Hoffa: Teamsters put corruption in its past

Wednesday marks an important milestone in the history of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Teamsters Union and the U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York filed an application with Chief Judge Loretta Preska requesting that she approve an agreement to end decades of government oversight of our union. We anticipate that the court will approve the agreement.

As a result of the dedication and strength of our members, I can finally say without hesitation that corrupt elements have been driven from our union and that government oversight can come to an end.

In 1989, the Teamsters Union settled a court case brought by the U.S. government and agreed to a consent decree. The purpose of the consent decree was to remove corrupt influences from the Teamsters by establishing direct elections of International Union officers and establishing an independent disciplinary process for rooting out corrupt elements from the union. Wednesday, by agreeing to end that lawsuit, the government acknowledges that there has been success in eliminating corruption from within the Teamsters.

This would never have happened had the members not had the ability to directly elect honest and responsible leaders at all levels of our union.

When I took office in 1999, I pledged that corrupt elements would never have a place in the affairs of our union. We have clearly established a culture at the International Union and its affiliates that no corruption of any kind is tolerated. At our union's international convention in 2001, I successfully led efforts to pass a "democracy package" that enshrined into our constitution the fundamental right of every member to vote for their leaders. Today, the Teamsters are as democratic as any labor union or institution in the world.

Americans' fundamental belief in fairness dictates that the government should not retain control over a private organization indefinitely through a consent decree, whether in the context of anti-trust — AT&T and IBM come to mind — or anti-racketeering. The Teamsters Union is a private organization that has changed and improved under government supervision. Now that the union has met its obligations to its members, it will return to its rightful place as a privately operated enterprise.

When then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani brought the anti-corruption lawsuit, he said that it should remain in place "only for so long as necessary to eliminate organized crime's influence over the Teamsters, to put permanent reforms into place, and to return control of the Teamsters to the many honest working men and women of the union." Today, we realize those words.

Americans believe in individual liberty — free of government intervention — as the most basic of our rights. Free trade unions are part of a free market in any modern democracy. This is why our government promotes free trade unions in places like Iraq and around the world. After 25 years of government supervision, the Teamsters will once again be a "free" trade union. This is something all Americans — regardless of political or economic ideology — can celebrate.

James P. Hoffa is the general president of International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

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