Teamsters might be "Free At Last"

This is from John Tusani of Work Life. It is interesting but explains a little on why Obama got the Teamster endorsement.

The Wall Street Journal has this interesting story today:
Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.
And...
Neither Sen. Obama nor Teamsters President James P. Hoffa has spoken publicly about easing up federal oversight, a top priority for Mr. Hoffa since he became union president in 1999. On the campaign trail, Mr. Hoffa stresses Sen. Obama's criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement as the big factor in winning the 1.4-million member union's support.
But John Coli, vice president for the Teamsters central region, who brokered the Teamsters endorsement, said Sen. Obama was "pretty definitive that the time had come to start the beginning of the end" of the three-member independent review board that investigates suspect activity in the union. Mr. Coli said that Sen. Obama conveyed that view in a series of phone conversations and meetings with Teamsters officials last year.
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor confirmed the candidate's position in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, saying that Sen. Obama believes that the board "has run its course," because "organized crime influence in the union has drastically declined." Mr. Vietor said Sen. Obama took that position last year.
The promise to end the government oversight, according to the article, had nothing to do with the Teamsters' endorsement of Obama:...split...
Bret Caldwell, a Teamsters spokesman, said the union's endorsement was "predicated in no way, shape or form" on the consent decree. Mr. Caldwell said that only a court can do away with the oversight, not the president. "The only way that this is going to be resolved is through the court system, there can't be a political solution," he said.
But Mr. Caldwell said the president could appoint people to the Justice Department and courts who also favored ending the consent decree.
"It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a president who came out and said that they would support getting the oversight out of our union," Mr. Caldwell said.
The oversight of the Teamsters dates back to 1989 when the union's leadership agreed to the deal:
The consent decree required the direct election of the union president and other officers by rank and file members, in an election overseen by a court-appointed election officer. (Before, the president was elected by delegates.) It also set up a three-member independent review board to investigate corruption within the union. These elements of the decree are in effect today, while others, like oversight of union finances, have ended.

As an aside, it needs to be pointed out that a number of unions conduct their elections via the convention route, not by direct membership election. I've heard the arguments pro and con on convention elections versus direct membership vote and I don't think that either is the panacea of necessarily better than the other.

The real question is: should the oversight end? It costs the Teamsters $6 million per year to keep up with the decrees' demands. On the one hand, some pretty bad people have been booted out of the union and gone to prison; it's hard to argue--and I don't think that even Hoffa would argue--that that would have happened absent outside intervention.

On the other hand, no union should want the government--given the hostility of the government to union power generally--to control how it operates and have access to its records. And this decree creates some pretty onerous and even preposterous situations that, in the real world, civil libertarians would be up in arms over--there are numerous instances of people being suspended from office for pretty minor things and one would even say acts that amount to having had innocent conversations with people they've known for years.

When is the job done?

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