The Teamsters' Return

Normally AFL-CIO Chief George Meany treats former Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa with the silent contempt he might reserve for a scab laborer. But a few weeks ago, Hoffa delivered a diatribe that Meany could not ignore. Publicly championing a Teamsters assault on Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers Union, Hoffa declared that the fledgling AFL-CIO affiliate must be stamped out because "Chavez is incompetent." An angry Meany responded at a press conference by charging that the Teamsters, whom he booted out of the AFL-CIO 15 years ago, were guilty of "strikebreaking."

Such criticism is not likely to deter the Teamsters. After years of being shunned as the pariah of organized labor, the Teamsters have nourished an ardent romance with the Nixon Administration that has given them a new measure of respectability and influence. An unbridled push for expansion has brought the union more than 2,000,000 members, making it the largest in the non-Communist world. What worries Meany and other labor leaders is that much of the Teamsters' growing strength is coming from raids on AFL-CIO unions.

The move to thwart the U.F.W. drive to organize California lettuce pickers is a prime example of Teamster tactics. Hours before the U.F.W. campaign was to begin, the Teamsters rushed through their own contract with the growers; the union did not bother to fill in the sections on wages and benefits, and the growers said nothing about a representation election. Last December, the California Supreme Court upheld the farm union's charge that the Teamsters and the growers had conspired to sabotage the U.F.W., opening the way for Chavez to resume his organizing program. But the Teamsters still claim command of 30,000 farm workers, and forcing them out will be tough.

Unhampered by jurisdictional restraints imposed by membership in the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters are free to roam the labor lot in search of new recruits. Though over-the-road truck drivers continue to be the union's elite, earning up to $20,000 a year, the majority of its members are now in much lower paid, non-trucking jobs. Card-carrying Teamsters now include hospital workers, bridge tenders and race-track guards in New York, rice-mill workers in Houston, lampmakers in Los Angeles and campus police at the University of Minnesota. The Teamsters will shortly absorb an entire union, the 47,000-member Brewery Workers. Yet for all their recruiting success, often the result of extravagant promises to workers, the Teamsters in non-trucking fields have the reputation of a do-nothing union that is content to accept area pay patterns and collect dues.

With expansion has come wealth; in its last report in 1971, the union put its net worth at $95 million. Its annual revenues from dues alone come to $34 million. Such resources enable the union to publish a slick monthly magazine (Nixon was on the cover of the January issue), maintain a fleet of Lincoins and Cadillacs for its Washington-based staff and keep a pilot for its leased Hawker Siddeley jet on the payroll at $36,000 a year. The Teamsters' plodding, phlegmatic president Frank Fitzsimmons gets $125,000 a year in salary, a union-owned house in Chevy Chase, Md., to live in and an all but inexhaustible expense account. Though corruption at the top has ceased to be a major charge against the union, records kept by the Labor Department show that Teamster officials outdo those of all other unions in being arrested, indicted and convicted for crimes that range from embezzlement to taking kickbacks from employers.

None of this has interfered with the warm relationship that has grown up between the Teamsters, especially Fitzsimmons, and the President. As an earnest of his regard, "Fitz" stayed on the President's Pay Board when Meany and three other labor leaders walked off. He led the Teamsters in backing Nixon for reelection. In return, Fitzsimmons gets special White House treatment. Important Teamster functions are often attended by a galaxy of Administration stars, and Fitz has been put on an equal footing with Meany in clearing Labor Department appointees. Fitzsimmons himself was offered appointment as Secretary of Labor, but declined.

As a favor to the union, Nixon commuted former Teamster Boss Hoffa's jail sentence for fraud and jury tampering on condition that he steer clear of union politics at least until 1980. Though the mercurial Hoffa is aching to return to power--as his gratuitous attack on the Chavez union attests--neither Fitzsimmons nor the Administration wants him back in his old seat. Last month Attorney General Richard Kleindienst stated again that the terms of Hoffa's release are not negotiable.

With his new prestige, Fitzsimmons has gained a tight hold on his office. The real test will come when the National Master Freight Agreement, covering 450,000 over-the-road truckers, expires in June. The expectation among union members is that with friends in high places, they will somehow do a little better than most other workers.

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