The RISE program: trying to discuss the future of Teamster Reform at a Cornell University Forum

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In 1999 Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa Jr hired Edwin Stier, a former federal prosecutor credited with ridding NJ Teamster Local 560 of mob influence, to develop an internal ethics program that would convince the Justice Department to end its oversight of the union.

Stier produced RISE (for Respect, Integrity, Strength, and Ethics). He selected a committee of officers and rank-and-file Teamsters to develop an ethics code, created a complex enforcement system, recruited an advisory board of prominent labor attorneys and professors, waged an aggressive public relations campaign to promote the program, and published an 800-page report on Teamster corruption.

Now, after five years, while the Hoffa administration continues its campaign to end government oversight, RISE is in limbo, its implementation stalled while the government's apparatus remains in place. The public relations campaign, however, continues in full force.
On December 11, with 75 other unionists, I attended a talk on RISE given by Stier at the New York City branch of the Cornell School of Industrial Relations. Gene Carroll, director of the Cornell Union Leadership Program, introduced Stier and explained the purpose of the presentation: Unionists and the public, he said, are deeply aware of the existence of the union corruption but know little about this great, unprecedented self-reform effort.

Stier pronounced RISE to be the most comprehensive internal self-reform effort by union or corporation in U.S. history. Its goal, he explained, is to transform the culture of the union into one where corruption is not tolerated. Reform imposed by outside monitors, he argued, will not effect lasting change because it will not alter the culture of the union. He posed a stark choice: perpetual outside monitorship or the RISE program. Stier himself accomplished such a cultural transformation, he said, in his 10 years as court-appointed monitor over the notoriously mobbed-up Local 560 in NJ, and so it could be accomplished in the entire IBT if only his RISE is adopted.

AUD has followed Stier's program closely, praising the comprehensive Code of Ethics, but expressing deep skepticism about its enforcement mechanism which relies entirely on the union's existing power structure, currently in the hands of officers who have repeatedly failed to take action against corruption in the union. So none of Stier's presentation was new to me. What struck me, though, was how confidently he lauded the program even though it has never been put to the test.

When he finished his presentation, I raised my hand. The issue, I said, is not a choice between perpetual government monitorship or a self-reform program. At some point, the union must be given a chance to go it alone. But, is now the right time?

Hoffa openly proclaims his top priority to be ending the government monitorship, yet his administration has missed many an opportunity to show that it is serious about attacking corruption, failing to take action in several cases involving wrongdoing at high levels of the union. It has been the court-appointed Independent Review Board which continues to police the union for corruption. If the Teamsters, with its history of domination by organized crime, embezzlement, repression of members' rights, beatings, murders - all the sordid crimes that led to the RICO suit in the first place - is to be left to its own self-monitoring, shouldn't it prove itself first before the government steps out? Why not implement RISE now, show that it works, then ask the government to leave?

These were, I thought, good points, substantive criticism that would spark an interesting discussion.

Stier's response was deeply disturbing. He did not address the points I had made. Instead he launched an attack on AUD. He charged that we have never said a single positive thing about RISE, and judging by our criticisms, we have not even looked at it. Our attacks are explained, he claimed, by our alliance with a faction in the Teamsters (he did not say TDU, but everyone knew what he meant) which he said is hoping for RISE to fail.

I was taken aback. But I shouldn't have been. Stier is, after all, a highly paid employee of the Hoffa administration, a combination ethics czar and public relations agent on a mission to end government oversight. He's also an attorney, a savvy former prosecutor who knows that if you can't answer someone's question, you can always question their motives.

I was starting to get annoyed, and not just at Stier, but at Cornell which, although its aim was to foster discussion, ended up providing a one-sided platform for Stier to carry out his public relations campaign. (When, before the talk, I distributed a UDR article about Teamster Local 854, a local said by RISE to have been democratized and freed of mob dominance but where the NLRB has issued a stinging complaint against local officers for violently intimidating insurgents, Carroll felt it necessary to disclaim Cornell's association with the piece. He later told me it had offended some Teamster officials who were present.) Here was Stier lauding his untested program as the labor movement's greatest effort against corruption, without a word of acknowledgement to the Teamster reformers, rank-and-filers and officers, in and out of TDU, who have risked - some even given - their lives fighting to rid the union of the mob.

Later, in his concluding remarks, Stier backtracked. Some compromise, he said, between the two extremes of perpetual government oversight and self-monitoring is called for at this point. I approached him afterwards, pointing out that the program he had just plugged for an hour and a half, is the latter extreme. His response: RISE is merely the union's "bargaining position" with the government; he fully expects to compromise somewhere in between the two.