Reform Teamsters Gather to Back Insurgent Campaign
Jane Slaughter | Labor Notes
11/07/2010
“I havent been this excited since the early 1990s,” said a Teamster at a strategizing session for the Sandy Pope campaign. Pope, a local president in New York, is running against James Hoffa for the Teamsters presidency next year.
The early 1990s is when reformer Ron Carey bested two opponents to take the union’s top spot, backed by the reform caucus Teamsters for a Democratic Union. The mood this weekend in Chicago at TDU’s 35th annual convention is high and determined. Members and others are already out gathering petition signatures from fellow members to make Pope an accredited candidate.
One member from Long Island said he’d already gotten 500 signatures–the national target is 40,000–and pledged 500 more. Curtis Zeolla, who drives freight for ABF in Chicago, said all he has to say is that Pope is running against Hoffa, and most drivers are willing signers. ABF is suing the Teamsters for giving huge concessions to its competitor, YRC–the only other remaining signatory to the once-proud National Master Freight Agreement.
A quarter to a third of the convention is first-timers, but older heads reminded themselves of their similar grassroots effort that brought Carey to power in 1991. It was the first contest in which rank-and-file members had had the right to vote on top officers. Tim Buban, a retired local official from a Milwaukee UPS local, told delegates, “The power of the incumbency isnt what it used to be. Look at the national mood.”
Tom Leedham, a Portland, Oregon, local president, ran against Hoffa five years ago. He told the crowd, “I used to say Hoffa had a three-point program: talk tough, settle short, declare victory. Now he’s only got two points: sell out to the employers and sell it to the members.”
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