March 8, 2006. Freight and carhaul Teamsters will make less this year than last due to wages lost to inflation—despite COLA increases which will take affect next month.

Freight Teamsters will get an extra 10c raise on April 1 because inflation has jumped to 4.1% over the past year, triggering a payout from the cost of living clause in the National Master Freight Agreement. Under the NMFA, a COLA kicks in when inflation exceeds 3.5 percent—so freight Teamsters will get an extra dime or slightly less than 1/2 percent of the wage rate.

The carhaul contract has superior language, so carhaulers will get 21c per hour, or about 1%, on June 1. Carhaulers suffered a two year wage freeze in the present contract, and lost 6% of real wages to inflation, so the 1% increase is more than welcome.

These COLA increases are in addition to the regular wage increases of 45c (2.0%) for freight, and 40c (1.9%) for carhaul. The COLA for freight mileage pay is .25c per mile, and for carhaul it is 1.05c per loaded mile and .525c per running mile.

Even with COLA payout, freight and carhaul Teamsters will lose real wages over the year to inflation. Freight Teamsters will make 33c less this year than last, measured in “real wages”, the economists’ term that takes into account inflation. Carhaulers will make 27c per hour less.

International officers will get a COLA raise on July 1, calculated on a rather different formula, the details of which will be known in May. If inflation for that period is 4.1%, the COLA raise for James Hoffa will be $5.03 per hour, with similar increases for other IBT officials.

February 28, 2006: On February 25th, the 5,000 members of Local 200 elected all seven delegates and two alternates from the Buban/Connell Strong Contracts, Good Pensions Slate, handing a defeat to the slate heavily backed by the Hoffa Campaign and International VP Fred Gegare.

“In a record turn out for a delegate election, the members have sent a strong message,” said Local 200 Secretary Treasuer Tim Buban. They want reform at the national union in Washington. We intend to fight for all members at this year’s Teamster Convention.” Gegare went all out to win the election in Wisconsin’s largest Teamster local, but his Teamsters 4 Teamsters Slate got beat by a 60-40% margin.

In violation of the election Rules, Gegare mailed out a joint council newspaper to all Local 200 members featuring a big attack on TDU, with lies about the Central States Pension Fund. The members of Local 200 opted to elect delegates in support of Teamster reform and Tom Leedham.

The National Review Committee (Tyson Johnson for the IBT and Jim Roberts for TMI) ruled Teamster members covered under NMFA Supplements will no longer have the option of requesting a 3rd doctor’s evaluation in cases involving DOT medical examinations.

This giveback to the employers was tacked onto the end of a decision involving a Harrisburg Local 776 ABF member. This protection has been in place for decades and helps prevent the employers from imposing decisions made by company doctors. Prior to the latest ruling, the decision of the 3rd Doctor was binding.

It’s unclear now how the difference of opinion between a member’s doctor and that delivered by a company doctor will be resolved. Leaving each such case up to the panels is not a solution, especially when a better procedure has been in place for so long.

Confronted by members, Tyson Johnson now claims that he did not sign the decision (even though his signature appears on it) and there are rumblings that it could be overturned.

What is going on at the IBT and in the freight division? Why are long-time provisions being traded away? If the decision is overturned, what will the IBT end up giving the employers in exchange?

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February 1, 2006. There was a time when candidates for Convention delegate paid Hoffa to ride his coattails. Hoffa’s campaign would charge his supporters to pose for campaign photos with the General President. But Hoffa’s pension cuts and other failures have shifted the political winds—and sent Hoffa’s associates ducking for cover.

From Detroit to Nashville, from Seattle to Atlanta, some Hoffa delegate candidates never mention their candidate, and pretend that they will go to the Convention “neutral” or “uncommitted”. Some of those who claim they to be undecided are, in fact, on the Hoffa payroll.

Hoffa’s good friend, International Rep. Earl Walker, heads up Hoffa’s home Local 614 in Michigan. But Earl’s delegate campaign literature never mentions Hoffa, or that he will vote to nominate him at the Convention. His literature even copies Leedham’s platform.

Hoffa’s friends in Seattle Local 174 list their ten most important issues for the IBT convention; nowhere on that list do they mention that they will vote to nominate Hoffa. Their lead candidate pretends he is uncommitted, even though it is apparent that the Hoffa campaign is bankrolling his slate, and he joined the Hoffa walkout when Tom Leedham spoke at the 2001 Convention.

If Hoffa’s supporters really believe in their candidate, why are they hiding their identity in so many delegate races?

January 30, 2006: The campaign for Teamster president is starting to heat up—with the opposing slates employing competing strategies.

Both Hoffa and the Tom Leedham Strong Contracts, Good Pensions Slate have campaign pages in the February Teamster magazine and on their websites. But the similarity ends there.

While Hoffa is struggling to keep defectors in the fold and put a glossy sheen on his failed record, Tom Leedham is drawing in new support and building a grassroots network of Teamster campaigners.

Leedham has built on the vote he got in the last election—picking up support from Teamster members and officers who are disaffected with
Hoffa because of the decline in Teamster power during his seven years in office.

Hoffa may be his own worst enemy. He is haunted by his broken promises of “No Dues Increase,” “25-and-Out,” and “No Corruption”—and by his broken pledge that “Health and pension benefits are guaranteed” under the master contracts he negotiated.

The Hoffa “Unity” that was formerly rock solid among Teamster officials is cracking, if not crumbling. It took an all-out pressure offensive to hold together his Unity Slate when Freight Director Tyson Johnson launched an aborted third slate in December. While Johnson is back in the fold, other key Hoffa supporters have turned against him or dropped away from active campaigning.

Third Slate?

Johnson, who announced his candidacy for Teamster President on Dec. 12, abandoned that campaign just two weeks later. Reportedly Johnson will retire from office. At the eleventh hour, Hoffa vice presidents and consultants convinced Johnson to drop out, all using the argument that Leedham would surely win a three-way race.

Some Teamster officials would rather let the union continue to go downhill under Hoffa than risk a Leedham victory.

But many officials, including several in the Freight Division, refuse to come back to Hoffa. Some allies who helped put Hoffa in office are no longer with him. Even his former Executive Assistant, Carlow Scalf, is working against Hoffa’s reelection. Former Freight Director Phil Young, International Vice President Tom O’Donnell, New Jersey Joint Council President Don DiLeo, among others, have split from Hoffa.

To many officers it looks like Hoffa has not only abandoned Teamsters in freight, but he relies more on his consultants and handlers than the local officers who put in power.

Whether these developments will lead to a third slate, a coalition with Leedham, or something else, remains to be seen. In any event, they show that Hoffa has lost key support, at the same time that Leedham is reaching out to draw leaders who formerly backed Hoffa into the campaign and slate.

With no positive record to run on, Hoffa’s strategy is to go negative. Hoffa’s campaign ads call Leedham a “loser,” because Leedham lost to Hoffa in 1998 and in 2001.

But that approach may fall flat: thousands of Teamsters feel like they have been the big losers under the Hoffa administration.

Since Hoffa took office, our union has lost 100,000 members; hundreds of thousands of Teamsters have had pension and health benefits cut; and many officers feel Hoffa has lost touch with local officers and lost control of our union to inside-the-beltway consultants.

PR Campaign vs Ground War

The Hoffa Campaign will rely on a big fundraising advantage to bankroll a glossy PR campaign. Hoffa pays some 148 multiple salaries to Teamster officials—not including the hundreds more on the Hoffa payroll, most of whom can be made to pony up big bucks to his campaign.

Leedham is relying on grassroots fundraising to finance a “ground war” campaign based on Teamster-to-Teamster outreach.

The campaign has launched a Strong Contracts, Good Pensions tour that is putting candidates in the field to talk with Teamsters about what it will take to rebuild our union’s strength.

Hoffa can only buy another term of office if we let him. The PR attacks of Hoffa’s consultants are no match for Teamster members if we’re organized in the terminals, hubs, factories, warehouses, job sites, and other Teamster workplaces.

The Leedham Campaign is building a Teamster army. It’s time for you to enlist.

January 30, 2006: John Thyer, the secretary-treasurer of St. Louis Local 604 and an experienced union leader, has joined the Tom Leedham Strong Contracts, Good Pensions Slate to help strengthen and rebuild the IBT Carhaul Division and the Teamsters Union as a whole.

“Under Hoffa, we’ve got a shrinking union and shrinking Teamster power,” Thyer said. “Hoffa has lost touch with the members and cut local officers out of the loop.”

Thyer has been outspoken against weak enforcement of the national carhaul contract, a lack of effective organizing, and concessions that the Hoffa administration has given the employers that violate the contract and have locals underbidding each other. Stewards and members from other locals often rely on him for help.

Thyer considered a run for Teamster President, but met with Tom Leedham and decided to team up with Tom and his slate. He’s been a Teamster for 31 years and principal officer of Local 604 for 12 years. “I look forward to taking this campaign to the Teamster members. They know this union is headed in the wrong direction."

January 30, 2006:It’s the first rule of politics. When you can’t run on your record, you lie, spin and go negative.

Hoffa campaign operative Richard Leebove has made millions off of Teamster elections with his lies and distortions.

And he’s at it again in this month’s Teamster magazine. Under Hoffa, the Teamsters Union has lost over 100,000 members.

To cover for his failures, Hoffa’s campaign operatives lie about Hoffa’s organizing failures and distort Tom Leedham’s record.

In the February Teamster magazine campaign “battle pages” Hoffa brags, “We have added nearly 200,000 new members.”

He also charges that Tom Leedham’s Local 206 lost 17 percent of its membership over the last five years because of decertifications. Both claims are outright lies.

The Truth Squad is here to present Teamster members with the facts so you can cut through the spin and make up your own mind.


Membership Loss Under Hoffa

• The Teamsters Union has lost over 100,000 members since Hoffa took office.
• In the mid 1990’s, before Hoffa, the Teamsters Union reversed a 16-year decline in membership in the mid-1990s by launching aggressive organizing campaigns.
• When Hoffa pushed through the biggest dues increase in Teamster history, he nearly doubled the International Union’s income. But Hoffa has failed to use these new resources to organize and grow our union.
• The membership additions under Hoffa have come through mergers not organizing. Three mergers added 140,000 members to our union, inflating Hoffa’s numbers and covering for the lost Teamster members since Hoffa took office in 1999.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor LM-2 Reports filed by the Hoffa administration.


The Facts: Local 206 Membership

• Like most Teamster locals that are not predominately UPS or public sector locals, Local 206 has lost members due to changes in the U.S. economy. More than 90 percent of Local 206’s membership loss is due to companies closing down or moving to another local jurisdiction.

• Much of the Local 206’s membership “loss” came when Food Service of America, moved into a neighboring local union’s geographic jurisdiction. These members are not “lost.” They are proud Teamsters in Local 324.

• The Hoffa administration has failed to help Teamster locals to organize and grow—despite the largest dues increase in Teamster history. Hoffa’s own home Local 614 has suffered a double-digit membership decline.

Tom Leedham is running for General President to reinvigorate Teamster organizing. Leedham will rebate money to Teamster locals to help them organize the nonunion competition.

Unlike Hoffa, Leedham will take responsibility for rebuilding Teamster organizing—not pass the buck to Teamster officers and blame them for our union’s membership losses.


Employer Donations—A Big Lie

In the same Teamster magazine campaign ads, Leebove and Hoffa claim that the Tom Leedham Strong Contracts, Good Pensions campaign is “linked to employer funding.”

This is another outright lie.

Accepting direct or indirect employer contributions is a blatant violation of Federal Law and the IBT Election Rules.

If Hoffa had any evidence to back up his bogus claims, he would immediately file a charge with the Teamster Election Supervisor and the Department of Labor.

But Hoffa restricts his charges to the Teamster magazine. Why? Because his claims are campaign propaganda and nothing more.

Leebove should know all about employer contributions. The Election Administrator expelled him from the 1998 campaign for making an illegal $167,000 contribution to Hoffa. Leebove was suspended from the 2001 campaign for hinting to employers that they should donate to Hoffa’s campaign.
Source: Decisions of the Election Administrator.

Commercial movers and art handlers in New York City have defeated an attempt to merge their local union. Members voted by 60 percent against the proposed merger—despite a barrage of mailings by both Local 814 and Local 810 officials trying to sell it.

The merger had the endorsement of New York Joint Council 16. But it did not have support of the Local 814 membership. The no vote shows once again the value of the right to vote on mergers. TDU members proposed this constitutional reform for years at Teamster Conventions before it was finally approved in 2001.

“What Local 814 needs is new, strong leadership that will fight for strong contracts and organize the nonunion competition—not a merger into a weak local with a history of corruption,” said Walter Taylor, one of the leaders of the Vote No effort. “Now that we’ve defeated this merger, hopefully we can get down to the real business of rebuilding union strength in the moving industry and for all of our local’s members.”

Teamster Local 814 members in New York City had a tough year in 2005. First they were hit with concessions and pension cuts after the IBT gave them no strike support in a fight with the Movers Association. Then they were blindsided with a proposed merger into Teamsters Local 810—a local with a long history of corruption scandals, bloated officers’ salaries, and embezzlement.

The anti-merger effort was led by the same members who formed a rank-and-file network to fight for a strong contract during last summer’s negotiations. Some Local 814 officials also opposed the merger, including George Daniello who had ambitions of his own to head the local.

Daniello got his wish. In the wake of the merger defeat, Local 814 President Pete Furtado has retired and Daniello has taken his place.

To defeat the merger, members distributed informational leaflets about Local 810’s record of corruption and dues waste and it’s weak record on organizing—an issue that is critical to the future of Teamster commercial movers whose wages and benefits are being undermined because of growing nonunion competition.

The committee also revealed that president Lou Smith has nearly doubled his salary to $244,845.

Local 810 has lost 2,000 members since 1997. The only organizing Smith is known for is a sweetheart contract he signed with the Cipriani family to undercut a strike by the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union. That move landed Smith a suspension from union office in 1999.

“The men were fed up. They saw this merger as a dues grab that was for the benefit of certain union officials and not the members,” said Billy Esser, Sr., a Local 814 Teamster at Hanover Moving and Storage. “We don’t want more business as usual. We want real change and we’re standing up for it.”

The Local 814 merger was defeated because rank-and-file members put in action an organized plan to inform and unite the local’s membership. That same combination of rank-and-file organization and unity is what it will take to rebuild Local 814 as a union that delivers strong contracts and good benefits.

January 30, 2006: What Happens When Elections Are Not Supervised! Members Prove Chicago Local Rigged Election January 30, 2006. “We knew the election was stolen from us. But I don’t think we expected to get the black and white proof, and see how they did it,” explained Richard Berg, leader of the New Leadership Slate in Chicago Local 743.

Berg referred to documents obtained by his attorney, Tom Geoghegan, from the U.S. Department of Labor showing that hundreds of ballots were diverted to the addresses of employers, stewards and even a Russian bath house that the union president frequents. Those ballots were then voted and counted in the December 2004 local union election.

The phony ballots, which were mailed in bulk to stewards, employers and cronies, kept Robert Walston in office instead of the New Leadership Slate, which would have won the election. The election was already a “do-over” that Walston called after Berg won two months earlier by seven votes (despite the ballot box stuffing!).

The local leadership was named as corrupt in the April 2004 report by former Teamster anti-corruption czar Ed Stier, before he resigned his position in protest. The officers also use Hoffa’s political advisor Richard Leebove as a consultant. The Department of Labor has gone to federal court against the Local 743 leadership to overturn the vote.

New Leadership Slate is also planning their own legal action in addition to the Department of Labor action. And they continue to build their support among the rank and file. The New Leadership Slate plans to run a slate of delegate candidates to represent Local 743 with honest leaders at the IBT Convention. With an independent Election Supervisor in place, they believe they can get a fair election there.

January 30, 2006: Hoffa is trying to block all opposition candidates from getting on the ballots. Will your local elect delegates who will nominate the Tom Leedham Slate and give members a choice?

Pension Reform
Hundreds of thousands of Teamsters have had their benefits cut under Hoffa. Will your delegates support reforms to hold pension trustees accountable to the members?

Strong Contracts, Not Dues Waste
Will your delegates vote to eliminate multiple salaries for Teamster officials and dedicate the savings to organizing the nonunion competition and fighting for strong contracts?

No Dues Hikes
Will your delegates vote to require a membership vote on future increase to the dues formula?