EXCLUSIVE: Boston Teamster Boss Says Providence Reform Group to be Punished

GoLocalProv News Team

EXCLUSIVE: Boston Teamster Boss Says Providence Reform Group to be Punished

New England's top union boss has been recorded on tape threatening reform union opposition group Teamster for Democratic Union (TDU), regarding upcoming elections at Teamsters Local 251 in Providence.

The video, which features Teamsters' Sean O'Brien, President of Teamsters Local 25 in Charlestown, MA and President of Joint Council 10, opens with "Vote the Membership Slate," has O'Brien saying Joe Bairos is one of his closest allies. Bairos is the Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Union Local 251 in Providence, RI.

"What's going to happen ten years down the road?  Do you want to leave the legacy whose only intention is to tear down the Teamsters union? We cannot allow this to happen. This is the most important battle in New England -- and nationwide," said O'Brien in the video.

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He then goes on address TDU.

"Anyone who takes on Bairos -- they've got a major problem, they'll never be our friends -- they need to be punished, held accountable for their actions," said O'Brien, who continues, "TDU sucks, go home...there's no doubt in my mind you're going to kick TDU's ass." 

GoLocalProv has learned that the video had submitted to the Independent Review Board (IRB), created by a federal court in the late 1980s via a consent decree.  The three members of the IRB are among three of the leading federal law enforcement officials.

The Independent Review Board

Benjamin Richard Civiletti served as the United States Attorney General during the Carter administration, from 1979 to 1981. Civiletti is one of the three members of the Independent Review Board, a board that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union must answer to when allegations of corruption or organized crime infiltration surface under the terms consent decree issued by a federal district court judgment.

William Hedgcock Webster is the current Chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Previously Webster was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1978 to 1987 and Director of Central Intelligence from 1987 to 1991. He presently serves on the IRB.

Joseph diGenova in 1997 was named Special Counsel by the U.S. House of Representatives to probe the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. As a result of that assignment, he was appointed by the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, to sit on the Independent Review Board. He is on that Board with former FBI and CIA Director William Webster and former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. In 2007, diGenova was retained by the New York State Senate to investigate then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer in the Troopergate matter.

According to the Teamster's Web site, Sean M. O’Brien was elected President of Teamsters Local 25 in November 2006, at the age of 34 and is the youngest Principal Officer in the 113-year history of the organization. He is part of a proud working class Teamsters’ family that spans four generations on both sides. As President of Local 25, Sean represents more than 11,000 working men and women throughout Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire - the largest Teamsters’ union in New England. A fourth generation Teamster, Sean has worked his way up from driving a truck, to shop steward, to president and in 2011 being the youngest executive board member ever elected to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

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