Ron Carey (labor leader)

Carey, the second of six children (all of them boys), was born in Long Island City in March 1936 to Joseph and Loretta Carey. His father was a driver for United Parcel Service (UPS). At the age of 18, he married Barbara Murphy, a girl who lived in the apartment above him. The Careys remained married until Ron's death; they had five children. He ran for and was elected shop steward of the 7,000-member Local 804 in 1958 because he felt members weren't getting the services their dues paid for. Under his leadership, in November 1967 Local 804 became one of the first Teamster locals whose members qualified for a pension after 25 years of employment regardless of age. He was re-elected eight times, winning each campaign by landslide margins. Although Local 804 had always negotiated its own contract with UPS, the national union forced the local to participate in the national master contract in 1979. Carey was named a negotiator for the national master contract, but was not included in the Teamsters' national bargaining team. In 1987, Carey sued to overturn a provision of the union's constitution which permitted rejection of a proposed contract only by a two-thirds majority. The union changed the provision to permit a majority to reject a proposed contract. During his tenure as Local 804 president, Carey took two years of correspondence courses at home, two years of courses at the Xavier Institute for Labor Management Relations (a highly influential Catholic labor school), and six months of labor management courses at Cornell University. Steven Brill devoted an entire chapter to Carey in his 1978 book, The Teamsters, which drew attention to the local leader and launched his national career within the Teamsters. ==The Road to the Teamster General Presidency==

Election campaign In 1989, Carey announced that he would run for president of the Teamsters union. Carey was highly critical of the UPS contract that the Teamsters, led by interim General President William J. McCarthy, had negotiated in 1990. Carey's local represented more than 6,600 members at UPS, making it largest Teamsters local within the company, and Carey's criticism of the contract carried great weight within the international union. Carey also criticized McCarthy for refusing to call for a strike vote prior to ratification, for not adequately communicating the "concessionary" nature of the contract to Teamster members, and for helping oversee the loss of nearly 800,000 Teamsters members in the past decade. In mid-October 1990, McCarthy, suffering from health problems and losing support within the union for his handling of various contract negotiations, announced he would not seek a full term as Teamsters president. Utilizing TDU's national mailing list, he raised $200,000 in mostly small contributions from Teamsters members and criss-crossed the country by car to meet with the union's membership. Carey and his slate (which included a candidate for secretary-treasurer and 13 vice presidencies) swept the election. Carey won with 48.5 percent of the vote to Durham's 33.2 percent and Shea's 18.3 percent. Carey vowed to reduce the general president's salary, end the practice of permitting union officers to draw multiple salaries, no longer endorse Republicans for president, and seek federal legislation mandating universal health care. He twice ordered his own salary cut, from $225,000 in 1991 to $175,000 in 1994. renegotiated a contract for truck drivers (carhaulers) who ferried automobiles from ports and factories to dealers, and defeated an attempt by the Safeway grocery store chain to contract out its trucking operations. Despite Carey's pledge to eliminate corruption and the influence of organized crime in the Teamsters, there were many who claimed that he did little in his first term to tackle the problem. Federal investigators accused Carey of engaging in "halfhearted" reforms, permitting a Teamster with known organized crime links to oversee a corrupt local, hindering court-appointed trustees reforming locals, and setting up an ethical practices committee which did nothing to stop corruption. There were also claims that Carey had improperly intervened in a jurisdictional dispute between two Teamster locals. Carey was also accused of a conflict of interest for not disclosing that he had received UPS stock from his deceased father's estate. Joseph Carey bought eight shares of stock in 1935 for $320, which over the years (including stock splits) grew to 112,000 shares worth $1.9 million. The stock was sold back to the company by the estate in August 1992, and Carey was cleared of the charges. In May 1994, Carey was accused of corruption regarding a number of real estate deals. The Independent Review Board (IRB), a three-member panel created under a Federal court order in 1989 designed to help supervise the union's elections and rid it of corruption, began an investigation into how Carey was able to finance hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate investments and into who may have forged Carey's estranged wife's signature on several documents. Carey later admitted he had forged his wife's signature but claimed he did so with her permission. Carey said he financed all the investments though savings, loans from relatives, and his $1.9 million inheritance. Although Carey did forge his wife's signature and asked a union employee to lie about it, the IRB concluded that Carey's wife had given him permission to sign her name and that the forgeries were unrelated to union activities. In January 1994, he trusteed Local 732 to remove it from the influence of the Lucchese crime family, and trusteed Local 851 (which represented workers at John F. Kennedy International Airport) for being under the influence of organized crime as well. He investigated the Local 819 health plan for selling policies to non-members and denying reimbursement to members to fund the scheme; trusteed the local representing workers at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for corruption and nepotism; trusteed Local 97 in Union, New Jersey, for being under the control of the Genovese crime family; trusteed Local 875 after federal investigators found that more than $8 million had vanished from the union's pension fund; and trusteed Local 1205 after finding that the union put non-members into its health plan, engaged in nepotism, and had violated federal pension regulations. By mid-August 1995, Carey had trusteed 51 of the union's 651 local unions (mostly on the recommendations of the Independent Review Board). The changes did not come without a backlash. Carey received a number of death threats during his first term, and hired bodyguards to protect himself and his family. The Teamsters' executive board gave him permission to close the offices by a vote of 14 to 3, and the regional headquarters were shuttered in June 1994—saving the international union $15 million in salaries and expenses. His second major initiative was to seek a 25 percent dues increase. Carey proposed the dues hike in February 1994. The union's executive board had voted to raise strike benefits from $55 a week to $200, but made no provision for funding the higher benefits. The union had lost 500,000 members since 1979 and assets had fallen to $45 million from almost $200 million in 1990. and as Carey predicted the union was forced to borrow money from other unions to continue operating. It was the first national strike against UPS. The strike was considered a major test of Carey's credibility and his control of the union. Carey also beefed up the union's organizing efforts, and stanched the loss of members. ==Carey's Second Term==

Re-election campaign James P. Hoffa began seeking support for a run at the Teamsters' presidency in February 1994. Hoffa formally announced his candidacy on September 4, 1995. Carey and Hoffa battled fiercely at the Teamsters' convention in July 1996. Hoffa introduced a resolution to deny convention voting rights to 80 delegates from the union's staff, although this right had been given to all previous presidents. Carey ordered a voice vote on the motion, announced that the motion was defeated, and ignored calls for a division of the house. But once it became clear that Hoffa had a slim majority of the 1,900 delegates, Carey used the power of parliamentary procedure to delay or defeat the proposals, and his supporters brought the convention to a halt by offering amendment after amendment to Hoffa's proposals. Carey's re-election campaign was an exceptionally bitter and close one. Hoffa drew strong support from Teamsters members in the Midwest and the West (with New York state a battleground), and from union leaders unhappy with Carey's anti-corruption drive and his attempt to dismantle regional and local bases of power. Hoffa attacked Carey for being a "chicken" and a "scaredy cat", and blasted Carey's campaign literature as "slimy pieces of half-truths". Carey repeatedly tried to link Hoffa to organized crime, and publicized the criminal past and mob ties of Hoffa associates and business partners. On December 16, 1996, federal election overseers announced that Carey had defeated Hoffa, 52 percent to 48 percent. The vote count proceeded very slowly, leading to protests from both candidates the vote-counting rules had been violated. Carey declared victory on December 15, 1996. Hoffa, however, refused to concede, claiming 31,000 challenged ballots remained to be counted. Federal officials overseeing the election confirmed the victory the next day, Later analyses showed that Carey drew most of his support from Teamsters locals in the East and Deep South and Canada, Hoffa led in the Midwest, and the two candidates were neck and neck in the West. But federal officials and labor movement insiders pointed out that Carey had undermined the power, income, prestige, and perks of hundreds of local union officials through his anti-corruption drive. Carey dismissed the allegations, claiming that it was mere "serendipity" that the donation came on the heels of the payment. On June 6, 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Davis on charges of conspiracy, embezzlement, and violations of federal labor law for masterminding the kickback scheme. Ansara pleaded guilty to conspiracy and admitted he had used the union's money to reimburse his wife for her donations to the Carey re-election effort. UPS strike As the financial scandal worsened, Carey faced a major strike against UPS. Carey had ordered Teamsters staff and local leaders to begin preparing for a strike against UPS a year before the contract expiration deadline. A questionnaire was sent to all Teamster-represented workers at UPS asking them what their key contract issues were, and the union made those issues the centerpiece of its negotiation strategy and strike effort. If the union could win most of its negotiating goals at the bargaining table, Carey intended to use the new UPS contract to help organize workers at FedEx and Overnite Transportation. Carey focused on just a handful of contract issues: That UPS create full-time positions rather than part-time positions in the future, convert several thousand part-time workers to full-time, increase part-time pay significantly, and remain in the union's multi-employer pension plan rather than create its own. UPS executives asked President Bill Clinton to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, which would force the union back to work, but the President said that the conditions required by the Act had not been met. Carey and the Teamsters also undertook a sophisticated public relations effort. They depicted the union members as average people (the union's spokespeople were often rank and file Teamsters), and mobilized the public's sympathy for UPS drivers by having strikers drive their regular delivery routes to give their customers information about the strike. They also made strategic use of the Internet, using the union's Web site to issue updates and put pressure on Congress. UPS also engaged in a strong public relations effort (using full-page newspaper advertisements and pressuring customers to ask the President to invoke Taft-Hartley), but most observers as well as some UPS officials agreed that the union had the better P.R. effort. The union agreed to a five-year contract rather than the proposed four-year deal. The 50-person Teamsters bargaining committee and conference of 200 UPS locals ratified the agreement on August 19. Re-election financial scandal and expulsion from Teamsters The donation kickback scheme which led to Carey's eventual expulsion from the Teamsters was created in July 1996. Early internal Carey re-election campaign polls showed Carey losing badly to Hoffa. Meanwhile, Davis contacted AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka and allegedly concocted a scheme whereby the Teamsters would donate $150,000 to the AFL-CIO for spurious get-out-the-vote efforts and the AFL-CIO would pay the same amount to Citizen Action. The August 23 report also indicated that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had been approached by Carey campaign officials. The report did not, however, conclude that Carey knew of the transactions and referred the matter to federal prosecutors for further investigation. The Independent Review Board opened its own inquiry into the financial scandal on August 27. The scandal widened throughout September and October. Although Carey had not been disqualified from being a candidate in the re-run election, new evidence and witnesses had caused federal officials to reconsider that opinion by mid-September. As Carey kicked off his second re-election bid, a federal grand jury began investigating whether the Teamsters' donations to the Democratic Party violated federal law. Carey repeated the charge several times over the next few months. Hoffa said all his donations had come in sums of less than $100, which did not have to be reported. On August 17, federal prosecutors said that they had evidence that the AFL-CIO may have contributed $150,000 to Citizen Action for spurious get-out-the-vote efforts in an attempt to get Citizen Action to give $100,000 to the Carey campaign, and that AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka was implicated in the scheme. On September 19, Martin Davis pleaded guilty to mail fraud and embezzlement, and conspiracy to commit fraud, to make false statements, and to embezzling funds. On October 22, the IRB accused William Hamilton, the union's former political director, of conspiring with Nash, Davis, Ansara, and others in the donation kickback scheme. Carey contended he knew nothing of the donation kickback scheme. He testified before a grand jury in August and October 1997 that he knew nothing of the kickbacks, only the donations. In late September, the re-run of the Teamsters presidential election was set for January 1998, albeit with much stricter limits on campaign contributions and greater disclosure requirements. On November 17, 1997, a federal official overseeing the Teamsters disqualified Ron Carey from seeking elective office in the union, concluding that Carey knew of and approved the donation kickback scheme. Although Teamsters for a Democratic Union continued to support Carey as he fought the disqualification, they also debated what strategy to pursue in the event that the disqualification was upheld. Meanwhile, Carey and the Justice Department signed an agreement in which a federal monitor would oversee the union's spending to prevent any additional improper expenditures. Carey sued to have the disqualification overturned, but a U.S. district court and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both refused his request. Carey's accusations against Hoffa, however, led federal officials to seek a delay in the Teamster election to investigate these charges. A 45-day delay was granted. A second delay was sought and granted in January 1998. Hoffa was cleared of all major wrongdoing in late April 1998. On November 25, 1997, Ron Carey took a leave of absence from the Teamsters, just hours before the Independent Review Board accused him of illegally using union money to fund his 1996 re-election campaign and failing to meet his fiduciary duties. He directly contradicted testimony by his former executive secretary, who said Carey knew of the kickbacks to his campaign. Carey's attorney pointed out that the executive secretary had changed her testimony several times the past year, and that it had been undermined by testimony from another secretary and a mail clerk who both testified that the executive secretary admitted forging Carey's initials on donation approvals. However, Carey admitted that he had not adequately overseen the union's finances, and did not know that the union had spent close to $1 million in political contributions during a 10-day period in October 1996. The IRB concluded Carey breached his fiduciary duty, but that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that he approved or knew about the donation kickback scheme. ==Post-Teamsters life and death==

The Teamsters sued Carey for unspecified damages in 2000 for approving $885,000 in political donations in exchange for contributions to Carey's re-election campaign. Carey was indicted on federal perjury charges in January 2001. He was accused of making false statements to the grand jury in his August and October 1996 testimonies, and for lying to federal officials overseeing the Teamsters election and to the Independent Review Board. Carey pleaded not guilty. Carey's trial began in August 2001, and he was found not guilty on all charges on October 12, 2001. In 2007, Carey was researching and writing a book based on his experiences. He was critical of the policies of his successor, particularly the centralization of authority in the international headquarters, business-model organizing, and giving Teamsters officials permission to draw multiple salaries again. Ron Carey died of lung cancer at New York Hospital Queens in New York City at age 72 on December 11, 2008. ==Other activities==

A Roman Catholic, Carey coached softball at Queen of Peace Roman Catholic Church in Queens, New York City, in the 1960s and 1970s. He was also very active in the American Parkinson Disease Association (he was elected its national vice president in 1971), and sat on the boards of the American Cancer Society and Boys Clubs. ==References==