Respected Union leader could be jailed for speaking to best friend
Posted by George Bogdanich on March 30th, 2008
Under highly controversial rules imposed on the International Brotherhood of Teamster by the federal government almost twenty years ago, Bill Hogan, a highly regarded former Teamster official couldn’t talk to his best friend of fifty five years, Bob Riley, who served as his organizing director at Local 714 in Chicago. Hogan may now face six month jail term for having done so in a classic case of a federal government attempt to curb free speech which is being watched closely by unions and civil liberties groups.
Bill Hogan could face incarceration despite the fact that he is no longer a Teamster member and legal experts say he should no longer be subject to the onerous rules of the IRB. Hogan was expelled for life in 2002 for what are widely viewed as trumped up charges by the Independent Review Board (IRB), a government-imposed internal watchdog, though he has never been accused of a crime, never associated with mobsters or acted unethically with regard to his duties either as the head of Local 714 and Joint Council 25 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The (IRB) is seeking six month jail sentence for Hogan for talking to Riley about purely personal matters Worse yet, Bill Hogan’s son Bob, who has been elected four times as leader of Local 714 (which represents Chicago area convention workers and film productions), could also soon be expelled from the union for life at a hearing on April 2, because he couldn’t prevent his father from speaking to his best friend going back to the fifth grade. Riley, who has been repeatedly honored his for lifelong work in humanitarian causes, fundraising drives for charitable organizations and as a foster father to needy children, was expelled for talking to Bill Hogan in 2005. In addition to Riley, three other Teamster officials have been banned for life: John Kikes of IBT Local 78, Joseph Bernstein Local 781 and Jerry Vincent of Local 728. A union member who talks to Riley would suffer the same fate. And so it goes. even though Bill is no longer a union member.
The Checkered History of the IRB – Early warnings from Congress, Legal and Labor experts
The IRB was installed almost twenty years ago as a result of the controversial misuse of the RICO (Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations) statute by former US Attorney Rudy Giuliani who sought a short cut to go after mobbed up or corrupt officials, almost all of whom operated in a handful of locals of the 700 locals of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters by establishing a government run investigating unit that would have extraordinary power – without the usual checks and balances — to investigate any perceived wrongdoing, remove officials, ban them for life from the union and ban them from speaking to any union members.
Faced with a federal lawsuit in the Southern Federal District Court of New York, members of the Executive Board of the Teamsters were threatened with loss of their positions, their pensions and told that they would not be able to use the Union treasury to fight the lawsuit which would be very expensive. The federal government essentially made the Teamster Board members an offer they couldn’t refuse in 1989, but only after a promise that the membership by then United States Attorney Benito Romano that the Teamster membership would have the opportunity to vote on the agreement. Unfortunately that promise was broken by the Department of Justice which went into court to insure that a membership vote against the consent agreement would not stop the government an open ended mandate to interfere in the union’s business as it saw fit.
In 1988, as the Justice Dept was invoking the RICO statue, some 264 members of Congress, which had passed the RICO law for other purposes, co-signed a letter to then Attorney General Edwin Meese warning that “the imposition of trustees to administer an international union by the government is, on its face, inherently destructive of the ability of workers to represent and speak for themselves through their union.”
William Wynn, President of the 1.3 million member United Food and Commercial Workers Union stated that the US government was “trying to deny freedom in the name of freedom.” Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) noted the threat to free speech and association, pointing out “Our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantees institutions the right of association and guarantees institutions the right to exist in our democratic society.” The late Senator Paul Simon commented: “I think we are getting on very thin ice here. “ Lewis Kaden, an attorney teaching law at Columbia University observed that the Justice Dept., by lumping guilty and innocent Teamster officials together in a RICO lawsuit “runs the risk of guilt by association.”
The Chicago Tribune, in a strong editorial, observed that justice could not be served by legal “short cuts” such as the RICO statute. “We have criminal laws to deal with folks who do wrong” the editorial added. “If the civil RICO statute is to be used in the absence of an earlier criminal conviction, it should be done only under the closest and most sensitive kind of in-house Justice Dept. restraints.”
No such restraint by the Justice Department was exercised unfortunately, and the warnings turned out to be prophetic. Within the first few years of the consent decree, the mobbed up officials were gone, but to justify their lavish salaries and operating budget, the IRB needed to intervene in numerous instances in union business often without justification, taking sides in political factions, targeting honest respected union officials such as Bill Hogan on trumped up or trivial charges while officials involved in corruption or theft get a slap on the wrist. and operating budget, the IRB needed to intervene in numerous instances in union business often without justification, taking sides in political factions, targeting honest respected union officials such as
As Hogan observes: “The consent decree was supposed to be used to get rid of mob guys, but they found they can use it against anybody.” Bill Hogan was then serving as President of Teamsters Joint Council 25 when the IRB targeted him for supposedly negotiating a substandard labor agreement, although no contract was ever signed and the bargaining was in the early stages with management. Hogan, who had wide experience representing convention center workers and knew the management company was brought in as a consultant to help unionize temporary employees into Local 631 which represents convention workers in Las Vegas, and any agreement would have had to be signed by the trustee of the local. Early discussions with management included proposals that would have increased temporary workers wages from $7 to $11 and made them union members with the ability to obtain full time union status with the same salaries and benefits as other union members.
Hogan’s former attorney Matthias Lydon, whose career as an Assistant US Attorney included prosecution of corrupt Teamster officials, says that the IRB charge against Hogan is baseless: “What Bill Hogan did in assisting efforts to organize convention workers was consistent with top-down organizing techniques used in industries that employ temporary workers. The IRB is filled with former law enforcement people who have little idea about what goes on in collective bargaining. Either the IRB was looking for a reason to remove Bill Hogan or they did not understand how union negotiations are carried out.”
Not only are union members and labor leaders puzzled by the continued harassment of Bill Hogan and his family, so are civic and business leaders in Chicago where Hogan is respected for his successful efforts to bring film productions to Chicago and boost the town’s convention business.
“The Hogan family has been committed to the movie and convention business for some 50 years now and has put some remarkable work-rule changes into effect that put money into the pockets of their members and our city,” says Gerald Roper, president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
Lucy Salenger, former director of the Illinois Film Office says emphatically “there would have been no film industry in Chicago without the full fledged support of Bill Hogan. From our first meeting, not only did he encourage his union, Teamsters 714, to give financial breaks to the film industry in order to encourage filming on location here, he worked with all our other unions, Local 476 (Studio Mechanics), Local 666 (Cameramen), SAG (Actors), DGA (Directors), and every other union, to make it financially competitive for film companies to shoot here, as well as to make it as physically easy as possible to film in Illinois. (left , Actor Danny Devito with Hogan on the set of the movie “Hoffa,” featuring actor Jack Nicholson playing the late Teamster leader.)
Actor Jim Belushi who has made four movies in Chicago and is a close friend of Bill Hogan, organized a benefit in Bill honor and decries “the unfair personal and malicious attacks on his
character” adding: “Together, Bill and I have gone to factories on the West side, visited jails and picketed UPS plants to give part time UPS employees their fair share. I have personally seen Bill shake hands with every Teamster member at every one of those sites. I have witnessed how much this man cares for the working man. He has worked endlessly in trying to bring more work from the film industry to the city of Chicago.”
Double Standards, Closed Proceedings, Tainted Justice
Evidence that the IRB uses double standards in targeting union officials and takes sides in internal union politics, is not hard to find. It was the IRB which supervised the re-election of supposed reformer Ron Carey for the presidency of the Teamsters Union in 1996 which was tainted by use of laundered and embezzled funds it was monitored by the IRB. Much of the evidence of money laundering of illegal campaign contribution, which led to the eventual ouster of Ron Carey was uncovered by Teamster official Dane Passo who served as campaign manager for current IBT President James Hoffa Jr. who had been defeated by Carey. “When I informed the IRB of wrongdoing on large scale, they showed little interest,” says Passo who spent a lot of time poring through union records. “It went on for months. The IRB didn’t act until they couldn’t avoid the evidence of wrongdoing any longer.”
By contrast, when the IRB chooses to target a union official, it uses a charge-now-investigate-later approach. In a blatantly political move in 1996, the IRB moved against Bill Hogan and two local union leaders running on the same slate with him (Tom Ryan of Local 107 in Philadelphia and T.C. Stone of Local 745 in Texas) by placing their locals in trusteeship before they had evidence to merit the charges. The moves deprived the union membership of the leaders they had democratically elected and caused considerable disruption and hardship. As a result of the trusteeship, Local 714 incurred a budget deficit of $500,000. The local also lost some 3000 members and five bargaining units chose to decertify from the local as result of the trusteeship. Yet the trustee assigned to monitor the local was unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing in this well run local by Bill Hogan or any other local official who had been removed by the trusteeship. Out of 12,000 members invited to a well publicized hearing by the trustee, not a single complaint was lodged against the former leaders of the local.
When the local was reinstated, Bill Hogan, who enjoyed wide respect among Teamster members outside of his local, successfully ran for the President of Teamsters Joint Council 25 in Chicago. His son Robert Hogan, an energetic organizer who had grown up in a union family, decided to run for the leadership of Local 714 in 1998 after the trusteeship was removed. He was elected twice by an increasing margin and then two more times without opposition, because the local has prospered under his leadership which brought in 3700 new members.
Targeting Whistle Blowers, Suppressing Free Speech
Normally, an organization that seeks to unearth corruption tries to protect whistleblowers, but the IRB’s penchant for taking political sides means that whistleblowers can find themselves expelled from the union. Dane Passo, a Special Union Representative for President James Hoffa was the one who exposed misdeeds by former IBT Present Ron Carey, who had been a beneficiary of IBT favoritism. Although the IRB was finally compelled to act against Carey, the IRB was not about to miss an opportunity to move against the whistleblower. Passo, who was assigned to Local 631 in Las Vegas was the one who invited Bill Hogan to help him organize the temporary convention workers because he had long experience in the convention business and knew leaders of the company that employed the workers. Like Hogan, Passo too was expelled from the union he loved on the absurd charge that he intended to negotiate a “substandard” labor agreement though no agreement or contract was ever reached.
Several years later, Ray Isner, another official of Local 631 naively approached the IRB with information about corruption in that local including a chilling threat from a business agent who threatened to kill him.
“I spoke to an IRB investigator and gave him documents and evidence of the corruption in the local says Isner. I expected the IRB to take action against officials implicated in corruption, but they never spoke to those of us who had the information. I sought out Dane Passo who was familiar with the situation at Local 631 involved and he was helpful. Unfortunately, the IRB found out and I was expelled for talking to Dane. Apparently, the IRB is not particularly interested in corruption, but whenever free speech breaks out, they are quick to act.”
Highly Paid IRB has no Motive to Give up Power
When the use of the Civil RICO statute was first proposed as a shortcut to root out mob influence in the Teamsters, critics in Congress and the press, urged that the extraordinary power of the IRB be used sparingly, ending its activities when its limited mission of removing mob influence was completed. Unfortunately, nearly twenty years later, despite its checkered history of tainted justice, double standards and its assault on free speech, the IRB has no motivation to end its operations because of the enormous sums of money it receives from the treasury of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and because it has de facto allied itself with factions within the union that benefit when the IRB targets their political opponents.
Chief IRB investigator Charles Carberry, was paid $380,000 in salary before expenses during a single year and a whopping total of $1.16 million between 1988 and 1992 according to IRB records. According to the most recent available records, the three IRB Board members have been paid $99,996 for the part time job of attending several meetings a year. William Webster, the former Director of the FBI and Director of the CIA, has been heard snoring through some of these hearings. Meanwhile, Teamsters who continue to work in dangerous jobs, driving on snowy highways at night and numerous other jobs represented by their union are being shortchanged by a supposed “watchdog” that holds onto its power by spreading fear and enforcing silence within a once proud union.
The IRB will remain in its disgraceful position of unchecked power until the public, our elected leaders and courageous union officials act to end its abuse of power, its assault on free speech and demand that democratic control be restored to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Check out how the Government is trying to take all civil liberties away from Teamsters at: http:www.teamsterinjustice.com
Check out how George Bush and DOT Secretary Mary aPeters are trying to defy Congress at: http://www.firemarypeters.org
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