April 21, 2008: UPS Teamsters in New York have overwhelmingly voted for changes that will put more pension and contract information in the hands of the members.

At a meeting on April 20, New York Local 804 members approved two changes to their local union bylaws by more than 90 percent.

By a 208 to 12 margin, members voted to require the Executive Board to give a report on the pension and health and welfare funds at each quarterly membership meeting.

By a 207 to 19 vote, members voted to require the local to establish a contract committee to keep members informed and united whenever a contract is being negotiated.

The bylaws campaign grew out of a rank-and-file mobilization against pension cuts and contract concessions at UPS—including a 30 percent cut in pension accruals in 2006.

Last year, members voted by nearly 3 to 1 to reject contact givebacks negotiated with UPS by Local 804 officials.

As a result, members won a better contract offer that both reversed the 2006 pension cuts and defeated new demands by UPS to cut pension benefits for new hires and divert part of members’ wages to pay for their pensions.

But Local 804 Teamsters didn’t stop after they defeated the givebacks. They formed a network called 804 Members United and launched a campaign to reform their local union bylaws.

Members fanned out across the local, distributing leaflets, talking Teamster-to-Teamster and collecting signatures. Two thousand members signed petitions supporting changes to the local union bylaws.

At the last membership meeting, Local 804 President Howard Redmond denounced members “who are handing out papers and dividing the local.”

But Redmond changed his tune yesterday—endorsing the bylaws proposals from the podium. Redmond also pledged to help members obtain pension documents that the Local 804 fund has failed to turn over to members in violation of the Pension Protection Act.

For more information, visit www.804membersunited.org.

March 27, 2008: Teamsters in New York Local 804 will vote this month on bylaws changes that will put more pension and contract information in the hands of the membership.

The first bylaws change will require the Local 804 Executive Board to include a report on the Local 804 benefit funds at every general membership meeting.

For ten years, the Local 804 pension fund earned dramatically substandard investment returns—resulting in a $100 million shortfall in the fund. But members never knew a thing about it.

The fund’s poor investment record and $378 million overall funding shortfall only came to light when some Local 804 Teamsters obtained a leaked copy of a pension fund actuarial report. By then, the fund had voted to cut the pension accrual by 30 percent.

“During the last contract, we were hit with a lot of propaganda from the company about our pension and very few members really felt like we had the facts. Having reports at our meetings will help members know what is happening with our fund so we can act as watchdogs when we have to,” said Chris Sabatino, a package car shop steward.

“Informed members mean a stronger union and stronger pensions, and that’s our goal,” Sabatino said.

A second change mandates Local 804 to set up a Contract Committee to inform and mobilize Local 804 members when a new contract is being negotiated.

When members were kept in the dark during the last contract, they launched the Local 804 Make UPS Deliver network.

The network held meetings, issued contract bulletins and led a Vote No campaign that defeated a weak contract recommended by both UPS and Local 804.

By voting No by a nearly three to one margin, Local 804 members won a new contract that restored their pensions without giving in to the company’s demand to eliminate 25 & Out pension benefits for new employees.

“UPSers remember 1997 and we know that we win better contracts when members are informed and not kept in the dark,” said Ken Reiman, a package car driver in Melville, N.Y.

“We don’t want another weak contract like this last one. By itself, voting Yes on this bylaws change won’t win us a good contract, but will send a message about what members want our union to do the next time we’re in negotiations.”

March 27, 2008: After years of apathy and neglect, members and new officers in Chicago Local 743 are working together to turn their union around.

Last year, the Local 743 president resigned and his replacement was indicted for stealing the 2004 election. In October, the membership of Local 743 elected a reform slate of officers to the union’s top spots.

“For years, members got no information from our union. No one ever talked to them. They never knew what was going on with the union,” says Yvette Gardner, a Local 743 member at Provident Hospital. “Now there’s a new sheriff in town.”

Membership Education

Since taking office in January, the new local leadership has brought members from across the local together for a series of educational workshops.

The workshops have covered legal rights on the job, the grievance procedure, and organizing skills—and there are more planned.

The new leadership has also created new stewards positions and recruited some of the most active members into these positions.

At Provident, Gardner became the new steward for her unit. She has scheduled a meeting with her co-workers and new president Richard Berg so that the members can discuss their problems directly with their top officer.

Even with new leadership, management hasn’t let up their harassment of members, reports John Watkins, a member at the University of Chicago Hospitals. “It’s all out war. They write people up. Fire them. Management does whatever they can get away with,” Watkins says.

“The workshop was a good step forward. I want more of my co-workers to attend. You’ve got to participate and get involved to make our union stronger.”

Years of Neglect

Weak contracts are another challenge for the new leadership. Local 743 has over 120 agreements—on average, three contracts expire each month.

Local 743 officers and members are putting together plans to build membership-based contract campaigns to help members have a voice in their contracts.

“We have years and years of mess to clean up,” Gardner says. “It just doesn’t happen overnight. We’re only three months into it—we’re going to stick with it and get results.”

March 10, 2008: A former president of Chicago Local 743, who resigned to try to avoid criminal prosecution, has now been indicted.

The reform team that drove him out of office is hard at work moving Local 743 in a new direction.

On March 6, Robert Walston became the latest disgraced Local 743 official to face federal prosecution on charges that they conspired to steal ballots and rig the 2004 local union election.

Walston mysteriously resigned from the Local 743 presidency last October just days before the first indictments came down.

Also added to the new indictment was Thaddeus Bania, Local 743’s comptroller and dues administrator. Bania is accused of helping Local 743 officials engineer a scheme to reroute hundreds of mail ballots to friends and supporters, in some cases employers.

Walston’s replacement Local 743 President Richard Lopez was also indicted, along with two former business agents and a former organizer.

TDU members and other reformers won a clean election supervised by the Department of Labor and are moving ahead to build a new Local 743 that fights for the members.

The new Local 743 leaders have slashed the salaries of top officers and launched an education program to provide training Local 743 stewards and activists—among other reforms.

“The training was very educational and I’m very proud to be a part of this very important movement,” said Local 743 member Yvette Gardner. “Things have been wrong for so long, hopefully with education we can get 743 back on track”.

Click here to read the indictment of disgraced former Local 743 officials.

February 27, 2007: This new video details how working Teamsters in Chicago took back Local 743.

On Jan. 1, Richard Berg and the New Leadership Slate took office in the 13,000 member local. This video looks at their long road to turn around their local.

Having trouble viewing the video? Click here to view the video on another website.

February 21, 2008: Two times in the last 18 months, UPS has blindsided Teamsters in New York City by demanding pension cuts. Now Local 804 Teamster members are organizing to get the information they need to defend their pensions.

Two thousand members have signed a petition to propose changes to the Local 804 bylaws that will put more contract and pension information in the hands of the Local 804 membership.

In November 2006, UPS forced through a 30 percent cut in pension accruals in Local 804. Management claimed that without the cuts the Local 804 fund would fall into “Critical Status” (the “Red Zone”) when the Pension Protection Act went into effect.

An actuarial report was leaked that revealed that the Local 804 pension fund had earned dramatically substandard returns on its investments for a decade. AON Consulting reported that, “The average investment returns over the past five years have been a little more than 3%; over the past 10 years the average return has been just 6%.”

Substandard Returns

Local 804’s pension investment returns were worse than the Central States Pension Fund over the same five and ten-year periods—and worse than other funds managed by AON Consulting.

“For comparison purposes, we looked at another substantial fund we work with and the average returns over similar periods were 6% over the last 5 years and nearly 10% over the past 10 years,” AON reported.

According to AON, the Local 804 pension fund had a $378 million shortfall—and approximately $100 million of this was due to poor investment performance.

“Members were shocked. We had always been told that our pension fund was in great shape,” said feeder driver Pete Mastrandrea.

“By mandating that our union include a report on our pension fund’s performance at every general membership meeting, we can make sure that the membership is never blindsided like this again,” Mastrandrea said.

Information Brownout

The second attack on Local 804 pensions came during UPS contract negotiations.

After months of secretive negotiations, UPS and Local 804 agreed to a new contract that would eliminate 25-and-out pensions for all new employees—a deal that was unanimously endorsed by the Local 804 Executive Board.

UPS sent every Local 804 member a letter saying that if the contract was not approved then it would be illegal for the fund to restore their pensions.

Members voted the contract down by 3 to 1 anyway.

As a result of their united stand, Local 804 members saved 25-and-out, defeated other givebacks and reversed the 2007 pension cuts.

Information is Power

The Local 804 Make UPS Deliver network showed that members can make a difference when they are informed and involved.

Many Local 804 members were still disappointed with the final contract and felt more could have been won if the membership had been better informed—about both contract negotiations and the real story with the Local 804 pension and the Pension Protection Act.

That’s when members decided to propose two changes to the Local 804 bylaws.

The first change will require the Executive Board to include a report on the Local 804 benefit funds at every general membership meeting.

The second bylaws change will mandate Local 804 to set up a Contract Committee to inform and mobilize Local 804 members whenever a new contract is being negotiated.

“This bylaws vote is about what kind of contracts and benefits we’re going to have in the future,” said shop steward Tim Sylvester. “Local 804 has always had some of the highest retirement benefits in the country. But we’ve fallen behind other funds like Washington D.C., Upstate New York, and the Western Conference.

“Local 804 has won top contracts and benefits by leveling with the members and getting people involved. We did that to win 25-and-out before the rest of the country. We did it in 1997. We can do it again,” Sylvester said.

Mandate for Change

Two hundred signatures are required to introduce bylaws changes in Local 804. As Convoy Dispatch goes to press, 2,000 members have signed each bylaws petition.

“Winning strong contracts and pensions by informing and mobilizing the membership is something that every Local 804 Teamster can unite behind,” said Jim Reynolds, an alternate steward and one of the leaders of the bylaws reform campaigns.

“Members proved that by signing these petitions in such huge numbers. This is really a mandate for positive change,” Reynolds said.

The proposed changes will be voted on at the next Local 804 membership meeting on April 20.

February 21, 2008: An “agitator” is the device in your washing machine that stirs things up and gets the dirt out.

That’s also the role played by Local 804 member and UPS package car driver Ken Reiman.

Better known by the name of his newsletter and website, the Local Agitator, Reiman exposes corporate greed at UPS and what working Teamsters can do about it.

Never one to duck controversy, Reiman uses his newsletter both to celebrate union achievements like the 1997 UPS strike and to cast a spotlight on Hoffa and Local 804 officials when they fail to stand up to Big Brown.

Reiman blasted his local executive board for unanimously endorsing the new concessionary contract—which Local 804 members voted against by a nearly three-to-one margin.

His website also lists the salaries of Local 804 officials who make $130,000 and up—noting that their salaries have grown by 40 percent in the last seven years, twice the rate of the UPS Teamsters they represent.

“I’m just trying to inform people and stimulate them and look at what UPS is doing to us and what’s happening in our union. Once members have the information, they can make their own minds.

“I don’t mind being called an agitator. We need to stir things up. That’s how you get change—and we need it,” Reiman said.

February 21, 2008: Wayne Shatkoff, president of Pittsburgh Local 249, was suspended from office on Feb. 8 for a year by the Local Executive Board, after the Board heard charges of blacklisting Teamsters in the movie industry. On February 13, a judge found the Shatkoff administration guilty of the same offense.

An administrative law judge who heard charges filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered Local 249 to pay some $70,000 plus interest to the three Teamsters who lost work. Some Local 249 members are planning to ask Shatkoff to reimburse the local for what will have to be paid out.

The three Teamsters had complained to Shatkoff and to the International Union about contracts that Shatkoff had bargained and about how he ran the movie division of the local. The Executive Board and the NLRB judge ruled that Shatkoff punished them for their union activity.

Shatkoff told us: “I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a political year in this local.” The Local 249 election will be later this year. The members of the E-Board ran on Shatkoff’s slate, but he now considers them political opponents.

Shatkoff has appealed the decision to Joint Council 40, and General President Hoffa has issued a “stay of effectiveness.” This is a common procedure, to allow someone to stay in office during the appeals process. Hoffa stipulated that Shatkoff must have nothing to do with job referrals in the movie industry.

One steward we spoke with called Shatkoff a “little dictator” and several others predicted that he will not be in office past the end of the year.

It looks like Local 249 may be headed for big changes in the near future.

February 15, 2008: The president of Pittsburgh Local 249 has been suspended from office for a year after the Local Executive Board heard charges of blacklisting Teamsters in the movie industry.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has charged Wayne Shatkoff with the same offense.

The NLRB does not have the power to suspend union officers, but could order the union to pay the three affected members lost wages for movie jobs in late 2006. This could be up to $70,000 in union funds. The NLRB has held a hearing, but no decision has been issued yet.

Shatkoff told us that, “I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a political year in this local.” The Local 249 election will be later this year. The members of the E-Board ran on Shatkoff’s slate, but he now considers them political opponents.

He has appealed the decision to Joint Council 40, and General President Hoffa has issued a “stay of effectiveness.” Allowing someone to stay in office during the appeals process is a common procedure. Hoffa stipulated that Shatkoff must have nothing to do with job referrals in the movie industry.

One steward we spoke with called Shatkoff a “little dictator” and several others predicted that he will not be in office past the end of the year.

It looks like Local 249 may be headed for some changes in the near future.

January 10, 2008: Change continues to be on the agenda in Chicago Local 726 as Members of the Fighting for the Future Team plan to re-introduce bylaws changes they made last January.

They’re at it again because they won a protest at Joint Council 25 over how Local 726 officers conducted the vote. This year, there has to be a verified count on the bylaws proposals, instead of a rigged voice vote.

Fighting for the Future is pushing for members to get a say on who bargains their contracts. Last year Fighting for the Future led a campaign to vote down a tentative agreement that failed to protect members’ jobs. Local 726 members voted down the deal twice and won improvements. This year, Fighting for the Future is proposing three changes:

• Include rank-and-file members on bargaining committees;
• Protect members’ voting rights by mandating advance notification from Local 726 on membership status for voting purposes;
• Increase membership participation in the local by setting a new meeting time for general membership meetings.

Vince Tenuto sees the bylaw changes this way: “It’s about making members’ voices heard. Leadership isn’t just who sits up front at the hall, it’s about members having a say on how our local runs. The officers ran a piss poor vote count last year and we made sure they were held accountable. The Joint Council backed us up. Now the membership has a real chance to vote these bylaw changes up at our March 2008 meeting. We can make Local 726 officers work for the members.”