Unions: The Teamsters Go Bust

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Has reform done to the TEAMSTERS, once the nation's richest and most powerful union, what the Mob couldn't? The latest financial report prepared by the union's secretary-treasurer and obtained by TIME, shows that the scandal-plagued union may be down to its last dime. The report, dated Jan. 26, 1998, and covering the fiscal quarter ending in September 1997, shows only $702,000 left in union coffers. Insiders say Teamsters headquarters faces large-scale layoffs within the next week or two. Those layoffs and the as-yet-unpaid bills for the government's inept efforts to clean up the union are likely to further cripple the union, which was once the giant of labor.

Things might get worse. The government, which spent $30 million in taxpayers' money on the Teamsters' last election, will require the union to fund the next one, probably in the spring. It will also send the Teamsters the tab for its abortive investigation into the fund raising of front-runner JAMES P. HOFFA. As a former officer said, the government has done what the Mob couldn't do: bankrupt the Teamsters.

--By Edward Barnes/New York