Round Two in the 2016 Teamsters Election

I was shocked and distressed when Tim Sylvester lost the presidency of New York Teamsters Local 804 on Dec. 15.

I was elated when I realized this was just the first round in Sylvester’s bid to become the next General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; that he was still in the fight.

In effect incumbent General President James P. Hoffa won the opening round of the 2016 election when a slate obviously aligned with him beat Sylvester by 70 votes.

Sylvester is going into the second round, the final round, with the continued support of Teamsters United and Teamsters for a Democratic Union. The preliminary for the final round will be at the 2016 Teamsters Convention in June at which Sylvester must win enough votes to be on the ballot in the November-December 2016 election--no sure thing when you are opposing an entrenched incumbent.

There are two routes to the presidency for Sylvester:

First: Hoffa stumbling into a scandal so serious he is forced from office;

Second and most likely: Sylvester generating enough support from Teamsters disgusted with the Hoffa administration along with somehow tapping into the vast reservoir of rank and filers (over a million) who haven’t bothered to vote in past IBT elections.
vvv

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TEAMSTERS 2016 ELECTION BEGINS

Incumbent James P. Hoffa and challenger Tim Sylvester have joyfully reported the impressive results of their petition drives to be accredited as candidates for the Teamsters presidency in 2016.

Hoffa reported 135,000 signatures--more than twice Sylvester’s 63,000.

However, we need to delve into the numbers. Hoffa’s incumbency gives him access to hundreds of local officials--many hungry to please him with hopes of being added to the international union’s payroll and being viewed favorably in conflicts with other locals, other unions and employers.

In the 2011 presidential election, Hoffa won a dismal 137,172 votes, just 2,172 more than the list of signatures he recently submitted on his petitions.

There is a political adage that to win an election, you have to run either unopposed or scared and hard.

In the 2011 election, Hoffa’s opposition was so divided and ineffective that he was just about unopposed.

So, the 135,000 signatures he collected either means that is about the max of his support or he is really running hard this time around planning to pressure his Teamster underlings to turn out the vote--or else face the prospect of being stripped of their extra salaries and perks.

Tim Sylvester, who heads New York Teamsters Local 804, promises to be a formidable candidate. His supporters in Teamsters United and Teamsters for a Democratic Union managed to tally 63,000 signatures on his petitions--or more than twice as many as needed for certification.

Sylvester has been on the campaign trail--mostly on weekends--since January and will pick up the pace as the election approaches. He is running hard to find enough votes among the 90 per cent of the 1,400,000 Teamsters rank and file who didn’t vote for Hoffa in 2011.

Accreditation gives a candidate the opportunity to promote himself in the Teamsters magazine as well as the names and address of all Teamsters members. Formal nomination still needs to be won at next year's Teamsters Convention.

*  *  *

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TEAMSTERS PRESIDENCY 2016

Tim Sylvester has started on the long climb to winning the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 2016 by setting out to build a coalition called Teamsters United!

The coalition will combine those who supported the late Ron Carey, those disenchanted with the leadership of incumbent James P. Hoffa, and an untold number of the million plus Teamsters who didn't vote in the union’s 2011 election.

Sylvester is the president of New York Teamsters Local 804, the same militant local of mostly UPS workers that Carey headed and was his base in his successful run in 1991 to become the first IBT president elected by the rank and file.

Among those aligning themselves with Sylvester in Teamsters United are Fred Zuckerman, president of Louisville Local 89, and Tony Jones, president of Columbus Local 413. Zuckerman and Jones were vice presidential candidates on the anti-Hoffa ‘Fighting for the Members Slate’ in the 2011 election.

With less than 20 per cent of the membership voting in the 2011 election, Hoffa tallied an unimpressive 137,164 votes, although that was more than enough to defeat his two opponents: Fred Gegare (54,117) and Sandy Pope (39,251).

Sylvester’s challenge will be to somehow draw between 150,000 and 200,000 votes from that pool of more than a million Teamsters who either didn’t vote or who voted against Hoffa in 2011.

What has Sylvester got going for him:

--Experience in defeating an incumbent. In 2009, Sylvester ousted the Hoffa-allied president of Local 804. That was a feat equivalent to beating an incumbent Senator; it can be done, but not easily.

--The big, burly, bearded Sylvester not only looks like the movie version of a Teamster, he comes from the rank and file. Hoffa, who was a lawyer with Teamsters locals among his clients, ran for his first union office in 1996. In that election he failed to defeat the incumbent IBT president, Ron Carey. For the few who don’t know, the reason Hoffa was selected by the neo-old guard as their candidate was because he happened to be born the son of the legendary Jimmy Hoffa.

--Sylvester has developed a national reputation for his accomplishments as the head of Local 804, which reputedly has the best contract covering UPS workers among the nation's many Teamsters locals. In an age of givebacks, Sylvester won a $400 a month increase in pension benefits in the last round of negotiations, enabling a Local 804 member to retire after 25 years with a pension of $4,000 a month.

--Sylvester formally announced his candidacy on March 14, 2015—and has been holding meetings across the country to add local officers and rank and file adherents to Teamsters United coalition.  He already has been to Worcester, Mass., Los Angeles, Cleveland, Louisville, and Columbus. He will be in Chicago on Saturday, April 11.

--Sylvester presumably will have the backing of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the rank and file reform party, with its national network of rank and file activists and local union officials.

                                              *  *  *

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STEVE KINDRED’S ODYSSEY

Nowadays if you want to start a revolution, an audience of potential recruits and sympathizers is only a few clicks away on the internet via blogs, email, Facebook, chat rooms, YouTube, Twitter, and the list goes on. How much more difficult such an undertaking was 39 year years ago when a dozen dissident Teamsters gathered in Ken Paff’s living room in Cleveland, spending four hours plotting how to create a national grassroots organization of truck drivers and dock workers, who like them, were dissatisfied with their notoriously corrupt union. I have told this story before, but the courageous, self-sacrificing, and poetic saga of 31-year-old Steve Kindred’s odyssey is worth recounting again and again to illustrate his commitment to reforming the American labor movement, the Teamsters in particular. Chipping in, the dissidents came up with a $100 kitty, which doesn’t sound like much but in that earlier time $89 was enough pay for a ticket allowing 21 days of travel to wherever Greyhound buses went. Kindred, who had the gift of gab, climbed onto a Greyhound in Cleveland’s bus terminal on a dreary April morning in 1975 with only a few dollars in his pocket along with five pounds of Spanish peanuts, three pounds of raisins, and a list of Teamster activists culled from various sources. Can you imagine the ordeal he faced: having to sleep on buses and wash in public restrooms, lingering in bus terminals waiting for the targeted Teamster member to show up or the bus to the next city, hoping the person he was meeting would treat him to a meal. And, there was always the possibility of getting his head bashed in. Kindred had been beaten up by thugs at the 1972 Teamsters convention. The affable, loquacious Kindred, who had attended the University of Chicago before being expelled for his role as a student activist, had been a taxi driver and a truck driver, which earned him the right to his audience. Those he spoke to in the 22 cities he reached (including Dallas, Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis and Los Angeles) were to form the nucleus of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), created in 1976 to battle the business unionists and outright criminals running the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which is the union’s reform party, has compiled an admirable record of accomplishments through the years including fighting off contract giveaways and being directly responsible for both getting the rank and file the right to vote for the union’s hierarchy and for the election of Ron Carey to the presidency of the IBT in 1992. As the years went by, Kindred moved to New York City where he worked as a truck driver continuing his calling as an advocate for workers. He was most recently involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Kindred, who had a life worth living, died from cancer this past Dec. 9. He will be honored at a memorial at 4:00 p.m. on Feb. 8, a Saturday, at the Murphy Center/ CUNY Labor Studies Dep’t, 25 West 43rd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, in New York. Perhaps, I’ll see you there.

Discovering A.H. Raskin’s review of COLLISION by Kenneth C. Crowe

One of the great disappointments of my writing life was the failure of the New York Times to review COLLISION, my book about Teamsters for a Democratic Union and the election of Ron Carey to the presidency of the union in 1992.
When COLLISION was published in February, 1993, I was told in confidence by Moe Foner of 1199, the hospital workers union, that A.H. Raskin, the great labor writer, had written a review of the book for the New York Times. Moe was a mutual friend of both Raskin and me.
I so looked forward to reading what Abe Raskin (whom I greatly admired) had to say about my book. Eventually, COLLISION was reviewed by the Washington Post, Newsday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer; the list goes on of major newspapers and magazines all over the country. But it doesn’t include the New York Times.
Raskin, who had been ill for some time, died at the age of 82 in December, 1993.
I had always wondered whether he finished the review and then: I was roaming the internet where I discovered a reference to Raskin’s papers including “Review of Collision by Kenneth C. Crowe undated.”
Finally, I could read what Raskin said about my book.
I went to New York University’s Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, where I discovered that the Raskin papers had been processed in 2011 by project archivist Daniel Michelson.
I love Abe Raskin’s review. These excerpts explain why:
“In ‘Collision’, written by Kenneth C. Crowe, we find an accurate, brilliant, fact-filled chronology of the plight of the rank and file in their attempt to take back the reins of power.
“For the student of labor wishing to be well versed in the inner revolution of the rank and file against the stronghold of the mob, this book will serve as an invaluable source of information...
“Citing the difficult rise to authority in the blatantly non-democratic Teamsters, the book describes the struggle of those such as the brave and devotedly committed union patriot, Ronald Carey and his 35 year ascent to his present position as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.”
(Raskin gives credit to TDU for the significant support that rank and file organization gave to Carey.)
Raskin continued: “In years to come ‘Collision’ will be viewed as an invaluable reference book, an encyclopedia of the post-Hoffa Teamster era.”
Raskin’s assessment of the significance of COLLISION as “an invaluable reference book” has proven true. COLLISION has been cited in numerous civil and criminal lawsuits, research papers, and labor books.

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SANDY POPE wins the first round of Teamsters 2011 election

Sandy Pope won the first round of the Teamsters 2011 election—the media battle before and after the convention--walking across James P. Hoffa like he wasn’t there. Fred Gegare, the third candidate wasn’t even in the running.
Media success is crucial to foster name recognition. Hoffa has had his thanks to his dad. No doubt that Sandy Pope’s appeal to journalists is the fact that a woman with a black belt in karate is running for the presidency of a union with a reputation of burly, big-bellied men who drive trucks.
Hoffa, unlike Sandy Pope, has never driven a truck as a real rank and file Teamster. He does have the belly that goes with the old out-of-date image.
Before last month’s Teamsters Convention in Las Vegas, Sandy Pope scored with a major piece about her in The Nation and on public radio stations across the nation via an interview on The Story with Dick Gordon.
During the convention, the New York Times, CNN, and ABC featured her. After the convention, she managed to wind up in a big story in The Sunday Times of London.
The assumption is that the combination of support by a large bloc of Teamsters local leaders and his incumbency makes Hoffa an almost sure bet to win another five years in the presidency.
But there are factors at play that could cause that sure bet to stumble. Sandy Pope is getting the needed name recognition, she has the support of the potent reform group, Teamsters for a Democratic Union, she has a substantial record as a local union leader in New York City as well as a background as a working Teamster and organizer, and in addition, the issue that made her attractive to journalists could very well bring in votes from the women who make up 20 to 25 percent of the union.
And, the decision of Midwestern Teamster leader and International Vice President Fred Gegare to run for the presidency against Hoffa could change the outcome of the 2011 election. There is the possibility Gegare could win and the probability he will take a substantial number of votes away from Hoffa.
In his acceptance speech on July 1 as a presidential candidate at the convention, Gegare contended that Hoffa betrayed the members by allowing United Parcel Service to withdraw its employees from the Central States Pension in 2007 in exchange for making it easier for the IBT to organize the 12,000 workers in UPS-owned Overnite Trucking.
Without UPS, which has created its own plan, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars every year into Central States to fund its workers’ retirement, the storied pension fund is in serious trouble, according to Gegare, who is a fund trustee.
Gegare said that he told Hoffa at the time: “Don’t let it happen. You’re going to destroy everything your father built. You are going to ruin the foundation of this great organization...You ain’t going to see the tsunami coming if you let them take 45,000 participants out of Central
State Pension Fund.” Gegare told the convention, “They gave the farm away to UPS...That’s criminal. I’m telling you,
we cannot afford it. I got four retired for every
one working.”
Gegare sounded a warning to the union as a whole: “
Let me tell you something. If Central States goes down, there’s going to be a domino effect from the New England pension fund, Central PA, Central States, and the Western pension fund, because we all got the same top employers. If they did it to me, I keep telling the members, they’re going to do it to you. You got to get involved.”

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Herman Benson, the soul of the Association for Union Democracy

Herman Benson has spent the past 42 years as the soul of the Association for Union Democracy on a quest as elusive as the Holy Grail: to instill union democracy in the American labor movement. At the age of 96, he says that biology is finally catching up with him. Not that he is going to retire.
Benson recently informed AUD’s board of directors that he is relinquishing his roles as editor of the Union Democracy Review and secretary treasurer. He plans to continue as a member of the board of directors, to write from time to time for the Review, and to be on call via telephone and e-mail for union members who need his help. A lot of them have over the past decades.
Back in the late 1980’s Benson stepped down as AUD’s executive director passing that post to Susan Jennik, a union activist and labor lawyer. Benson and Jennik played central roles in assuring that the rank and file election of the Teamsters hierarchy, promised in the federal court decent decree aimed at cleaning the mob and corruption out of the union, was run by court-approved officers not the IBT and its locals.
As a result and with the significant help of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, Ron Carey became the first rank and file-elected president of International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1991.
That must have been Benson’s crowning triumph. I’m sure that he enjoys the memories of dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds, of lesser victories.
Benson was in his 70s when he gave up his role as AUD’s executive director. At the time, I was Newsday’s labor writer and intended to do a major piece on his retirement and his dedication to trying to make the American labor movement a linchpin of democracy. Well, I didn’t write it because he didn’t retire. And the same is true now. He isn’t retiring and is continuing to do what he can as a one-man revolution of union democracy despite the claws of biology.

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Fred Gegare’s June Surprise

With the Teamsters 2011 convention a little more than three weeks away, Fred Gegare has come up with a June Surprise: Aaron Belk, the late Ron Carey’s executive assistant, has been added to his Fighting for the Members Slate as a candidate for Southern Region vice president.
Aside from rising from a loading dock in Memphis to the top of the Teamsters’ hierarchy by being elected an international vice president on Carey’s reform slate in 1991, Belk distinguished himself in trying—though unsuccessfully—to block the political contributions in 1996 that resulted in Carey’s downfall. At a 1998 Congressional hearing, Belk testified: “I can hold my head high and I can look at myself in the mirror each morning knowing that I did my job to the best of my ability by turning down these large contribution requests and by refusing to support and condone the actions of the 1996 Carey campaign staff and their consultants.”
At the end of this month, we’ll find out whether Gegare, currently an international vice president, will make the 2011 Teamsters election a three-way race by overcoming the barrier facing all outside candidates of being nominated for president by winning the votes of five percent of the 1,700 or so delegates to the Teamsters convention in Las Vegas.
James P. Hoffa, the incumbent international president, and New York Teamsters Local 805 president Sandy Pope are expected to be the other two candidates in the fall election. Hoffa, barring the unforeseen, certainly will be nominated. Pope has the backing of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the nationwide reform group, whose support was crucial to Carey two elections in 1991 and 1996 to the presidency of the Teamsters. Last month, Pope announced she had enough delegates pledged to be nominated.
Pope is running alone—without a slate—hoping to win the votes of the rank and file by contrasting her history as Teamster over the past 33 years—working as a selector, a truck driver, a local union organizer, an international staffer, and finally elected president of a local—against Hoffa’s scant background with summer jobs as a Teamster while in college and later as a lawyer. He was elected international president in 1998 primarily because he was the son of the legendary Jimmy Hoffa. Gegare—who has 39 years of experience at every level of the Teamsters—split with Hoffa last year proclaiming his leadership was disastrous.

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Gegare on how Hoffa lost millions

Fred Gegare today (March 16, 2011) on his website revealed at least one of his serious disenchantments with Teamsters President James P. Hoffa contending that a panicked Hoffa dumped millions of dollars in stock held by IBT entities at rock-bottom prices during the financial crisis of 2009.
“Nearly $30 million dollars of Teamster dues money and charitable contributions were lost when Hoffa's weak knees got the best of him. Countless millions more have been lost because the IBT no longer owns the stock and can't benefit from the market's rebound,” Gegare said.
Gegare has an inside knowledge of the Hoffa Administration since he is an International Vice President who was elected on Hoffa’s 2006 slate. He shocked the Teamsters world when he announced last year that he was running for Teamsters International president against Hoffa.
At the time, Gegare claimed that the union faced a dire future under Hoffa’s disastrous leadership. That generality finally has been brought somewhat into focus by Gegare proclaiming today on his website that Hoffa ignored the advice of financial professionals and bypassed the Teamsters General Executive Board to sell the stock. He said, “By running scared, Hoffa incurred staggering losses that have crippled some of the IBT's most important funds. The Strike and Defense Fund plunged nearly $15 million. The Scholarship Fund saw $3.4 million vanish. The General Fund experienced a $10.2 million decline.”
If Gegare has many more weapons of character destruction to use against Hoffa such as this rush to sell the stocks that portrays him as somewhat clueless then the Teamsters 2011 election will prove to be exciting indeed. In addition the question of the silliness of the rank and file voting to elect James P. Hoffa as a strong leader, because his father Jimmy Hoffa was, will be resurrected.
Gegare is heading the Fighting for the Members slate in his campaign against Hoffa.
Sandy Pope, president of New York Teamsters Local 805, also is running for the Teamsters International Presidency with the backing of Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

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A review of THE TRUCKERS by Kenneth C. Crowe

The following review of THE TRUCKERS appeared in the Association for Union Democracy’s Jan. 4, 2011 edition of $100 Plus News. It is reprinted with AUD’s permission:

THE TRUCKERS by Kenneth C. Crowe
(CreateSpace, Charleston, SC: 2010) 300pgs.
Available in paperback on Amazon.com for $9.99 and
as an e-book on Kindle and Smashwords.com

AUD REVIEW:

This is an entertaining and fictional account of
the administration of a reformist IBT international
President called Tommy Kerrigan. The
novel is very loosely based on the Carey presidency
of the 1990s. But it is clearly fiction, and
Mr. Kerrigan’s fate turns out to be very different
than Mr. Carey’s. Mr. Crowe dedicates the
novel to Ken Paff, then, and still, director of the
Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) --
who in the novel is the fictional character
“Helmut Knall.”
A very palpable tension between Kerrigan and
Helmut Knall’s “TFOCC” (“Truckers Fighting
Organized Crime and Corruption”) is present
throughout the story. The reader is introduced
to it on page 11, when Kerrigan is planning his
post-election victory party and is consulting
with his top aide “Cobb Wowka” on who
should be on the invitation list. Wowka advises
Kerrigan not to invite Knall, but Kerrigan
reminds Wowka that “TFOCC did a lot for us.”
Wowka replies “Not for us. For their agenda.
Never forget that... Now that you’ve won,
Helmut and crew might get a little hungry for a
piece of action, which is okay, but we want to
keep them at a certain distance. Don’t let them
get the notion they’re gonna run this union
instead of you.” Kerrigan responds accordingly:
“I’ll give ‘em a couple of jobs. I’m sure we
can find an opening for Helmut in Alaska or
Hawaii.” “Right on buddy,” replies Wowka.
Helmut Knall is a smart, no-nonsense, pain-inthe-
neck whose advice to Kerrigan seems
always to be ahead of the game and works each
time Kerrigan does follow it. But Knall’s first
piece of advice, Kerrigan does not follow. The
uninvited Knall interrupts the victory party and
demands to speak to Kerrigan -- Kerrigan
reluctantly gives him a few minutes -- and
Knall points out that though Kerrigan has won
a great victory he needs to remember that most
of the locals are still being run by the “old
guard” -- the officials who owe their allegiance
to “Steamer Staski” and his successors. The
Steamer Staski character is loosely based on
the administration of Jimmy Hoffa, Sr. On his
victory party night, Knall implores Kerrigan to
help Trucker reformers get elected in the locals:
“The union is the locals, the locals are the
union. You should know.” But Kerrigan is
never willing to do this, as he tells Knall time
and time again throughout the book that an
“International President should not get
involved in the politics of the local.”
Meanwhile, the “old guard” infiltrate the
Kerrigan administration, and become his most
trusted aides, only to betray him, and eventually
succeed in their goal to get rid of him.
Sabotage by the old guard starts with its defiance
of Kerrigan’s call to go on a strike, then
moves on to a series of “dirty tricks” and smear
campaigns having to do with Kerrigan’s personal
relationships and alleged ties to organized
crime. Using its influence with an all too
compliant press, and even the FBI and Justice
Department, the old guard overwhelms
Kerrigan with government investigations into
alleged links to organized crime, or “communists.”
Knall advises Kerrigan on union strategy -- it
was the TFOCC’s plan to strike a major carrier,
a strike which turned out to be a a smashing success,
and makes Kerrigan a hero within the union. Later,
Knall and the TFOCC bail out Kerrigan
in another strike when the old guard begins to sabotage
it. But as the dirty tricks by the old guard become more
and more outrageous, and the investigations proceed,
mob characters appear – and are ready to go after
Kerrigan, reacting to schemes orchestrated by
Kerrigan’s union foes.
In the end, Kerrigan makes great gains for the Trucker
rank and file in its battles with employers, but, sadly,
is unable to withstand the relentless assault by his
internal union enemies.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

THE TRUCKERS novel

My latest novel, THE TRUCKERS, is available as a paperback on Amazon.com and as an e-book via Amazon’s Kindle and Smashwords.com. There is no hiding the root of THE TRUCKERS: the decades-long struggle by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. There are two protagonists in the novel: Tommy K and Helmut Knall. Tommy K is a daring and successful leader of both his New York local and the Truckers International Union. He flashes across the union firmament like a comet, is consumed in the process and emerges as a legendary figure. Helmut can be compared to an infantryman, an eternal soldier, who moves relentlessly and fearlessly towards the seemingly impossible goal of transforming the Truckers into a progressive union. And of course, there is the woman from Colorado.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

HONORING RON CAREY

In 1998, Ron Carey was exiled from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters of which he was an exalted leader, first as a local union president and then as president of the international union. In ancient times, among the worst penalties imposed upon a Roman citizen was exile. Sadly, the Teamsters Independent Review Board visited the same form of suffering on Carey--ruling he could not associate with his lifetime Teamster friends or participate in any way in the union--after finding him guilty in a scheme to use the union treasury to help finance his campaign for reelection the presidency of the Teamsters.
Because the FBI could not find any real evidence to pin him directly to the funding scheme and because he repeatedly insisted in sworn testimony before federal grand juries and the Independent Review Board that he was innocent, Carey was charged with perjury.
AND THEN three years later in the fall of 2001, Carey was cleared of the perjury charge at a trial in the New York U.S. District Court.
The testimony of a single witness, who claimed that Carey okayed the rip off of the funds during a 15-second-long phone conversation, was the basis of both the Independent Review Board decision and the criminal charges.
Fortunately for Carey, he went into the trial with two of the nation’s foremost white-collar criminal defense lawyers, Reid Weingarten and Mark Hulkower of the Washington, DC firm of Steptoe & Johnson representing him. In addition, Bob Hauptman, Carey’s former Special Assistant for Management and Budget, served as the defense team’s researcher and analyst of the documents used in evidence.
The defense team proved that the crucial 15-second phone conversation never happened. Weingarten in his summation said without challenge from the federal prosecutors that their witness had been proven to be “a completely dishonest, untrustworthy, little thief.” My detailed account of the trial, The Exoneration of Ron Carey, can be accessed at the Teamsters for a Democratic Union website.
Right after Carey—still in exile--died at age 72 in December 2008,a member of his home local, Queens-based Teamsters Local 804, asked me for my thoughts on how this great union leader could be honored. After mulling the possibilities, including a statue in Union Square in Manhattan or a scholarship, I have reached the conclusion that perhaps the best way to keep the memory of Carey’s reputation and achievements alive might be to create an annual Carey Teamster Award to be given to a Teamster official or member whose activities best reflect what he tried to do for union members in his lifetime of service. The organization best suited to confer the award—whether it be a simple piece of paper or a medallion—would be Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which has been struggling for more than three decades to make the Teamsters into a better union.
One side effect of an annual Carey Teamster Award could be to provide a stage for which a potential reform candidate for international president of the union.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.