A New Driver

Teamster power rolls on

"To all those who say that it is time to reform this organization and that it is time for the officers to quit selling out the members of this organization, I say to them, 'Go to hell!' "

With those defiant words, issued at his union's 1976 convention in Las Vegas, Teamster Boss Frank E. Fitzsimmons underscored the brass-knuckles philosophy of union management that ruled supreme during his decade-long tenure as president of the U.S.'s largest trade union. Fitzsimmons' death last week in La Jolla, Calif, of lung cancer at age 73 makes room at the top of the 78-year-old International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the succession is not clear. But there seems little prospect that the union will change very much from what it was under the bluff and blustery Fitzsimmons.

This week the Teamsters' 21-member executive board meets in Las Vegas to pick a replacement. The leading candidate is Roy L. Williams, 66, a protege of Fitzsimmons'. The president of union Local 41 in Kansas City, Mo., Williams began driving a truck in 1935 and joined the Teamsters three years later. As a trustee of the Teamsters' $2.8 billion Central States pension fund, Williams has been probed by federal officials for mismanagement and ties to organized crime. He has been indicted three times on federal embezzlement and records falsification charges, but never convicted.

Scandals stud the history of the 2 million-member union, which represents not only some 1 million truckers and warehousemen but also hospital and brewery workers, food industry laborers, police and other municipal employees, and workers in many other occupations. In the 1950s the Teamsters were often linked to labor violence and racketeering, and their president, David Beck, was convicted of embezzlement, larceny and income tax evasion.

Beck's successor, Jimmy Hoffa, remained under almost continual federal investigation by the Justice Department. In 1964 he was convicted and sentenced to a total of 13 years in federal prison for jury tampering, fraud and conspiracy in connection with pension-fund mismanagement. He began serving time in 1967 after his appeals ran out.

Before entering prison, however, Hoffa persuaded delegates to the union's 1966 convention to elect Fitzsimmons to the newly created post of general vice president, to watch over day-to-day Teamster affairs in the boss's absence. Fitzsimmons had worked for Hoffa in various union posts since 1934 and was considered little more than a yes man.

In 1971 Hoffa was released from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary after agreeing to resign as president and seek no other union office. Fitzsimmons, who had in the meantime solidified his power within the Teamsters, became president in his own right. Later Hoffa, who suspected Fitzsimmons of engineering the terms of Hoffa's release for his own ambitions, disavowed the agreement with federal authorities, raising the possibility that he would try to regain the union presidency at the 1976 Teamster convention. He never got the chance: in 1975 Hoffa disappeared, almost certainly murdered, and his body has never been found or the case solved.

The union's difficulties with the law have never crimped its political clout. Last year the Teamsters were one of only two unions (the other: the National Maritime Union) to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. The Teamsters got their reward. In November, Reagan and George Bush paid a courtesy call at Teamster headquarters. The President eulogized Fitzsimmons last week as "a powerful voice in the American labor movement," and a man who had "won the respect of both business and political leaders throughout the nation."

The Reagan Administration has also paid attention to Teamster preferences in selecting top officials. Last week the White House announced the nomination of Nevada Lawyer Reese H. Taylor Jr. as chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which regulates much of the nation's trucking business. As the law partner of Republican Senator Paul Laxalt, he has represented a number of trucking firms before the Nevada Public Service Commission. His appointment is favored by the Teamsters. Under Jimmy Carter, the ICC angered the Teamsters by moving rapidly to deregulate interstate trucking and increase competition from nonunion truckers. Taylor is not expected to push deregulation so zealously.

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