Time is running out for disgraced IBT Vice President Rome Aloise. He will appear before Judge Barbara Jones in a hearing on April 6. The architect of the Vairma-Herrera campaign is expected to be suspended or barred for life from the Teamsters. 

The latest charges against Aloise were issued over a year ago for racketeering, harming fellow Teamsters, threats and retaliation against members, and secretly running Oakland Local 853 and Northern California Joint Council 7 while he was suspended from Teamster office.

Aloise earned his two-year suspension after he was found guilty of accepting gifts from an employer to whom he gave contract concessions, negotiating a sham contract with an investment pal, and rigging a local union election. 

After all that, Aloise still insisted he was above the rules. He continued to secretly run Local 853 and Joint Council 7 while suspended and to pursue vendettas against other Teamsters, even threatening a charity with financial ruin if they went through with their plans to give an award to a Teamster leader Aloise doesn't like. 

Hoffa, Vairma, Aloise

Aloise is spending his final days in the Teamsters collecting multiple salaries and scheming to put Hoffa’s chosen successors in power.   

Aloise is the architect and chief strategist behind the Vairma-Herrera Slate and the man behind multiple online smear campaigns against the O’Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters United Slate and TDU.

It’s not hard to connect the dots. Aloise’s attorney in the corruption charges against him is the attorney for the Vairma Slate and Hoffa’s former General Counsel at the IBT. 

Hoffa, Vairma and Herrera have pulled out all the stops to cover for Aloise’s corruption and shield him from accountability. 

After a Teamster panel found Aloise guilty, Hoffa, Vairma and Herrera narrowly won a 12-11 vote on the General Executive Board to approve a sweetheart settlement that found Aloise guilty of nothing. 

That Hoffa-Vairma whitewash was promptly rejected by Judge Jones, the Independent Review Officer. She will conduct a hearing on April 6 hearing and later issue a decision on Rome's fate.  

The hearing is required to be open to Teamster members to view online. But the announcement of the hearing is carefully hidden on the Teamster website—we challenge you to to try to find it—and doesn’t include any link or information on how to view the hearing. So much for transparency.  

The hearing may be hidden from the members, but Aloise’s crimes against our union are well-documented and plain for all to see. Let Rome burn. Teamster members deserve better.