March 2006: New York City Teamsters rallied on the steps of City Hall on March 5 to protest comments by the head of the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) calling Teamster warehouse wo

Commercial movers in Boston Local 82 are used to battling the nonunion competition. But now there’s a new group trying to take their work: union Carpenters. The Carpenters have been threatening customers with slowdowns if they don’t get the moving work which has always been in the Teamsters’ jurisdiction. And the tactic’s been working. Now Local 82 members are fed up and fighting back. When movers from Walsh Moving Company showed up at a recent job at 100 Federal St. in Boston, they found Carpenters already unloading the trailers. They alerted their fellow Teamsters at another moving company, Casey and Hayes, and members came down and confronted the carpenters, snapping their pictures.

Gold! Rumors of gold! It was said to be everywhere! According to Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, “Fortune lies upon the surface of the earth as plentiful as the mud in our streets.”

So began the historic California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and 1850s. Most came away with nothing more than fool’s gold.

History repeats itself.

This time the promise of gold has hit UPS facilities in the form of a rogue group called APWA (The Association of Parcel Workers of America). This group intends to be a “UPS Only” union that promises equal or better pensions and better health coverage than what we currently have.

March 16, 2006: This is a pivotal time for all of us. Perhaps the most crucial decision we will make as Teamsters is the choice we make in the upcoming election for General President of the IBT.

March 16, 2006: The winds of change are blowing in the Windy City, says Mark Day, a UPS driver in Chicago Local 705. “The members of my local are getting behind Tom Leedham.

Last October, when Local 25 Teamster Dave Vallone returned from 18 months of active duty with the Army Reserves, he looked forward to returning to work as a shop steward—and to running for delega

A high-level official of the Teamster Rail Conference’s Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) announced that he will challenge President Don Hahs for leadership of the BLET. Tom Brennan served as the staff counsel for the national division for eight years, before suddenly resigning his position in early February.

“In my opinion, [Hahs’] views and decisions are adversely impacting the survival of our craft and organization,” Brennan wrote in his resignation letter. Since then, he has exercised his seniority on the Norfolk Southern. In his declaration of candidacy, he claims that the “business as usual” attitude of Hahs and past presidents has made the BLET weaker with respect to the carriers and to rival union UTU, even as the rail industry is reaping “record profits.”

Imagine trains carrying toxic chemicals or nuclear waste through your town and across the wilderness. Now imagine that the train is operated by a lone employee working long hours. The first part is already reality. The part about a lone employee is the goal of the railroad employer group, the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC). All-Out Attack on Rail WorkersThe carriers first put out their plan to go to single-employee operations about 15 months ago, when they issued their bargaining demands to the Teamsters Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen (BLET) and the United Transportation Union (UTU).

From coast to coast, DHL Teamsters feel the same way: Hoffa did the company’s bidding and didn’t even bother to consult the affected Teamsters.

1. How soon after the formation of the IBT did reformers challenge an incumbent president? Two years. A slate of reformers narrowly lost against Cornelius Shea in 1905.