Teamsters Locals Defect to Form Their Own District : Labor: A lawsuit seeking to block the move says it is designed to weaken the powerful West Coast joint council.

Reflecting continued turmoil in the Teamsters union since national President Ron Carey began a reform movement three years ago, five locals in Southern California have pulled out of Teamsters Joint Council 42 in Los Angeles, stripping the longtime West Coast power base of 32,000 members.

The defection is being challenged in court by Mike Riley, head of the council and an opponent of Carey. But Riley’s effort to obtain a preliminary injunction to block the move was denied Wednesday by a federal judge in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge William J. Rea’s ruling clears the way for the five Southland Teamsters locals, plus two others in Central California, to operate under a new joint council. Earlier this month, Carey’s administration in Washington approved the secession and issued a new charter for Joint Council 92, one of dozens of regional groupings of Teamsters locals.

“We feel we can bring better service to the membership at a lesser cost than Joint Council 42,” said Ed J. Mireles, head of Local 952 in Orange, the 15,000-member local that led the effort to establish a new joint council. Mireles, who will be president of Joint Council 92, said Riley “has not lived up to his duties and obligations as joint council president.”

Riley, who has been president of Joint Council 42 for 16 years, ran on a slate against Carey in 1991 and has been critical of Carey’s actions, including his recent move to dismantle the union’s four regional conferences, which were umbrella groups of joint councils. Riley was head of the Western Conference of Teamsters.

On Wednesday, Riley blamed Carey for the defection of the locals, saying he is trying to stifle opposition within the union.

“He is encouraging these locals to make this move to weaken the joint council,” Riley said.

“It is pure retaliation, pure intimidation,” he alleged, adding that he will pursue his lawsuit to reverse the secession.

Carey was traveling Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. His spokesman in Washington, as well as leaders of the new joint council, said the secession isn’t politically motivated but reflects members’ dissatisfaction with Joint Council 42’s performance.

Even with the defections, Riley’s Joint Council 42 remains formidable, with about 95,000 members from two dozen locals. Nationwide, the Teamsters union has 1.4 million members. Still, the secession is a blow to Riley’s power base, and the loss of members is likely to trim the council’s operating budget by $50,000 a month.

As a result, Riley said, he will lay off five of the 13 employees at the joint council. In addition, he said, there will most likely be salary cuts for the remaining workers, including himself. Last year, Riley received about $81,000 as president of the joint council and $300,000 in total compensation for various Teamster posts, making him the top-paid Teamster in the nation for 1993.

Carey, a maverick New York union leader who was catapulted to head the nation’s largest union in a government-supervised election three years ago, has taken steps to cut salaries as part of his reform. But he has run up against plenty of opposition, some of the most vocal from Riley.

The new Joint Council 92 said it will charge its affiliated locals 65 cents per member per month--less than half what Joint Council 42 collects. In addition, as head of Joint Council 92, Mireles will receive a salary of $500 a month.