TEAMSTERS (IBT)
No DOJ Oversight of 2001 Election
For the first time since settling federal racketeering charges in 1989,
the Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters will conduct leadership elections free of government
supervision. Campaigns for union posts in the historically-corrupt union
begin this year with the selection of local delegates and conclude next
fall with the election of a general president. Each of the
past three Teamsters ballots -- including
the scandal-ridden vote in 1996 in which Ron Carey's campaign stole the
election with union funds -- have been conducted under the Dep't of
Justice's oversight.
IBT boss James P. Hoffa has been lobbying to end the oversight, and the DOJ's has agreed . The stage was set for the new elections when the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan agreed in principle to a set of election rules and procedures proposed by the union. Hoffa described the rules, which call for secret ballots and strict accounting of all campaign contributions and expenditures, as "tougher" than those imposed by the government in 1991, 1996 and 1998 when it supervised union elections.
Money may have played a key role in DOJ's decision to end its supervision of IBT elections. It cost the government more than $22 million to supervise the 1996 election and 1998 rerun. Congress only reluctantly agreed to pay for the 1998 rerun election, and coming up with taxpayer money to pay for another election may have been even more difficult. The union will pay the cost of the upcoming contest, estimated at more than $10 million.
The new rules provide for the election of delegates to the union's national convention in Las Vegas in June 2001. Delegates will nominate candidates for the union's top offices at the convention. Ballots will be mailed to the union's 1.4 million members in October of next year and the tallying of the votes will be in November. It further provides that William Wertheimer, a Southfield, Mich. labor lawyer, will serve as election administrator. Ex-U.S. Dist. Judge Kenneth Conboy will again serve as election appeals master as he has done in previous elections. It was Conboy who disqualified Carey in Nov. 1997.
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