BY BRIAN TAYLOR
After ordering new elections for the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), U.S. officials on November 17 barred the current Teamster president, Ronald Carey, from running.

Washington launched its latest "anticorruption" campaign against Teamster officials during the 15-day strike by 185,000 union members at United Parcel Service in August. That fight drew broad public support as the main demands - the creation of more full-time jobs, maintaining union control of pension funds, and wage increases - struck a common cord among other workers. Days after the strikers' victory at UPS, Clinton administration officials invalidated the December 1996 union election and stepped up their investigation into alleged misuse of funds by Carey.

Kenneth Conboy, appointed by the U.S. government to oversee IBT elections, disqualified Carey for allegedly diverting union funds for his own election campaign. Carey's election was nullified by Conboy's predecessor in that post, Barbara Zack- Quindel. Conboy wields as his main source of evidence a statement by Carey campaign director Gere Nash, who pled guilty to charges of conspiring to divert union funds and is currently awaiting sentencing.

Official government "supervision" of Teamster elections began in 1989, after the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil racketeering suit, asserting the Teamsters was gangster- controlled. The settlement coming out of that case gave the government powers to oversee elections. Using government snoops of various stripes inside the IBT is part of this "supervision."

Over the course of the most recent investigation, both Carey and his main opponent in the union election, James Hoffa, called on the federal government to investigate the other. Officials in Washington are now talking of going after Hoffa on corruption charges. They have also probed taking steps against other union tops including Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO treasurer and former president of the United Mine Workers union, and Andrew Stern, president of the Services Employees International Union.  
 
 
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