<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3>I know that this e-mail will create some controversy, but I think that it is
<BR>a political issue that needs a full airing.
<BR>
<BR>In the last few weeks on LBO-Talk, someone made a comment, in passing, that
<BR>suggested that Hoffa had not been such a bad leader of the Teamsters. I
<BR>disagreed, but it didn't seem like it was more than a general impression on
<BR>the part of the person or an issue of enough importance to pursue. In the
<BR>last few days, however, another poster has sent to a number of left listservs
<BR>a "report" on the Teamsters' recent Convention, which purports to demonstrate
<BR>that the Teamsters under Hoffa are the most democratic and most successful of
<BR>all American unions. Before this "report" becomes a basis for the
<BR>verification of vague impressions, it is necessary to take a deeper look at
<BR>what is going on here.
<BR>
<BR>The report forwarded on the Teamsters was written by Greg Tarpinian of the
<BR>Labor Research Association, a group which has been a primary front group of
<BR>the Communist Party with regard to its labor movement work. It continues a
<BR>pro-Hoffa perspective that the LRA and the CPUSA has held since prior to the
<BR>election of Hoffa.
<BR>
<BR>Why would the CPUSA take a position so contrary to the rank-and-file movement
<BR>in the Teamsters Union? The answer is appallingly simple. The founders and
<BR>leaders of Teamsters for a Democratic Union are, for the most part,
<BR>Trotskyists, affiliated with the journal _Labor Notes_ and the organization
<BR>Solidarity. Their Trotskyist roots go back decades to the original
<BR>International Socialists group in the US. The CPUSA would rather team up with
<BR>Hoffa Jr. then with a rank-and-file group led by Trotskyists.
<BR>
<BR>Now, I do want to make it clear that there are criticisms one can make of how
<BR>TDU has conducted the struggle within the Teamsters, and on other occasions,
<BR>I have made them here on LBO-Talk. But it is one thing to criticize from a
<BR>position of solidarity with the efforts to democratize and cleanup the
<BR>Teamsters; an entirely different thing to join with those who oppose
<BR>democratization and clean unionism.
<BR>
<BR>There is no question but that Hoffa Jr. has been forced to make some major
<BR>concessions on issues of union democracy, as the considerably more accurate
<BR>report by David Moberg in _In These Times_ indicates.
<BR>[http://www.inthesetimes.com/web2518/moberg2518.html] No doubt, too, TDU
<BR>rhetoric about the imminent collapse of the Teamsters under Hoffa Jr. is
<BR>hyperbolic. But there also is no question that every corrupt Teamsters'
<BR>official and every organized crime element within the union supported Hoffa
<BR>Jr. in the last election, and will do so again. There is no question that,
<BR>whatever their faults, the future of union democracy and clean unionism in
<BR>the Teamsters lies, for the immediately foreseeable future, with the TDU. It
<BR>is rank opportunism of the worst sort that LRA and the CPUSA has teamed up
<BR>with Hoffa Jr.
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --</P></FONT></HTML>