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...

November 4, 2004: A non-union operator seems to be taking over the ABF cartage operation in Charlotte, N.C. Millenium Express, a non-union cartage company, now actually rents part of the ABF dock. They use ABF’s pallet jacks and forklifts, load ABF freight onto six non-union trucks, and make deliveries and pick-ups. This has been going on for eight months and is expanding! The excuse is “overflow freight.” Eight months of sudden overflow? ABF is apparently...

November 4, 2004: Gate Gourmet, whose 10,500 employees provide food services to airlines and railroads, is trying to break our union. The current contract expired June 1. Management is demanding big wage and benefit cuts that they know workers will not accept. Under the company proposal, wages would be cut by as much as $5.02 an hour. Members’ pension and 401(k) would be eliminated. The company contribution to members’ health insurance would be capped at...

November 4, 2004: Hundreds of Teamsters attended the 29th annual TDU Convention in Cleveland last month to chart the course of the reform movement for the coming year. Speakers blasted James Hoffa for the decline of Teamster power on his watch. TDU members have their eye on the 2006 IBT election, but our convention voted to put the focus for the coming year on strengthening our movement at the grassroots—to build at the bottom so...

November 4, 2004: On Nov. 9 federal judge Kathleen O’Malley issued a temporary restraining order against James Hoffa’s trusteeship of Cleveland Local 293. Hoffa’s trustee was sent packing and the 1,700 members of Local 293 got their local back, with the elected officers back in office. Hoffa placed the local into trusteeship on Sept. 20, alleging serious problems including that Local 293 had undermined a strike by Local 348 against a beer distributor. Members, including...

November 4, 2004: The Independent Review Board (IRB) on Oct. 14 charged Joseph Bernstein with associating with Billy Hogan, who was banned from the Teamsters in May 2002. Bernstein, the president of Chicago Local 781 and vice president of Joint Council 25, faces a hearing and likely removal from our union as well as the loss of his $218,441 salary. Bernstein admitted under oath to having at least three meetings with Hogan, one of which...