by Charles Walker
It was startling to watch the
videotape of the Tom Leedham vs. Chuck Mack Teamsters presidential candidates’
debate of September 21 and hear Teamsters vice president Mack virtually endorse
the government’s takeover of the Teamsters in 1989. (Leedham’s actual rival,
James P. Hoffa, did not appear.)
The feds moved into the union under an agreement called the “Consent Decree” that settled a lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors against the union’s top leaders under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations sections of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (RICO). To my knowledge, Teamsters president Hoffa, unlike Mack, has not said that he ever favored the federal authorities’ intervention.
Mack’s admission was startling because it represented a 180-degree turnaround. At the Teamsters 1991 convention, Mack in a prepared speech denounced the government’s takeover as “tyranny.” In fact, at the convention it seemed that Mack’s viewpoint, in the main, was a consensus position. It seemed that way because all three major candidates, Ron Carey, Walter Shea, and R.V. Durham spoke in opposition to the government’s intervention.
At that 1991 convention,
Mack’s stirring condemnation of the union executive board’s “bargain”
(the record indicates he received a standing ovation), a deal which placed the
nation’s largest union under the government’s thumb, included these gems.
“… the Consent Agreement must be rejected because it doesn’t stand for
democracy. It stands for tyranny … This agreement has allowed the government
to occupy our International, locals and joint councils like a conquering army
… the decree has created a supercop…Big Brother is looming in our future
…Brothers and sisters, we’re obligated to scream, ‘Hell, no.’ We
won’t be part of what the government and certain members of our board put
together…Big business, the primary constituent of big government, can hardly
contain its joy…The decision to date has cost the membership and our
organization close to $25 million. Would you trust anyone who signed the Consent
Agreement to negotiate a collective bargaining contract on behalf of your
members? Neither would I. Sisters and brothers, the Consent Decree is nothing
but a sellout. It is the worst bargain struck in U.S. labor history.”
At the videotaped debate of
September 21, 2001, held Washington, D.C., a journalist and panelist asked Mack
why the 2001 Teamsters Convention had removed the anti-corruption clause from
the union’s constitution. Mack said, in effect, that the situation had changed
and the constitutional provision was out of date. “We have moved past that,”
Mack said.
Then another panelist asked if
the consent decree had ever been necessary. It was then that Mack confessed that
the mob had “infiltrated” the Teamsters and took control. In Mack’s words,
“I think the consent decree was …I think that it was necessary. I think that
over the years we have seen the value of the consent decree. I think, however,
that there is no question in anybody’s mind at this time that the mob is gone
from the Teamsters union. That’s why the consent decree was put in place. It
was put in place because the mob had supposedly and probably had infiltrated
this organization and were making decisions about the operation and how the
organization was run. That’s been eliminated. It’s time to move on.”
Hopefully all the labor movement can agree that it’s
time to move on. But the labor movement can’t take Mack’s word for it.
That’s because Mack’s record doesn’t unambiguously show that he can
recognize a mobbed-up union local or a wise guy when he runs across one. For
instance, Mack’s predecessor as Joint Council 7 President, Rudy Tham, was
convicted of extortion. Tham went to a federal jail and Mack stepped into his
shoes. To date, Mack hasn’t said anything about Tham’s crimes. That includes
the period when Tham was Mack’s superior and presumably could have made
Mack’s climb to higher power somewhat more complicated.
Mack controls the regional
Teamsters newspaper, which goes to the Bay Area’s 50,000 Teamsters. But
despite having that means of communication, Mack has yet to tell the membership
about the unsavory acts (clearly not misdemeanors) of one-time Teamsters
President Frank Fitzsimmons or his replacement, Roy Williams. In 1981, Williams
was nominated for the union’s top spot by Jackie (“I’m a snitch. So
what?”) Presser. Mack seconded the nomination, despite Williams’s
then-recent indictment on bribery charges. (Williams later cut a deal with the
authorities, confessing that for decades he had been a stooge for the mob.)
Jackie Presser took over from
the imprisoned Williams. “The drawers of Jackie’s bedroom bureau were
stuffed with money received as kickbacks from various union contracts. Whenever
a Teamster watch, cufflink, flashlight, bookmark — whatever was purchased,
Jackie got a cut,” as revealed by one-time Presser aide and confidante, Duke
Zeller (The Horse’s Mouth, 1996).
Perhaps in Mack’s earlier days as a rising tyro, he was still too green to recognize what was obvious to many others. But after a few terms as a local union principal officer and his various leadership positions in Joint Council 7, Mack should have been an insider long enough to hear what others were saying about the union’s corruption. But the surprising record is that Mack seems to have neither heard nor seen any evil. In any event, Mack never spoke out against the evil that gave the federal prosecutors the cover to occupy the Teamsters like “a conquering army.”
A somewhat cynical explanation for Mack’s blinkered view of serious union corruption has to do with his ambitions. Mack told a local reporter who noted a large color portrait of Jackie Presser in Mack’s personal office that old-time officials who wanted the union to project a fresh and wholesome image had favored him. Apparently, the cigar-chomping image was getting in their way of doing business. Of course, they were not about to ditch their cigars, or change their mode of operation. They just wanted a front man to shield them.
Mack was a good choice from their point of view. He was a college graduate, thinking about being a lawyer. He didn’t have much time in as a working Teamster, but that didn’t seem to matter. For a short time he was a business agent and then was shipped off to California’s capitol to represent the Teamsters. By all accounts he was a good lobbyist. In less than two years he was elected to head up his local, the Bay Area’s largest trucking union. As mentioned above, he became president of the Bay Area joint council when its incumbent was imprisoned. Of course Mack made his way onto the conference and the international payrolls, with time enough left over to serve as a union trustee on the multi-billion dollar western pension plan.
Mack gave the reporter the impression that he wanted go even further up the ladder. But later his rise was halted when the insurgent members who elected Ron Carey defeated Mack in his first and second run for an elected position with the international union.
It’s not clear when Mack found out about the mob’s long influence at the union’s highest level. Of course if he knew about the mob’s “infiltration” as early as 1992, when the mob was no longer pulling the strings in the “marble palace”—the union’s grand headquarters in Washington, D.C.— he could have used his skills and image to help clean up the union once and for all.
Sure, it would have meant breaking with disreputable elements such as Billy Hogan and his nepotistic family, Frank (the bank) Wsol and the younger Hoffa; but perhaps that was too chancy a way to get to the top. In any event Mack has stayed with “them that brought him” and has been rewarded.
Perhaps he’s not yet where he thinks he should be. Who knows? But one thing seems for certain. Mack is still allowing his “clean and educated” image to be used by those above him in the bureaucratic hierarchy. That happened again when he filled in for the absent Hoffa at the debate. Just out of curiosity one has to wonder what’s the price these days to get Mack to be a stand-in or a shill for a suspect higher-up. There’s certainly no glory.