Word: carey
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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...
...Carey now appears to be adopting that same defiant, foot-dragging posture. Lacey was replaced last month by a three-member independent-review board, as scheduled in the settlement. Yet Carey has gone to court (so far unsuccessfully) to challenge everything from Lacey's right to sit on the board to the government's right to issue rules for it. He has also tried to hamper the board's ability to hire staff, to seek redress in court or even to communicate with the rank and file through the Teamsters newsletter...
Federal Judge David Edelstein, who supervises the case, lashed out at Carey in August for actions that "presage tolerance of organized crime" and "suggest a desire . . . to cloak corruption in secrecy." The judge blasted Carey's record on eliminating corruption as "pathetic." Since then, the battle has only got worse, with Carey now comparing U.S. involvement in the Teamsters with the Polish government's attack on the Solidarity union in the early 1980s. "((Carey)) is basically an insecure guy who does not want anybody supervising what he's doing," says Lacey. "It's the same dance, but with different partners...
...part, Carey complains vehemently that the union will go bankrupt at the rate ($385 an hour) that Lacey's law firm bills the Teamsters for its supervisory work. "The government created me in a democratic process, and democracy should be given an opportunity to work," he says. "They've been in here for three years, and if they haven't cleaned it out, why not? What's the problem, guys? How in hell can anybody justify $385 an hour -- this really frustrates the sout of me -- when we have members picking lettuce in California for $4.25 an hour...