The official charged with monitoring the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has decided that the executive assistant to union President James P. Hoffa should be charged with racketeering for illegally accepting six tickets to a 2013 Super Bowl party in New Orleans hosted by Playboy magazine.
The tickets were a gift to William C. Smith from an employer whose workers are represented by the Teamsters and were given in exchange for the Teamsters leadership’s help in ensuring that union contract negotiations underway at the time were concluded on terms favorable to the company, not the workers, according to independent investigations officer Joseph diGenova.
“These party admissions were things of value worth, at least, $6,000. Smith violated [federal law] which forbade an IBT employee from soliciting and receiving a thing of value from an IBT employer, and committed an act of racketeering,” diGenova, the independent investigations officer in charge of carrying out a 1989 court-ordered consent decree to monitor the Teamsters for corruption and a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in a letter dated Nov. 17 to Hoffa.
Smith is the third top Teamsters official who charges have been recommended against in the last month, the other two being former union Political Director Nicole Brener-Schmitz and current General Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall, the union’s No. 2 official.
Earlier this year, charges were recommended against Vice President-at-Large Rome Aloise. The Nov. 17 letter regarding Smith says he was aided by Aloise.
The allegations against Smith come just days after Hoffa and Hall won re-election to new five-year terms to lead the Teamsters.
DiGenova’s letter says that that Aloise intervened in contract negotiations between liquor distributor Southern Wine and Spirits and Minnesota-based IBT Local 792 at the company’s request. The negotiations had stalled because the local chapter’s leader was holding out for better terms for his members.
“He wanted to walk out on all us all through the days but Rome wouldn’t let him and finally forced him to take what we offered,” a company executive said in an internal email quoted in diGenova’s letter. In exchange, the company provided six tickets to the Playboy Super Bowl event, which Smith had requested Aloise obtain for him. The tickets had a value of at least $6,000.
The company “wanted to reward Aloise for his assistance in keeping a troublesome local official in line with the company’s expectations and to stay in the good graces of Hoffa’s team,” diGenova said.
Under the terms of the consent decree, Hoffa has 90 days to respond. If the independent investigations officer decides those actions are not sufficient, the officer is authorized to overrule Hoffa and order remedial action in the courts.
DiGenova’s letter was obtained by Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a dissident group within the union that opposes Hoffa’s leadership. The group said it would use the recent charges in its effort to get the union election results set aside. The group says Hoffa and other IBT leaders conspired to hide evidence of corruption prior to the election.
“Teamsters United — the coalition who challenged Hoffa in the election, winning a majority of votes in the U.S. and sweeping the Central and Southern regions — is pursuing a post-election appeal. Hoffa abused his power by hiding documents and violating the rulings of the [independent investigations officer] to prevent the charges from coming out before members voted,” the group said.
A Teamsters spokesman could not be reached for comment. The Teamsters have previously said that diGenova was deliberately attempting to interfere in the union election by recommending charges while the mail-in balloting was happening.
