Plain Dealer (Cleveland), September 21, 2006, Thursday

Copyright 2006 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

September 21, 2006 Thursday
Final Edition; All Editions

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. C3

HEADLINE: Dissident wing of Teamsters to gather here;
Upcoming election is key topic

BYLINE: Alison Grant, Plain Dealer Reporter

BODY:
Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the dissident group that has been a burr under the saddle of the nation's most legendary union for 30 years, brings its reform-minded agenda to Cleveland this week.
The opposition wing of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters meets Friday through Sunday at the Sheraton Cleveland Airport Hotel to talk about winning good contracts, fighting rank-and-file apathy and protecting benefits. But leading the agenda is the rematch between General President James P. Hoffa, 65, and TDU-backed Tom Leedham, 55, head of a Teamsters local in Oregon.
Ballots in the election to pick the Teamsters' top officers will be mailed to 1.4 million members in October. Leedham speaks at the convention Saturday evening.
TDU organizer Ken Paff said cuts in health and pension benefits "are huge" for Teamsters. Union members under the Central States Pension Fund - which covers 150,000 truck drivers and other Teamsters throughout the Midwest and South - face smaller pensions and later retirement ages because of changes in the plan.
The TDU says Hoffa failed to bargain sufficient employer contributions into the fund in the last UPS, freight and car-hauling negotiations. Since money from the health fund was diverted to shore up sagging pension resources, TDU fears health plan cuts will arrive next - once the election is over.
"I think the worst is yet to come," said Teamsters Local 407 member Jim Collum, a UPS package handler in Cleveland.
A recent issue of Teamwork, a Teamster magazine mailed to pension fund participants, hails a $12-per-month pension increase but buries its details in a footnote, according to TDU.
"To qualify for this benefit, you have to work 35 years starting now, and retire in 2041!" the TDU says. "That's right. Just 35 more years to go."
TDU also accuses Hoffa of letting Teamster power erode, blessing the expansion of multiple union salaries among top union officials and failing to extricate the Teamsters from federal oversight begun with the 1989 consent decree that settled the Justice Department's mob racketeering case against the union.
Richard Leebove, a longtime Teamster public relations consultant from Detroit, said pension trustees modified retirement benefits to strengthen a fund hurt by falling stock prices, 9/11 and the shutdown of Teamster employers. Leebove said those who pledge to restore the cuts "are reckless and playing with people's lives."
The TDU may be the most durable rank-and-file dissident group in U.S. labor, but Leebove said its claim to have thousands of followers is an "urban myth." Paff said the group has 10,000 members.
Leebove said the group pays no attention to Hoffa's accomplishments in office, including his work to block Mexican trucks at the U.S. border for failing emission standards and his boost to the credibility of the Teamsters in the political arena.
Hoffa, son of the storied union leader who was abducted from a Detroit restaurant parking lot and presumably murdered in 1975, did not respond to a request for an interview. He worked as a labor lawyer for 25 years before following his father into Teamster politics.
In August, Hoffa skipped the only debate scheduled in the Teamsters election, sending the union's secretary-treasurer, Tom Keegel, to stand in for him at George Washington University.
Leebove said Hoffa did not want to feed what he called Leedham's purely negative message about the Teamsters, which employers had picked up and used against the union.
Leedham trailed Hoffa in 1998 and 2001 races, winning first 40 percent, then 35 percent of votes cast.
Paff said Leedham has the advantage this time of contrasting his agenda to Hoffa's eight-year track record.
Leedham served as head of the union's warehouse division under Hoffa's predecessor, Ron Carey, who was ousted for a campaign finance scandal in 1998. Carey was cleared of charges he committed perjury to officials investigating the claims, but he was expelled from the union for not stopping improper fund-raising.
Carey said last week that the Teamsters are at a crossroads. Hoffa has been praised for bringing in a tough organizer from Minnesota and putting money into corporate campaigns against industry giants like Cintas, the Cincinnati-based laundry company, and Wal-Mart. But Carey said he has little to show for it.
Richard Hurd, a labor expert at Cornell University, thinks Hoffa has stolen some of TDU's thunder by focusing on inventive strategies to rebuild the union.
"They had to adopt new approaches to succeed, and above all else, Jim Hoffa is very interested in being successful," Hurd said.
Paff, the TDU organizer, said "I think there's something to that, and I think imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We're happy to have all kinds of people adopt things that we pioneered, including Hoffa."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: agrant@plaind.com, 216-999-4758

GRAPHIC: Leedham Hoffa