Help Workers Rise to the Challenge
TDU is at a turning point. For the last five years, we have been leading national grassroots campaigns that have won majority support in the largest and most strategic industries in the Teamsters Union. In Fall 2021, workers will elect the next national leadership of the 1.4 million-member Teamsters Union.*
Our challenge and opportunity is to turn the support we’ve built into grassroots organization that can change the direction of one of the country’s most powerful unions.
Transforming the Teamsters and the labor movement will take more than new leadership at the top of the union. TDU won’t achieve the change we need unless we can maintain and grow a nationwide network of grassroots activists that mobilizes worker power from the bottom up.
*Funds from non-Teamster donors are not used in union election campaigns—they support educational and legal defense programs to protect workers’ rights. Your donation will be processed by TRF, a registered non-profit organization dedicated to educating and empowering workers to enforce their legal rights on the job and in the union. Your contribution to TRF is tax deductible. You can deduct up to $300 of charitable donations this year—even if you don't itemize. This is a special provision in the CARES Act passed last March, for this year only.
When COVID-19 caught the union and corporations flatfooted, TDU activists launched national petition campaigns, exposed corporate greed in the media, and mobilized grassroots actions to win extended sick leave, PPE, and health and safety protections that are saving lives.
TDU is building power by uniting workers in successful campaigns to take back their local unions and transform them in a progressive direction. Reformers are launching education programs to involve workers, building new alliances, and organizing the unorganized.
TDU has led grassroots campaigns against concessions in contracts covering over 300,000 workers. These campaigns have created a groundswell of support for fundamental change in the Teamsters. We’re helping bring new top leadership to one of the country’s most powerful unions.
We’re fighting for a Teamsters union that empowers all members—women, Latino, and Black Teamsters. TDU helped organize successful campaigns of Black-led reform slates to win union office in Maryland, Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Richmond—a 25% increase in the number of Black-led Teamster local unions in two years.