But the IRB, which must justify its obscene salaries — Chief IRB investigator Charles Carberry was paid more than $400,000 in a single year — does not let facts get in the way when it targets someone for expulsion. Judis refers to a “sensational” IRB report” that I sought to undermine a Las Vegas local by negotiating “non-union, low-wage” agreements with a management company. Sensational for sure, and false in every respect. Because of my experience representing convention show workers, I was invited by an International Representative assigned to the local to help organize temporary members into the Teamster union, rather than leave them unorganized or to competitors such as the Carpenters union. Unfortunately, Judis parrots the IRB charges of “collusion,” and claims that management “hatched the Las Vegas scheme,” but management was reluctant to provide the wage increases we sought, and no agreement was ever signed, nor would I have had the authority to sign it. Some collusion.

The IRB, which is composed of former law enforcement personnel, knows very little about how the collective bargaining process works, yet this group, which operates outside normal checks and balances, repeatedly substitutes its judgment for that of the union membership. Those who criticize the IRB run the risk of being expelled for life from a union many of us have dedicated our life to serving. Those who have been expelled on trumped up charges are not allowed to speak to any union member, or they too will find themselves expelled for life. The IRB has had a chilling effect on union democracy and free speech. The misnamed “consent decree” that authorized the IRB was imposed by the Justice Department in 1989 by breaking a written promise by the US Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York that the union membership would have a right to accept or reject it.

Mr Judis’s observation that Senator Obama’s promise to close down the IRB suggests a “Bush-like contempt for the customary relationship between government and the judicial process,” is absolute nonsense. When the Justice Dept pushed for the consent decree that established the IRB, the Senate Permanent Investigations Committee found this to be a misuse of the civil RICO statute. A bipartisan coalition of 264 members of congress sent a letter to then Attorney General Edwin Meese warning that such government control over a union is “inherently destructive of the ability of workers to represent and speak for themselves through their union.” Moreover, a 2005 report by Ed McDonald, who headed a Justice Dept organized crime task force, fully discredits the baseless, McCarthyite allegations of continuing corruption by Ed Stiers whom Judis quotes at length. A recent Detroit News editorial supporting the removal of the IRB, notes “a 1999 congressional report, a Harvard study and an internal audit commissioned by the union all found that the Independent Review Board appointed to keep watch on the Teamsters is no longer necessary.”