How Hoffa Haunts the Teamsters

By RICHARD BEHAR

WILL THE TEAMSTERS EVER GO straight? Not with the attitude problem they've got. America's largest and most corrupt labor union remains in love with its sordid past, which is making it nearly impossible for it to forge an honest future. The attitude is reflected vividly in Hoffa, the new $40 million movie starring Jack Nicholson. The film tends to romanticize the life of the union's most infamous leader, Jimmy Hoffa, portraying him as a folk hero, a "friend of labor" who may have done deals with the Mob but only to help his Teamsters brothers and never to line his own pockets. Why does the movie represent the view of Hoffa disciples rather than that of reformers? Interestingly, the film's executive producer, entertainment-industry roughneck Joseph Isgro, has reputed ties to the Gambino crime family.

Ron Carey, the union's first democratically elected leader, publicly disdains Hollywood's portrayal of Hoffa's legacy. "He clearly was no Robin Hood, and he shouldn't be painted that way," declares Carey. Although the film doesn't say so, the real Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering, mail fraud and taking kickbacks. Two weeks before he disappeared, in 1975, investigators discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars had been stolen from the Teamsters' largest pension fund. "Hoffa was a dishonest person," says Carey. "You just have to look at all the pensioners around the country who lost money as a result of his actions."

It's too early in the new president's tenure to predict how a film called Carey would play. But the current boss has at least one trait in common with Hoffa: a ferocious and relentless tendency to attack the government for trying to clean up the union. When Carey was elected a year ago on a promise to rid the union of organized crime, federal agents and prosecutors were overjoyed by the underdog's surprise victory. Now they wonder if their confidence was misplaced. "He definitely has not been a corruption fighter so far," says Edward Ferguson, who recently served as the lead prosecutor against the Teamsters. "Nobody is suggesting that Carey is a bad guy, but his whole pitch was 'Elect me so we can get rid of the government and fight the enemy ourselves.' "

The feds got involved in supervising the Teamsters following a 1989 settlement of a racketeering suit that charged the union's leadership with having a "devil's pact" with the Mob. The record spoke for itself. Four of the union's past seven presidents had been indicted on criminal charges; three of them (including Hoffa) went to prison. To avoid a government-imposed trusteeship, the Teamsters agreed to allow the 1.6 million members to freely elect their president. In the past, the boss had always been handpicked by a coterie of top brass.

In settling the suit, Teamsters leaders agreed to a consent decree under which Frederick Lacey, the former federal judge who last week completed the Iraqgate probe, was assigned as an overseer to remove corrupt Teamsters officials and lead the way to free elections. But William McCarthy, who was president until last year, and his cronies spent $10.5 million of the union's money to litigate and obstruct the settlement at every step.

Carey now appears to be adopting that same defiant, foot-dragging posture. Lacey was replaced last month by a three-member independent-review board, as scheduled in the settlement. Yet Carey has gone to court (so far unsuccessfully) to challenge everything from Lacey's right to sit on the board to the government's right to issue rules for it. He has also tried to hamper the board's ability to hire staff, to seek redress in court or even to communicate with the rank and file through the Teamsters newsletter.

Federal Judge David Edelstein, who supervises the case, lashed out at Carey in August for actions that "presage tolerance of organized crime" and "suggest a desire . . . to cloak corruption in secrecy." The judge blasted Carey's record on eliminating corruption as "pathetic." Since then, the battle has only got worse, with Carey now comparing U.S. involvement in the Teamsters with the Polish government's attack on the Solidarity union in the early 1980s. "((Carey)) is basically an insecure guy who does not want anybody supervising what he's doing," says Lacey. "It's the same dance, but with different partners. Instead of McCarthy, it's Carey. But at least it's done to an Irish tune," he adds with a bitter laugh.

For his part, Carey complains vehemently that the union will go bankrupt at the rate ($385 an hour) that Lacey's law firm bills the Teamsters for its supervisory work. "The government created me in a democratic process, and democracy should be given an opportunity to work," he says. "They've been in here for three years, and if they haven't cleaned it out, why not? What's the problem, guys? How in hell can anybody justify $385 an hour -- this really frustrates the sout of me -- when we have members picking lettuce in California for $4.25 an hour?"

In response, Lacey says that Carey himself is draining the union's coffers by suing the government and by having "flooded the books" with highly paid executives in order to repay political debts. Lacey also argues that his own success with the Teamsters -- since 1989, more than 140 officials have been driven from office -- has saved or recovered $14 million for the union, far in excess of the $4 million in legal fees and expenses his firm has collected.

Why has a reformer like Carey turned into an apparent reactionary? Some experts speculate that Carey believes his militant posture is safe now because the Clinton Administration's Justice Department will not hound the Teamsters the way Republican Administrations did. Yet Carey's behavior, past and present, indicates that government supervision is still necessary. For example, the Teamsters leader doubts he "ever would have testified" on behalf of a reputed Lucchese family mobster named John Conti. But court records show that Carey spoke highly of Conti in a criminal case in 1975.

< This year, one of Carey's first moves as boss was to install William Genoese, a Teamsters official with a dubious background, as the head of a Mob- controlled airport-workers local in New York City. Lacey vetoed Carey's selection, calling Genoese "unbelievably oblivious" to corruption and citing his lengthy pattern of nepotism and misuse of union funds. "If even a casual look had been taken at Genoese's background, you would have known that this was a terrible mistake," says Lacey. "And Mr. Carey knew that." Moreover, the Mafia apparently likes Genoese: earlier this year, a former Lucchese crime boss testified about a Mob attempt to influence last year's election by placing Genoese and other Teamsters in key union posts.

Carey concedes that the Genoese selection was a mistake -- one that he is unlikely to repeat, he says, thanks to an "ethical review committee" he launched last month. The committee will operate separately from the review board, and an outside firm will handle much of its work, including union background checks. The independent contractor will be Decision Strategies, a firm run by Bart Schwartz, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who Carey says has an "untouchable" reputation. "((Schwartz)) is now the investigative arm of the Teamsters," boasts Carey.

But Schwartz's resume is far from spotless. A congressional report cited him in 1990 as a main player in a case that led to a serious misuse of law enforcement. After Schwartz left the U.S. prosecutor's office in 1985 to join a private investigation firm, one of his first moves was to help a devious client provoke a criminal probe against a business rival. As a result of the efforts, the rival suffered a crippling IRS raid in 1986 despite scant evidence of wrongdoing. Four years later, the case was quietly closed by the Justice Department without any indictments. Schwartz maintains he did nothing wrong, but the affair raises questions about his standards of conduct.

To his credit, Carey has made some big strides since taking office. When turncoat Gambino underboss Sammy Gravano testified recently about his ties to a concrete-hauling Teamsters local, Carey slapped a trusteeship on the unit to shape it up. Last week, he says, he launched a probe of Teamsters links to the Mob in the movie industry. Carey also instituted budgets for the union, a previously unheard-of practice. He personally negotiated a contract for car haulers, one of the union's biggest accords, and he stopped a revolt by Northwest Airlines flight attendants who nearly quit the union to join another.

"The union seems to be turning in the right direction," says Susan Jennik, head of the Association for Union Democracy, a reform group that has monitored the Teamsters since 1969. "But I don't agree with Carey's emphasis on opposing the government. It took decades for the union to get so corrupt, and it will probably take some time before it's totally cleaned up."

Those who doubt the immensity of the task should look no further than the Teamsters' first open convention in 1991, which paved the way for Carey's election. At the event, union leaders rejected a proposal to amend the constitution to boot out their "general president emeritus-for-life." And who holds that prestigious post because of his "good-standing membership" ? Who else but Jimmy Hoffa, missing in action, perhaps, but proving once again that the rank and file never gets what the rank and file deserves.