The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the U.S. Department of Justice have jointly filed a motion to end federal oversight of the union after nearly 37 years of monitoring, marking the longest such monitorship in U.S. history.

The current oversight stems from a 1988 civil racketeering lawsuit brought by then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, which alleged that organized crime had run the Teamsters as a racketeering enterprise for decades Reuters. In 1989, a consent decree was reached, requiring a court-appointed monitor to oversee internal affairs, changes to the union’s election process to ensure fairness, creation of a review board to investigate corruption allegations.

The consent order was established in 1989 when the IBT settled this lawsuit filed after years of corruption and mob influence. It was replaced in 2015 with the final order which established the current anti-corruption program consisting of the Independent Review Officer and the Independent Investigations Officer.

As part of the original consent order, Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) fought for and won the right to vote for International Union officers and Convention Delegates under democratic rules with an independent election supervisor. These rights are now written in the Teamsters Constitution and will continue without change.

Under the joint motion filed, Judge Barbara Jones, the Independent Review Officer, will continue to play an oversight role for another three years with an option to extend if she believes the IBT has not sufficiently maintained its disciplinary and audit systems at the end of that term.

An interesting fact is that TDU has had a volatile history with Sean O’Brien and as a result O’Brian was suspended for two weeks in 2013 after an Independent Review Board found out he had violated union rules by threatening TDU members during a Rhode Island election rally.

There is also a concern within the labor movement that Teamsters for the Democratic Unions support for O’Brien has aligned the union with far-right politics, With the TDU annual convention approaching, some TDU members and reform groups, such as Teamsters Mobilize, report they have been banned from attending TDU conventions, citing political alignment with O’Brien and Trump CounterPunch.org. Critics say TDU has abandoned its reformist image, instead elevating its own members into leadership roles while O’Brien steers the union toward nationalist politics.

Politics within the labor movement are fierce and union officials they will eat their own the minute they see any challenge to their authority including rank-and-file members.

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