Transport Workers Solidarity Committee

IBT BLET Rail Members Save the Right to Vote For Their Top Officers

http://tdu.org/blet-right-to-vote
BLET Members Save the Right to Vote
August 30, 2010: By an overwhelming vote of 6,305 to 2,452, members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) in the Teamsters have saved the Right to Vote for their top officers.

BLET members won the Right to Vote in 2006, by a smaller margin and lower turnout.

That was before three of the union’s top officers left in disgrace for misusing tens of thousands of dollars of union funds, double-dipping on expenses, and soliciting a $20,000 bribe from an attorney.

Members Organize

In December, officials from Divisions 13, 98, 155, and 236 started circulating petitions to take away the Right to Vote, and the issue was put to a referendum vote. Behind the scenes, top BLET officers campaigned hard to take away members’ democratic rights.

Right away, rank-and-file members and local officers mobilized to protect their rights.

“The Right to Vote gives us the tools to hold our leaders accountable, punish officers who violate our trust, and root out corruption from our union,” said Hugh Sawyer, President of BLET Division 316 and a member of TDU’s Steering Committee, in a letter that was mailed to all BLET members.

Top local Teamster In Minneapolis splits with Hoffa on his slate
http://www.startribune.com/business/99670394.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

Top local Teamster splits with Hoffa

Longtime Twin Cities labor leader Tom Keegel dropped out of the union's leadership campaign after running three times as Hoffa's No. 2 man.

By MIKE HUGHLETT, Star Tribune
Last update: July 30, 2010 - 11:33 PM

Khue Bui, Associated Press

Veteran Twin Cities labor leader Tom Keegel has been at James P. Hoffa's side in the Teamsters union for 12 years.

The Hoffa-Keegel ticket -- with Hoffa as president and Keegel as the No. 2 man -- has won three elections and was gearing up for the 2011 campaign for leadership of the giant union.

But earlier this month, Keegel abruptly announced his impending retirement and his departure from the 2011 Hoffa ticket, questioning the direction of the union in a letter circulated to the union's leadership.

It marked the second recent outcropping of dissatisfaction among longtime -- and high-ranking -- Teamster supporters of Hoffa.

In May, Green Bay Teamsters leader Fred Gegare, a member of the union's executive board, announced he would challenge Hoffa in the 2011 election for president. At the time, he criticized Hoffa for surrounding himself with appointees who weren't elected by Teamster members.

IBT BLET Railworkers Anti Democracy Initiative Passes First Hurdle
http://tdu.org/node/3989
BLET Anti Democracy Initiative Passes First Hurdle
June 4, 2010: In 2006, BLET members voted two-to-one for the Right to Vote for top officers. But now some officials are trying to take it away—and they’re one step closer to their goal.

Last December, a few BLET officials put forward an initiative to reverse the membership vote and take away the Right to Vote.

To get past the first hurdle with their anti-democracy initiative, these officials had to get divisions representing 25 percent of the membership to endorse the initiative. They’ve reportedly succeeded—at least in round one.

Now the opponents of democracy have to get over a much bigger hurdle. This month, the entire membership of the BLET will be mailed a ballot to vote on whether or not they want to give up the Right to Vote.

The timing couldn’t be better for officers who want to avoid having an election. The first ever one-member, one-vote election is scheduled for this November. In April, rank-and-file member Tom Brennan announced his candidacy for the top spot. And this week, BLET President Paul Sorrow announced he’s stepping down in July.

600 ILWU Local 30 Boron miners have been locked out now for 2 ½ months by Britishbased Rio Tinto, one of the largest mining conglomerates in the world. If we don’t stop this attack, ILWU warehouse Local 20 also employed by Rio Tinto at the Borax terminal in the port of Los Angeles could be next. Their contract expires in one year. And Rite Aid warehouse workers near L.A., ILWU’s greatest organizing success recently, will find it tough negotiating
their contract. The Longshore Division has always said that Warehouse is our critical flank in the fight against PMA employers.

Scab borax cargo from Boron is being loaded onto ships in LA harbor now! In fact, scab cargo was being loaded in LA while the Longshore Caucus was in session. (This is public information at www.track-trace.com, Hit “container” on top of the page, then put in container #SEAU7838112, reported by locked out Boron miners. It shows the “full load” scab box was put on the Maersk Altair voyage #1004 @ 13:58 April 5 at APM terminal Pier 400 in LA.) That was the first day of the Longshore Caucus. Nuff said! You can be sure PMA is watching this one closely.

Mass Transit Cuts Leave Passengers Stranded: Coalition To Keep American Moving formed & ATU Leader Hanley Running For National President "Enough Is Enough"

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-11/columns/mass-transit-cuts-leave-passengers-stranded/
Mass Transit Cuts Leave Passengers Stranded
Big wheels unmoved
By Tom Robbins
published: May 11, 2010

Morgan Schweitzer

Mass transit is democracy on wheels. It is the great equalizer that lets lawyers and waitresses, messengers and professors enjoy equal-opportunity jostling aboard buses, subways, and trains.

It is the backbone of every great American city, the lifeline upon which jobs, commerce, and education all depend. It is the surest antidote to global warming, a long-term remedy for that sinister oil gusher now fouling the Gulf Coast. And right now—just when we need it the most—mass transit is taking a nationwide pounding the likes of which has not been seen in a generation.

Already this year, San Francisco has cut its service by 10 percent; Chicago by 18 percent; Atlanta sliced 30 percent of its buses and trains; Detroit slashed almost a third of its entire system. Here in New York, we are losing two entire subway lines and a couple dozen bus routes. Some 1,300 station agents and cleaners are due to be laid off. They are even giving pink slips to bus stops these days: Last week, bright pink signs appeared along many city streets. "This is no longer a bus stop," they read.

Turning up the heat in Orange County IBT Local 952
http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/10/turning-up-the-heat
Turning up the heat in Local 952
Edgar Esquivel, a UPS worker in Orange County, Calif., reports on the progress of the new reform movement in his Teamster local.
May 10, 2010

Teamsters Local 952 members on strike against the Orange Country Transportation Authority in 2007

FIVE MONTHS after it was born, the grassroots movement Reform Teamsters 952 has gained significant momentum through rank-and-file workers' efforts to change the direction of their union.

In recent weeks, the group, made up of pragmatic rank-and-file workers from Teamsters Local 952 in Orange County, Calif., has campaigned at numerous worksites, including UPS, CVS, Coca-Cola, Straub (the local Budweiser distributor), UPS Freight and Yellow Freight--and has been well-received by workers at each of these companies.

But perhaps the biggest shock to the Local 952 system came at the UPS hub in Laguna, Calif., where the reform movement was launched. In late April, UPSers from the Coast Center at the Laguna hub organized several votes of "no confidence" against their shop stewards, who were controlled by the union old guard.

IBT Pres Hoffa Jr. removes Richard Berg, Chicago Local 743 Teamster President, from office
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2010/5/10/hoffa-removes-richard-berg-local-743-teamster-president-office?utm_source=Fight Back! News
Hoffa removes Richard Berg, Local 743 Teamster President, from office
Members fighting mad
By Staff | May 9, 2010
Read more articles in Teamsters
Chicago, IL - Fight Back! learned May 9 that Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., at a meeting in Las Vegas, has joined with the corrupt Teamsters officials in Chicago to remove President Richard Berg and Secretary Treasurer Gina Alvarez from office in Local 743. Berg and Alvarez are rank-and-file reformers who fought for years against the gangsters who ran their union while Hoffa and officers of the Joint Council in Chicago turned a blind eye to the corruption in the local.

While the official decision has yet to be received, Berg confirmed that he has been notified. The decision rests upon a charge brought against Berg and Alvarez by other officers in 743 who had turned against the reform agenda.

The factual basis of the charge is that Berg had let go a former staff member who was no longer able to perform his duties. A severance was agreed upon, which the local executive board was informed of and to which they assented. Six months later, the same board members cooked up a scheme with the top Teamster old guard in Chicago. These ex-reformers knew the Joint Council was dominated by officials who were hostile to Berg and Alvarez’ agenda - reviving a fighting union with power in the hands of the members. The sole charge upon which the two are being removed was Berg’s failure to get an official vote from the board.

SFO IBT-UAL Shop Steward Joe Prisco On Union Democracy & Union Power
http://blip.tv/file/3445576
On March 6, 2010 SFO IBT-UAL Shop Steward Joe Prisco at a forum talked about the struggle
for democracy and membership power in the IBT UAL locals. The local membership when
they were joined in the IBT were divided up between LA and SF locals by alphabetical names.
Production of Labor Video Project, P.O. Box 720027 San Francisco, CA 94172
laborvideo.blip.tv www.laborvideo.org (415)2821908

Harry Bridges: Working-Class Hero
http://www.truthout.org/harry-bridges-working-class-hero57935
Harry Bridges: Working-Class Hero
Wednesday 24 March 2010
by: Dick Meister, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

He died 20 years ago this month, but I can still see him, a tall, wiry, gray-haired, hawk-nosed man. I can hear him.

I see him pacing restlessly back and forth behind the podium at union meetings, nervously twirling a gavel, puffing incessantly on a cigarette. I hear him calling on members, white, black, Asian, Latino, in the broad accent of his native Australia, actually encouraging debate and dissent.

He died in San Francisco at the age of 88 - Harry Bridges, co-founder and for 40 years president of one of the most influential organizations in this or any other country, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

Bridges often was irritating to the ILWU's friends and foes alike. He was irascible and obstinate. But he was unquestionably one of the past century's greatest leaders.

Bridges was not in it for money. His salary as union president was far less than he would have made had he remained a working longshoreman. Bridges was in it because of his unswerving belief in "the rank-and-file," as he once told me, a naive and inquisitive young reporter - "the working stiff, that's who! Can you understand that?"

New NYC TWU 100 Transit Union Crew Hits Hard at Former TWU Leaders, MTA on $
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/01/new_transit_uni.php

Runnin' Scared
Labor
New Transit Union Crew Hits Hard at Former TWU Leaders, MTA on $
By Roy Edroso, Friday, Jan. 29 2010 @ 10:51AMComments (0)
Categories: Featured, Transportation

​The new administration of Transit Workers Union Local 100 -- which swept out the old regime on a Take Back Our Union ticket last year -- is apparently looking back in anger, and leaking details of questionable expenses under the leadership of former Local 100 boss Roger Toussaint and his successor, Curtis Tate. amNYhas learned that in 2008, the union sprang for atwo trips to Great Adventure for thousands of its members, costing $1.7 million.
Toussaint tells amNY that the union had scaled back its annual Great Adventure "Family Day," which it started in 2001, after litigation resulting from the 2005 transit strike ate into its finances, but went ahead with these last hurrahs -- one held last year, another scheduled for later this year -- because they couldn't cancel the reservation. He said union officials have constantly and conscientiously re-negotiated its deals with the amusement park, and that this expense was only coming up as "a political issue more than anything else."