How Hoffa Haunts the Teamsters

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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.