Labor Notes is reporting that Teamsters Vice President Dan Kane has told union officials in New York that it’s time to return to choosing Teamsters presidents at union conventions and other Hoffa lieutenants around the country are now saying the same. They are expressing concerns that rank and file elections cost too much, involve too few and “distract from union business.”
As we reported last month in INK, only one in ten Teamsters reelected Hoffa in last year’s ugly (even by Teamsters standards) battle against Sandy Pope, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union candidate. Even with the union spending millions on GOTV, the election had the lowest voter turnout in IBT history, raising fears that a highly motivated TDU contingent could deny Hoffa’s heir apparent in the next election. (Hoffa is 70 years old and not expected to seek reelection in 2016.)
The IBT is one of very few unions that directly elects its International president, a result of Justice Department reforms imposed on the Mobbed-up union in the late 1980s.
