-That's a pretty big difference, isn't it? If U.S. unions would -violate laws against secondary boycotts or plant sit-ins that'd be -one thing. The kind of stuff Carey & Co. did isn't gangsterism, but -it still smells bad. -Uh, just a second. I never said Carey was a mobster. He's not of the -same breed as Coia and Bevona, but he does reflect some similar -structural problems of U.S. unions.
But the problems involved with Carey do not share a similar structural problem with Coia and Bevona. That's what pisses me off with them even being mentioned in the same breath, since that is what the reactionary press has been doing. Check out the Wall Street Journal's assault yesterday.
Bevona and Coia were purely self-aggrandizing people seeking to make themselves materially well-off at the expense of their members. Carey took office, slashed his own salary and perks, and ended up facing off against a Hoffa slate backed by local officials who were exactly of the character of Bevona and Coia. The government did nothing as Hoffa piled up a war fund in contributions from those self-aggrandizing old guard Teamsters. So Carey and a whole slew of progressive folks, from activists in Citizen Action to other progressives in other unions, became desperately worried that the Teamsters were about to be plummeted back into exactly the structural problems that Bevona and Coia represent. The reason the national Citizen Action folks got involved was not to support Carey's self-aggrandizement, since no outside group has ever done anything similar for a Bevona or a Coia, but out of progressive aims. So the whole stupid money laundering circuit was created to defend progressive unionism in the Teamsters. Carey personally may have had some self-interested purposes involved, but the reason this scandal is touching so many people is precisely that it was not the usual in-house self-interested enterprise.
It was good intentions deployed with bad means and ultimately stupid strategic vision. But that is a completely different thing with ZERO relationship to what went on with Bevona or Coia. And mentioning them in the same breath is a reactionary thing to do.
And yep, when you take such a reactionary position as progressive unionists are under assault, it is illegitimate. Timing is everything in evaluating when to make criticism of allies and right now, as indictments are being levelled at Trumka and a new NLRB is being appointed, is not the time to be echoing the rightwing line.
-- Nathan Newman