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DisUnion

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Next to collective bargaining, nothing is as close to the heart of a union's reason for being than its representation of workers. If the business agents are ineffective and employees lose confidence in them, the ability of the union to withstand management pressure can be seriously undermined. And a number of Teamsters say that since Hammond's ouster, the quality of their representation has severely deteriorated. "It's kind of like trying to run a mule at the Kentucky Derby," says Consolidated Freightways driver Tommie Jones of the business agents he considers ill-equipped to go toe-to-toe with management.

"Our office can't seem to get help from the union," says Emma Clardy, a clerical worker and steward at Consolidated Freightways. Clardy says the new staff members at Local 988 freely admit they're not familiar with the portion of the 1994 Master Freight Agreement covering office workers, and that the assistant shop steward resigned a couple of weeks ago in frustration.

Bill Groweg and others believe their companies are exploiting the disarray at Local 988 and the lack of experience among the business agents, an assertion that even Jim Buck acknowledges is true. "The employers seem to think that a trusteeship is an opportunity for them to screw everybody," Buck says. He says he's heard complaints about certain business agents and is investigating them case by case. "If I find the agent is not doing his job," he says, "I'll terminate him."

Buck, in fact, did fire two business agents last week, including Dennis Bankhead.

On the other hand, most of the disgruntled workers are also supporters of Richard Hammond, and it's not hard to find rank-and-file Teamsters who believe that they're better represented under Jim Buck than they ever were under the Hammond regime.

"It's totally different," says Rainbo Baking Company driver and steward James Johnson, who's currently under suspension for alleged union organizing at a grocery store he delivers to. "They are hearing every case," he adds, a contrast to the old days, when grievances would disappear without explanation. "Every grievance we file, they're there."

Roosevelt Yancey agrees, and he should know -- Yancey has been a Teamster for 48 years, and was the first full-time black driver hired at Rainbo. Before, he says, "People would walk through [the plant] and bat their eyes, and if they didn't like the way you batted, they'd fire you." Because of weak representation, he says, a number of members left the company, and new employees wouldn't join the union. In contrast, says Yancey, "I've been represented more since the trustee took over than I had [in years]."

To some extent, the difference in perception has as much to do with the skill of the individual business agent as with who's in power. "You're gonna have some people who are better than others," says staunch Hammond supporter Bobby McCoy, who admits that even before the takeover, disciplinary cases were lost that should have been won. "There's gonna be mistakes made."

But if a problem exists, the best way to solve it is with good communication between union staff and workers, something that the factional infighting has made almost impossible. Company supervisors, trying to further drive the wedge, have alternately suggested -- and workers have repeated -- that each side is in bed with management, a mortal sin to faithful Teamsters.

Scott Hendries, a former UPS shop steward turned Local 988 business manager, was fired from his post and permanently barred from holding a job with the union after being accused of conspiring with management at Northwest Transport (now NationsWay Transport) to blackball a pair of Carey supporters. Buck says Northwest Transport officials admitted that Hendries told them to fire the workers, but the company denies it.

A supporter of Hammond and Hoffa, Hendries also has been accused by Buck of embezzling almost $18,000 via a union credit card. He maintains that the charges against him and the others are phony. During the internal hearing, he points out, Buck only asked him about $4,000 of the total, every dollar of which he could account for. "The issue is to get everybody out of the way so they can't run [in future elections]," he says.

Teamsters are undermining one another in other ways, not cooperating on organizing drives and constantly tearing down initiatives in conversation. "If someone does not want the people in here that are in here, they're not going to cooperate," said Scott Bankhead shortly before he was fired. "They want it to be a failure, so they can sit back and say, 'Look, I told you those people aren't worth a shit.' "

With the split among the members becoming increasingly rancorous, Hendries is in the majority in lamenting the local's prospects if no bridge between the factions can be established.

"We're destroying ourselves," he says.

Fidgeting slightly in a straight-backed chair in his lawyer's office, Richard Hammond chalks up his discomfort to a general distrust of the media and distaste for being photographed. But behind his restive movement is a self-assuredness that comes from being in charge for 25 years, the person most responsible for the welfare of the members, the one on whom, literally, their jobs can depend.

Ironically, Hammond arrived in Houston much the same way as he went out, during a trusteeship. A native of Cleburne, Hammond had been working for the Miller Brewing Company in nearby Fort Worth and was instrumental in switching the workers from an AFL-CIO brewery workers' union to the Teamsters. When the two unions merged in 1971, Hammond says, his presence was an affront to the AFL-CIO group, and he was moved to Houston to serve as chief business agent and principal officer of Local 988 under the trusteeship, which had been imposed because of money problems. "They couldn't manage 15 cents," Hammond says of the former staff.

What he found when he arrived, says Hammond, was a local in disarray. In addition to the financial troubles, the members had divided along racial lines and fought constantly. Membership meetings were out of hand, and fistfights were frequent, a recollection backed by a number of Teamster old-timers. "We had to frisk some people when they came in the doors," Hammond recalls.

After six months, the books were in decent enough shape that the International dissolved the trusteeship and called an election. Hammond ran for president and won, which he's done every three years since, sometimes in a contested race, sometimes not. But the result was always conclusive. "I beat [the opposition] every time, in every election, by two or three to one," he says proudly.

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