leaders of an immense union, criminals or not, and let non-union monitors--whose names will be suggested in this case by the anti-union Reagan Administration--try to run it and, in addition, finish the much-needed job of cleaning it up.