Copyright 2000 The National Journal, Inc.
The National Journal
May 20, 2000
SECTION: LABOR; Pg. 1596; Vol. 32, No. 21
LENGTH: 1078 words
HEADLINE:
What's Driving the Teamsters?
BYLINE: Julie Kosterlitz
HIGHLIGHT:
Hoffa's hard-line stance against
PNTR reflects pragmatism and
union politics.
BODY:
Most unions are actively opposing
making normal trade relations
with China permanent. But no union is doing so
with as much gusto
as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
Chauffeurs,
Warehousemen and Helpers of America under the leadership of its
new president, James P. Hoffa. When the AFL-CIO held an
opposition rally
in April on Capitol Hill, the Teamsters held
another one, an hour
earlier-replete with a horn-blowing convoy
down Constitution Avenue
and
the fiery rhetoric of Pat Buchanan. The would-be Reform Party
presidential
nominee Pat Buchanan wowed the crowd by telling them
how, as President, he
would tell the Chinese to shape up "or you
guys have sold your last pair of
chopsticks in any mall in the
United States."
Although other unions rose above their disappointment
with Vice
President Al Gore's pro-trade views and supported an
AFL-CIO endorsement of
his presidential bid last October, the
Teamsters joined the United Auto
Workers in withholding support,
and then made a very public show of meeting
with other
presidential hopefuls. The 1.4 million-member union-still one of
the federation's largest-has yet to make an endorsement (although
it has
ruled out backing Buchanan), and now says it may hold out
until around Labor
Day and make a joint endorsement with the UAW-
or it may forgo any
top-of-the-ticket endorsement and focus
instead on congressional races.
While the rest of labor struggles to balance its
impulse
to punish candidates who cross them on China with its desire to
return the House of Representatives to Democratic control, the
Teamsters
seem willing to give precedence to the China vote-as it
did in recently
rescinding its support for Rep. Lois Capps, D-
Calif.
What's driving the Teamsters? Other strong opponents of
the trade
deal-such as steelworkers and autoworkers-at least can
argue that the pact
would shift their work to much lower-paid
Chinese workers. But it's harder
to see the threat to U.S. truck
drivers.
Hoffa
and other Teamsters say they're fighting for bread,
butter, and principle.
Twenty percent of Teamsters work in
manufacturing; many of the 33 percent
who work in transportation
rely on hauling goods from domestic factories,
they say; and even
the roughly 10 percent of Teamsters in the public sector
rely on
the tax base provided by local manufacturing. "In the old days we
could focus on contract issues, dealing with the trucking company
on the
corner. Today they can take away jobs with something
signed in Geneva,"
Hoffa told National Journal. "If we're not
making cars and airplanes here,
that will affect our people."
More important, Hoffa
says, is China's unreliability as a
trade partner, its lack of core labor
standards, its menacing
stance toward U.S. ally Taiwan, and its emergence as
a potential
nuclear threat to the United States. "With an annual review (of
China's trade privileges), we could monitor how well they're
living up
to (trade agreements) and how they treat their fellow
citizens," Hoffa said.
Moral sensitivities, however, clearly take a back
seat to
pragmatism: Even as Hoffa personally prevailed on East Coast
Teamsters to create a show of strength at the China rally, he has
been
supporting a bid-now before the U.S. Department of
Transportation-by the
Teamsters' largest employer, United Parcel
Service, to become the fourth
U.S. air carrier granted landing
rights in China.
Hypocrisy? Hoffa says no. "The difference is, this
creates American
jobs, where the PNTR agreement is another NAFTA,
spurring
the pell-mell migration of plants to China to exploit
the cheap labor
there," he says, referring to the 1993 North
American Free Trade Agreement.
Other union insiders and union watchers-none of whom
wanted to be quoted by name or affiliation-consider Hoffa's hard-
line
stance on China to be as much about intraunion and
interunion politics as
about geopolitics.
For starters, Hoffa, who took
office just over a year ago
and is filling out the unexpired term of his
scandal-tarred
predecessor, Ron Carey, faces re-election in the fall of
2001.
Unlike other unions, in which national leaders are anointed by
local ones, the Teamsters chooses its top leaders in a members'
plebiscite-as required by the 1989 consent decree that settled
Justice
Department racketeering charges against the union.
Although Hoffa probably
won't have any serious opposition, "he
never stopped campaigning," said
Teamsters Government Affairs
Director Mike Mathis. The China issue, says
Mathis, will resonate
with those hurt by NAFTA. "There is a core group of
people who
will really notice his leadership on this," says Mathis.
Building a national reputation as an outspoken and
independent labor leader could also boost Hoffa's clout within
the labor
federation, where-as in the economy-power has shifted
from manufacturing and
the building trades to service-sector and
public-sector employees.
Similarly, withholding an endorsement
until late summer in a tight
presidential race could increase the
union's leverage with the candidates.
What some may see as cynical calculation, however,
Mathis
argues its merely due diligence in a union in which 25 percent of
the members are strong Republicans, another 25 percent strong
Democrats,
15 percent are independents, and the rest are "swing
Democrats." Polling has
shown that "lots of members felt left out
of our close alliance to the
AFL-CIO and their close alliance
with Democrats," said Mathis, and that
members knew too little
about the candidates to justify an early
presidential
endorsement. "There's a significant portion-the 50 percent or
so
in the middle-that we can sway. But we have to make a case in
order
to have credibility." The union plans to conduct a poll of
its local leaders
around the end of June.
For all its public display
of independence, however, the
union is still for the most part a team
player, both within the
AFL-CIO, say insiders, and in party politics. Of the
$ 1.17
million in PAC contributions it has made to congressional
candidates in this election cycle, 94 percent has gone to
Democrats. And
the Teamsters recently gave $ 150,000 to the
Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee.
LOAD-DATE: May 23, 2000
