February 17, 2005: Boston Local 25 President Ritchie Reardon told Joint Council 10 that the IBT Parcel Division approved a mid-contract giveback to UPS that violates language in the New England supplement. Reardon’s statement was part of his testimony in a hearing on internal union charges over the concession. The testimony marks the first time that anyone has put on the record that the IBT approved the contract concession. Reardon said the approval was not...

February 1, 2005: The Tom Leedham Campaign is off to a fast start and the Tom Leedham Strong Contracts, Good Pensions Slate members are poised to become officially accredited candidates. Teamsters have been petitioning across North America to make the Leedham slate the officially accredited team to put forward new leadership for the Teamsters Union. It will also give all Teamsters the right to hear from the candidates in the Teamster Magazine. (The Leedham campaign...

January 28, 2005:Members in two local unions representing over 10,000 Georgia Teamsters have voted this fall for new leadership. In November Local 728 members elected the Members First Slate. And on Dec. 15 Local 528 members elected a slate that successfully challenged Hoffa’s hand-picked successor in that local. Georgia has a long tradition in the history of Teamster reform. Teamsters here have also been deeply involved in the effort to stop pension and health benefit...

January 28, 2005: New York Local 805 members elected the Sandy Pope Leadership Action Team in balloting on Dec. 7. Pope, a long-time leader in the Teamster reform movement and a member of the TDU International Steering Committee, defeated the incumbent president by a wide margin. All seven members of her slate were elected. Cuts to the Local 805 pension were a major issue in the campaign. Pope opposed them and said the union should...

January 28, 2005: On December 9 Judge James B Moran directed the trustees of the Teamster Central States Pension Fund to turn more documents over to participants in the fund. The decision expands an October 21 victory won by Teamster members in Locals 638, 391 and 20. Central States has now been ordered to reveal quarterly reports, along with financial and actuarial supplementary attachments, from August of 2000 up till the present, and into the...

January 5, 2005: Some Teamster contracts address the issue of excessive overtime. Here are two examples. Forced overtime is a huge problem in grocery warehousing. Oregon Local 206 has fought for strong contract language limiting overtime in their grocery contracts. Local 206 Secretary-Treasurer Tom Leedham knows about forced overtime from back when he was a rank-and-file member working at United Grocers (now Unified Western Grocers) in the 1970s. “They would work us from 5 p.m....

January 30, 2005: The Graphic Communications International Union’s (GCIU) 60,000 US members voted by a narrow margin to merge into the Teamsters. Most Canadian locals, which voted separately, have rejected the proposal. One local inToronto and all three locals in Quebec have decided to affiliate with the IBT. TDU welcomes our new brothers and sisters across North America into the Teamsters. GCIU will now be an autonomous printing trades conference within our union. Those in...

The Members First Slate, headed by president-elect Randy Brown, won the Local 728 election on November 19. The election marks a victory for all the members of Local 728, and the Teamster reform movement. Georgia Local 728, which has statewide jurisdiction in the UPS and trucking industries, has over 6000 members and is the second largest local in the Southern Region of the IBT. Members First won five positions. The Experienced Slate, consisting mainly of...

November 4, 2004: I am a Locomotive Engineer on the Union Pacific Railroad with 34 years of service, and am on my third term as president of Division 724 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET). Before our merger this past January into the Teamsters, we were the International Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE)—the oldest existing union in America. Our members enjoyed one of the most democratic union constitutions in existence. We had...

November 4, 2004: Yellow Freight has proposed to add Premium Service boards at 33 terminals in Pennsylvania and across the Midwest, in a change of operations slated to be heard on Dec. 7 in Chicago. At the same time a separate proposed change of operations will be heard, to establishe sort-hubs in Coldwater, Mich., and Cincinnati and Richfield, Ohio. The new Article 18 (and a “Letter of Understanding”) of the 2002 NMFA allows management to...