Teamster Families Picket IRB Hearings for Bob Hogan

see video

On April 2, 2008, at least sixty Teamster members, their wives and children picketed hearings for Robert A Hogan, leader of Local 714 by the government imposed Independent Review Board (IRB), which is seeking to remove him from office for not firing his organizing Director Robert Riley for speaking to Hogan’s father Bill Hogan Jr. who was ousted from the union for life by in 2002 by the IRB.

Picketeers chanted in front of the non-union Renaissance Hotel chosen in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg carrying signs that read: “KANGAROO COURT NOW IN SESSION,” “IRB VS. DEMOCRACY,” “IRB VS. UNION DEMOCRACY,” as well as one of pigs at a trough above a list of lavish salaries of IRB Board members $135,000 a year for part time work, and as much as $400,000 for chief IRB investigator Charles Carberry.

Carberry’s zeal was on full display in the hearing as he kept insisting over and over again that Bob Hogan was supposed to fire his organizing director for having personal conversations with his father Bill Hogan. Hogan replied that he had not been given any directions from either the union or the IRB on how to handle an outbreak of free speech between in father and Riley, who have been friends since they met in the fifth grade 55 years ago.

John Cangelosi, who picketed from his wheelchair said: “We’re trying to get our right of free speech back. We are here because good people are being drummed out of the Union. “They [the IRB] kick out people and investigate families,” says Bill Cooper, former leader of a Springfield, Illinois Teamster local who drove up to join the rally whose entire family’s phone records had been subpoenaed by the IRB.

“They pulled my 5 year old son’s records for the cell phone, I got it for him for kindergarten so if something happened at school he could call. They pulled his records, my wife’s records and my mother’s records to see if I’m talking to Bill Hogan, Dean Paso or anybody else.”

A decision is expected in 6 to 8 weeks that could lead to expulsion of Bob Hogan who was elected four times by the membership of Local 714 including the last two times when no opponent chose to run against him.