Labor Revving Up For a Cleanup?

In a fitting stroke of symbolism, next week's Teamsters convention will take place in Orlando instead of its familiar site: Las Vegas -- the magic kingdom that was built illegally with the union's money. The Teamsters are putting on a new face. Even the workers at Disney World who walk around wearing Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck or Pluto costumes are card-carrying members of the International Brotherhood. More important, the union is at last cleaning up its act, thanks to the prodding of court-appointed officers who have forced dozens of Mob-connected officials out of the union.

The sweeping change is the result of a deal the government cut with the Teamsters in 1989 to settle a massive racketeering suit alleging that the union's leadership had made a "devil's pact" with the Cosa Nostra. To avoid a costly trial and the threat of a government trusteeship, Teamsters leaders agreed to major reforms. If the Orlando convention follows the new rules, in December the 1.6 million members of the most powerful U.S. union will freely elect their president and 17-member executive board for the first time. That's good news for the rank and file, whose pooh-bahs have been ripping them off for decades. The bad news is that none of the viable presidential candidates are completely free of old Teamster associations or questionable past performances.

The winner will have the historic challenge of recasting a union that the President's Commission on Organized Crime in 1986 tagged the "most controlled" by the Mafia, notably by New York City's Genovese family. Four of the union's past seven presidents have been indicted on criminal charges; three of them (Dave Beck, James R. Hoffa and Roy Williams) went to prison. "The Teamsters are probably the most Mob-controlled union in the country's history," says Joseph Coffey, a top investigator at the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. "And they could still tie the nation up in knots if they wanted to."

People tend to think only of truckers when they hear the word Teamster, but the union today embraces workers from all walks of life -- hospital and brewery laborers, librarians, schoolteachers, even state troopers and sheriff's deputies -- in more than 600 locals scattered as far as Guam and the Yukon Territory. Despite a membership erosion caused mostly by trucking deregulation (the Teamsters peaked in 1978 at 2.3 million), the union boasts the largest U.S. political-action committee. Last year it raised $10.5 million, nearly twice as much as the runner-up, the American Medical Association. That money buys plenty of political influence. More than half the members of the House of Representatives urged the Justice Department not to file the racketeering suit that paved the way for next week's free convention.