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UPS Accuses Federal Officer of Favoring Union

United Parcel Service yesterday accused the federal officer overseeing the Teamsters elections of siding with the union in the recent 15-day strike against the package delivery service.

Elections officer Barbara Zack Quindel has said she waited until after the strike was over before ordering a rerun of last year's Teamsters elections for national officers.

By doing so, the company said, Quindel improperly chose sides "in a momentous labor-management dispute."

United Parcel Service of America Inc. made the complaint in a letter to U.S. District Court Judge David Edelstein, the federal judge who has been overseeing the 1.3 million-member union as part of a 1989 consent decree that settled the Justice Department's civil anti-racketeering suit against the union.

UPS spokeswoman Gina Ellrich said the company was not seeking any specific relief from the court. "We wanted to be on the record," she said. "We believe the delay [in Quindel's announcement] contributed to the length of the Teamsters strike."

Asked if she thought the company's action now, with union members about to vote on the tentative contract agreement with UPS, might have an impact on the ratification vote, Ellrich said, "We would hope not. That's not the intention at all."

On Aug. 22, two days after the tentative contract agreement was reached between UPS and the Teamsters, Quindel overturned Teamsters President Ron Carey's 1996 election victory over challenger James P. Hoffa, the son of former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. She also ordered all the winning candidates on Carey's slate of national officers to stand for new elections.

Quindel said at the time that she had reached the decision to overturn the election after the strike had begun and deliberately delayed announcing it until the strike was over so as not to interfere with the contract dispute.

She repeated her assertion in a statement issued by her office yesterday: "The election officer has said that she didn't want her decision to be a factor in the labor-management dispute. UPS seems to misunderstand. The election officer's duty as a court officer is to run the election process for the benefit of the union and its members. The members of the union can't have faith in the consent decree if they see it as interfering with their economic livelihood."

Edelstein is scheduled to rule on Quindel's request for a new election at a Sept. 19 hearing in New York. If he approves her order, a mail ballot election would take approximately four months to run.

Hoffa has called on Quindel to step aside and suggested that former president Jimmy Carter supervise the new election.

The Hoffa camp has accused Quindel of favoring Carey by not immediately announcing the election decision.

The Teamsters issued a brief statement in response to the UPS letter. "It's not surprising that UPS management is unhappy with the Teamsters general president after our member's historic contract victory. UPS has no business attempting to meddle in internal union affairs. What they sent to Judge Edelstein has no legal significance."

Privately, some union sources see the UPS letter as nothing more than "sour grapes" from a company the union believes lost the strike.

In UPS's view, according to the complaint, the government's rules for the Teamsters elections required Quindel to announce her decision as soon as she reached it.

The company said that by waiting to announce the results of what it called Carey's "tarnished" reelection until after the strike, Quindel was interfering with the labor-management process.

"Attempting to 'time' the Election Officer's actions so as to affect or not affect contemporaneous labor events is an arrogant and perilous course," UPS wrote Edelstein.

"Suppose that the UPS-Teamster strike had not ended August 20, but had continued for a month or two. Suppose that the financial toll on the Teamster rank and file had become severe. And suppose that it had become apparent — as some suspected during the strike — that Mr. Carey intended to persist in the strike to avoid charges of weakness in an anticipated rerun against his opponent, Mr. Hoffa.

"At what point would the Election Officer have determined that Mr. Carey's invalid claim to authority was a factor?"