July 26, 2010: The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for a new Hours of Service rule will be in the hands of the Office of Management and Budget on time. A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation said Friday that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had “committed to sending a draft Hours of Service NPRM to OMB by Monday, July 26 and will be meeting that obligation.” Click here to read more at The Trucker.com...

July 23, 2010: The National Teamsters Hispanic Caucus passed a key resolution at its annual conference last week, committing to fight the exploitive business practices by online grocer FreshDirect as its workers seek union representation. FreshDirect has been at the center of controversy surrounding its warehouse in Queens, N.Y., for more than three years. Over that time, elected officials and organized labor have exposed the company as union-busters and of possibly alerting immigration officials to...

July 23, 2010: FedEx Corp., trying to defeat legislation that would make it easier for its employees to unionize, almost doubled its lobbying spending in the first six months of this year compared with the same period a year ago. Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx spent $11.6 million on lobbying between January and June, up from $6.1 million during the first six months of 2009. It hired two new lobbying firms this year to buttress its effort....

July 22, 2010: Profits are skyrocketing at UPS while working conditions continue to bottom out. UPS executives announced that Brown hauled in more than $854 million in the second quarter. Brown’s profits increased by 90 percent compared to the second quarter last year. That’s $400 million more in profits. In all, UPS made nearly $1.4 billion in profits after taxes in the first six months of this year alone. Package volume continues to increase. UPS...

July 22, 2010: Tom Keegel, IBT Secretary Treasurer, has issued a letter in which he criticizes the direction of the IBT under James Hoffa, and announces that he will not run for reelection. As a result of Keegel’s defection, Hoffa has taken down his campaign website, and has substituted Ken Hall to be his running-mate for the 2011 International Union election. Read Keegel’s letter to the General Executive Board. (Keegel also sent an official letter...

July 14, 2010: General Secretary Treasurer Tom Keegel will not run for re-election next year, according to reports from members of the General Executive Board and officials close to Keegel. Keegel, the number two officer in the IBT, had previously agreed to run with James Hoffa as the Hoffa-Keegel Slate in the 2011 election. But Keegel also has had disagreements with Hoffa, and at times seemed close to breaking away from him. The Hoffa administration...

July 13, 2010: The first stage in the paperwork shuffle toward a new set of hours-of-service regulations kicked off in late June when FMCSA sent a draft of a notice of proposed rulemaking to the Office of the Secretary of Transportation for approval. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration submitted a draft of the proposed HOS regs to the OST on June 23 – one day before the agency’s original target date. Click here to...

July 12, 2010: Why is our union holding a conference call for UPSers when they’ll still be on the truck? The Package Division is holding a telephone Conference Call on Wednesday, July 14 to update UPS Teamsters on “important information,” but they’ve scheduled the update at a time that makes it impossible for many package car drivers to participate. Why? The conference call is supposed to update all stewards and assistant stewards about “many developments...

July 6, 2010: For more than a year, FedEx and its bitter shipping rival, United Parcel Service, have been engaged in one of the fiercest lobbying battles in recent memory, with millions of dollars spent on advertising, Web sites, grass-roots organizing and other tactics more commonly seen in political campaigns. The reason for all the excitement? An obscure, 230-word provision that would require FedEx Express to comply with the same labor laws as UPS, making...

July 1, 2010: Teamster members are paying a high price for the pension concessions negotiated by the Hoffa administration. UPS was making record profits of more than $6 billion a year when Hoffa let Brown pull out of Central States and gave UPS Freight a free pass on paying Teamster benefits. A Teamster Voice report on the Teamster Pension Divide reveals how these givebacks are saving the company billions, but Teamster members are paying the...