Teamsters leaving AFL CIO??

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trickpony1

Guest
I'm not sure what to make of this. Could be a double edged sword.

Anyone with thoughts on this?
 
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moreluck

Guest
"We will not try to re-organize workers already in unions, but focus on the nearly 90% of workers who are not in unions."

Does that mean they will head over to FDX's playground and start signing them up??
 
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susiedriver

Guest
One of the reasons for the schism with the AFL-CIO was that the Teamsters (and others) wanted more funds directed towards organizing, while the AFL-CIO wanted the funds to go to political parties. One can only hope that organizatio0n will move to the forefront, though FDX is a might tough nut to crack, and their owner has repeatedly threatened to close shop if they ever went union. Frankly, I dont see any reason for a FDX employee to join the Teamsters.
 
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wkmac

Guest
susiedriver,
I heard the same thing concerning the issue of organizing. I also agree with you that why would a FDX employee join the IBT? Why join and then stand the chance of being thrown into a financially weak health and welfare plan. Their addition admittedly would benefit us (UPSers) but it may only move the implosion of the fund off a few years. JMO.
 
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trickpony1

Guest
Do you think Fred would really close shop if the members voted the union in?
Is Fred playing the odds that all his employees are "up to their ears" in debt and don't want to risk losing their livelihood?
I think it's just a scare tactic.
 
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susiedriver

Guest
trickpony1,

Yes, I do believe he would close up if faced with that possibility. He has sucessfully fought every attempt to organize freight & ground so far. He has a lot of cash to throw against any organizing effort.

Read about his history, especially regarding Greyhound Bus.
 
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ok2bclever

Guest
Yep, he is a vicious and efficient anti-union guy.

We may get help from UPS management in recruiting fedex workers into the Teamsters with the thought that fred would close up shop.
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Adding funds to the pension funds would just be a bonus.
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Truly, fred might as well close up shop if his workers, errr contractors win employee status and become union as he couldn't possibly compete with us if he had to start paying them similar wages, benefits and pension contributions and would go out of business regardless of whether he closed up or not and he knows it.

That said, he knows the ropes, has the money and would have no qualms on making it a tough, "no holds barred" vicious suicide fight with his workers.

I don't see it happening.
 
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susiedriver

Guest
Agreed,

This is probably the best chance for a change at Fedex:
http://www.detnews.com/2005/business/0507/23/biz-256616.htm

If this gets it's day in court, if the decision goes in favor of the contractors, and if it is not appealed for years, it will give us a good idea of the future of FDX.

My bet is eventually Fred gives up the ground, but with his pals, and I'm sure some sit on the appeals court, you never know.
 
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isdrone

Guest
I have been following this for some time. Andrew Stern has been talking about this for some time.
Labor is in a tough spot right now. Membership is decreasing at an incredible rate. Has the time of unions past? I do not know. In the 1800's and early 1900's companies pretty much did what they wanted to employees. Things have changed. Before someone blows a gasket let me explain. Child labor, sweatshops, etc. were the norm - third world working conditions. Do some of these places still exist in America? Probably, but they are the exception, not the norm.
Will FedEx and DHL be organized? Probably not. The unions do not have the funds to go after these companies. I would like to see both of them organized and level the playing field.
Overnite? The only way Overnite will be organized is in the 2008 contract. They did not want to join before and are still sensitive about it.
The actions of the past few days could change the landscape of labor forever. It could be the beginning or a new golden era or the end.
I will be an interested observer........
 
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tieguy

Guest
any teamsters consider this a little underhanded? Didn't the AFL/CIO bankroll the 97 strike?
 
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1timepu

Guest
Unions in order for them to succeed they have to get the majority of the public on their side, like in the past when Unions fought for the minimum wage and got it not just for Union members but for everybody, they need to fight for something that affects everybody not just union members, something like a 45hr work week, you cant be forced to work more than 45hrs in one week, only if you wanted to, now that would affect everybody if the Unions fought for something like that, also you will se membership rise again this time with low end office workers who make <font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font><font color="ff0000">•</font> and are asked to put in 50 60 hr work weeks
 
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bamboonga

Guest
"any teamsters consider this a little underhanded? Didn't the AFL/CIO bankroll the 97 strike?"

Um...yeah...and look at how helpful that was - didn't UPS lose like 30% of its business because of that strike?
 
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sawman

Guest
Looks like Hoffa has figured out a way to get his greedy hands on another 10 million dollars of the members money!
 
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ok2bclever

Guest
DHL is being organized bit by bit as the company is a conglomerate of tons of twelve people companies in reality.

Will this turn into an overall union majority, time will tell.

Fedex, probably not unless the contractor issue goes solidly towards the workers advantage (another tough sell with the current political atmosphere).

Overnite, they are what, something like 13-15 percent Teamster now and I would say much of the anti-union atmosphere was generated by the extremely anti-union owners.

Now the "owners" are UPS, so only time will tell what happens there.

The AFL/CIO more like "backed" the bankrolling of the '97 strike and I believe one could make the case that eight years of affiliation dues pretty much put paid to that "thank you".

It's all politics and philosophical differences on how to "grow" the unions in this split and personally I don't see this as having any major negative impact on the entire union issue.

I wouldn't be surprised if Hoffa starts asking us to turn in union "sales leads" now.
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PS - Actually he already did that where they had that cut out sales lead thing on the Teamster mag that you could give to local DHL guys in your area now that I think of it.
 
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susiedriver

Guest
July 27, 2005: 9:39 AM EDT
By Chris Isidore, CNN/Money senior writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The U.S. union movement split apart this week over how to best organize workers at non-union companies.

Two of the largest unions left the AFL-CIO this week, and others are threatening to follow.

But even without the defections, the battle for new recruits is an uphill one.

While unions have sometimes found willing managements in the public sector, employer hostility to organizing campaigns is the rule in the private sector.

But that doesn't stop the unions from trying, especially with union membership now down to about one out of every 12 private-sector employees.

From talking to professors, union officials and other experts, here are the companies that are on the top of organized labor's wish list.
Wal-Mart Stores

The largest private-sector employer in the country with 1.3 million employees, Wal-Mart is by far the biggest target for labor. And so far it has been among the most unattainable.

Unions have won the right to hold organizing votes at only a few Wal-Mart locations. The only time that a union won a vote was in 2000 -- 10 butchers signed on for representation at a Jacksonville, Texas store. Two weeks later, Wal-Mart got rid of all its butcher operations nationwide.

Most recently, in February, Wal-Marttire and lube shop employees in Loveland, Colo., and New Castle, Pa., voted against representation.

At this point, the union efforts at Wal-Mart are focused on building community pressure rather than getting employees to sign union cards, said Jim Papian, spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, one of the insurgent groups boycotting this week's AFL-CIO convention.

"There is no way I can put a time line on when this or that will happen," he said of the next organizing vote at Wal-Mart. "We are coalescing civil rights groups, women's groups, community groups, drawing attention to Wal-Mart's practices. When we get the critical mass, then we'll start seeing what happens."

Wal-Mart says that its nationwide average hourly pay for full-time employees is $9.68 an hour. The United Food and Commercial Workers union argues the rate averages only $8.23 an hour, citing what it said is independent expert statistical analysis.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the average hourly wage for all non-supervisory retail employees nationwide is $12.34.

Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman says the government data is inflated by overtime, and that Wal-Mart's pay scale is competitive and in many cases higher in every market it operates in.

"If you look at where our stores are, we have an awful lot of rural stores [where average wages are lower]," he said.
FedEx

FedEx (Research) is essentially a non-union company, with only its pilots represented by a union.

Its competitors are mostly unionized -- United Parcel Service (Research) and old-line trucking companies such as Yellow Corp. (Research), both represented by the Teamsters union, as well as the U.S. Postal Service, which is fully unionized.

While UPS has continued to thrive even while paying union pay and benefit levels, many unionized trucking companies have gone out of business.

The unions have an extra hurdle in attempting to organize FedEx, however, because express carriers operate under different labor law than most companies.

Under that law, a union would have win a vote of all FedEx employees in certain job classification, such as delivery driver or package sorter, rather than trying to win a series of votes at specific facilities, which is the more typical organizing method.

FedEx Express, its core overnight operation, has about 139,000 employees, the overwhelming majority in the United States.
Verizon Wireless

Unions have very good representation within the traditional land-line phone companies. But they have been much slower making inroads among providers of wireless communications.

One success story for the unions is Cingular Wireless, the joint venture between SBC Communications (Research) and BellSouth (Research) and the nation's largest wireless provider.

Cingular marks the unions' only significant private sector organizing success story of the past decade. Out of 63,300 U.S. employees, Cingular has almost 22,000 workers represented by the Communications Workers of America.

Unions have not had as much luck at Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications (Research) and Vodafone, which has nearly 50,000 employees.

"CWA has made progress organizing some wireless workers. (Verizon Wireless) is probably the target with the best shot right now," said Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research institute specializing in labor market policies.
Toyota, Honda or Nissan

Today, Japanese automakers have 25 plants in North America, employing about 56,000 employees, and more are planned.

Korean and European automakers also are opening U.S. plants, and production from all plants operated by non-U.S. companies account for almost as much output as General Motors (Research) and more than either Ford Motor Co (Research). or Chrysler Group (Research).

But most of those plants are non-union.

With the Big Three looking to shrink capacity and trim staff, it is essential for the United Auto Workers to make a breakthrough with these so-called "transplants" assembly plants.

So far it has come up empty, losing a vote at a Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tenn. in October 2001.

"There are organizers at a number of foreign-owned auto plants in the South. They're putting together committees, identify leadership, training workers," said Stewart Acuff, the AFL-CIO's director of organizing. "These will be long fights."
Comcast and IBM

Comcast (Research), the nation's largest cable operator is primarily non-union. But the Communications Workers of America is making a concerted effort at a number of Comcast locations around the nation.

The company has about 59,000 employees in its cable and Internet operations.

Comcast says that unions represent about 1,500 of those employees, down from 3,600 when the company completed its purchase of AT&amp;T Cable in 2002.

While the union has been holding organizing elections, Comcast has been pushing for union decertification elections during the same period.

The CWA also has an effort at IBM (Research) that got its start when the computer maker announced plans to change its pension plans in 1999 from a traditional plan that paid a fix amount per month as long as a retiree lived to one paid a lump sum.

But after IBM made some changes to answer criticisms of that shift, some of the union efforts there calmed down, said Marcus Courtney, president of WashTech, the high tech organizing arm of CWA.

"The Alliance at IBM is still an active campaign, but we've not been able to build enough support to get to the point to have a vote," said Courtney. "But the pension changes there, or the cutbacks and pension changes just announced at Hewlett Packard show the need for unions. They're unilateral, with no one in position to speak for the employees being affected."
 
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