Labor Day is a fantastic opportunity to share history with our sons and daughters.

(I’d argue the call for organization in the labor movement is not dwindling given political, corporate America’s continued discrimination against workers’ rights, especially in the past year.)

The Dropkick Murphys are a current voice for American workers, not just with the MTV generation but for all who have seen them perform at numerous rallies nationwide.

Even Chad Vader, Darth Vader’s parodied, younger brother, also has his take regarding working on Labor Day at the Empire Market (filmed in Madison, WI, naturally):

Brothers and Sisters, happy Labor Day! Enjoy your holiday, and remember to share and honor its meaning with your little ones, friends, and families.

Because a hit to one worker is a step backward from progress for all workers, the Teamsters were there at the request of the I.B.T. to send support and stand in solidarity. The message: WE ARE ONE. If politicians and corporate executives want to send our jobs over seas, the people can band together in protest with a resounding, “NO!” There can be zero allowances for outsourcing, offshoring, or anything that takes jobs away from American families, thus putting the basic tenets of unionism, economic independence, and American pride at risk.

There is no reason for Verizon, with its billions of dollars in profit, to demand its workforce to make concessions that will impact the economy for all Americans. It’s deliberate corporate warfare against consumers as well as the working class and completely unconscionable.

Beginning this week, Verizon will resume negotiations with union leadership in good faith as it has for the past two contracts. The strike is over (at least for now), which is great news for the 45,000 families who were scheduled to lose all medical benefits after August 31st. Striking workers are to report back to regular duties on Tuesday, according to the official CWA web site.

Let’s continue to show these workers our unity. If you have a Verizon account, remind the company that you support the workers and want to see its wireless division unionized as well.

Even though there was no official call to duty or notification on behalf of Teamsters Local Union 767 President Wesley Jenkins regarding the CWA’s organized picket line, volunteers from the membership were still there to support solidarity and represent union pride on the rainy Saturday morning. The CWA members were a great bunch of folks, adding, “Next time you guys need us, let us know. We’re there to help!”

Fight the good fight, and stand strong!

All images: Beatrice Garcia, with exception of second-to-last: Karen Berry.

Deepest respect and honor is given to all military personnel for their service. However, we must give more than just our thoughts and prayers in times like these. Saturday’s tragic loss is a also reminder that we must come together as Brothers and Sisters to care for the families of these fallen heroes. They offered their lives for our country, our values, and everything Americans everywhere have worked so hard to achieve. We should protect their legacies in return.

In a show of solidarity, each of us should consider donating to the Navy Seal Foundation, which is an organization well-known for its work with military families. Because donating should be easy, the foundation has set up a TEXT drive for those of us who wish to make a one-time ten dollar donation to be added to your phone bill. Simply text the word SEAL to 90999.

You might also check out these other links:

Comprehensive list of links for helping military personnel in variety of methods

 Support for families, veterans, active duty spouses, and children

Fisher House, for families who need housing while loved ones are being treated and in long-term care

Walter Reed Medical Center

Volunteer with Patriot Guard

Put on your Teamster shirts, meet the troops, and let’s show that we care.

These employees are fighting to protect healthcare, pension, fair pay raises, and many other contractual benefits that Verizon should rightfully honor — especially given the company’s monumental, fiscal success. No excuses.

Last month, members of IBEW 2222 demonstrated union solidarity when they joined picket lines with Teamsters from TLU25.  Now is the time for us to show these hard working men and women that we support their efforts to ensure fair labor for the future of all Americans.

Our thoughts are focused on a quick contract resolution for these CWA and IBEW workers and their families.

To help, sign up here for updates and mobilization information.

If you are a Teamster who, like many of us, purchased a Verizon Wireless service or product out of respect for the company’s unionized employees, you might also want to contact customer service and remind them of that: 1-800-922-0204.

Email Verizon here.

We are ONE.

Since 1975, union employees have known this protective measure as their “Weingarten Rights.” The Weingarten language is further example of how unions have been capable of influencing federal labor laws to cover all workers. For more information, go here.

The NLRB continues to fight in favor of individuals whose WR have been violated over thirty years after its inception.

You can download the following PDF card for use at your workplace.

weingarten rights (full-sized pdf)

If you’ve been to a union meeting, chances are you’ve witnessed Karen address the Executive Board with concerns or discuss contractual language with other members. This spring, she ran in the local’s delegate election. She’s definitely a dedicated Teamster, but Karen has wholly committed herself to serving the community outside of work as well through her involvement with the Patriot Guard, Special Olympics, and her family.

In order to accurately profile the accomplishments of Sister Berry, I’d need to spend the next year uploading photos and inserting text. Suffice it to say, Karen is a compassionate civilian whose weekly activities are enough to inspire those of us who could stand to brush up on our volunteer efforts.

We are proud to stand with our union sister and friend, Karen Berry.

November 23, 2009

Teamsters Local 767 Membership

Re: Election results and concerns

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

We want to take this time to thank each and every person who supports our efforts. We are very proud of those who took the time to get involved and vote (even if it wasn’t for us). We feel as though we ran a good, clean and effective campaign with the utmost integrity in keeping all issues focused on improving the overall mechanics of our great Local.

With the official results being posted around various worksites, many members are completely confounded as to the election outcome. It is very hard to unseat an incumbent. Every aspect of the election — from dates, times, notifications, election service providers, and ballot collection etc. — is stacked in their favor. We knew this going into the campaign and stand by our commitment to see it all the way through. While many theories are circulating regarding just how we lost, we want to assure everybody involved of our determination.

The general membership meeting was held on November 21, 2009. Secretary-Treasurer John Shorts, Sr., stated that 16 pre-election protests were filed as well as an unknown number of post-election protests. We, as members of an organized group, are following the protocol afforded to us through our Local Union By-laws, IBT Constitution and Federal Law. The appeal process can sometimes be viewed as a long and somewhat slow process. However, we can assure you the pace is set up as such to yield the truest decision based upon the circumstances available at the time. Please make no mistake: the slate members are still communicating daily with each other concerning the next steps that are to be taken.

In the mean time, we ask that you consider all the candidates of the Members First Slate (Billy Smith, Carlos Rios, Scott Wallace, David Varela, Jimmy Lyon, Bill Bagwell, and Brandon Santana) as viable choices in any future election.

In solidarity,

The Members First Slate

I answered a comment in the entry below this one with most of the following information and POV:

Anyone who has concerns relating to the election should notify: Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) at (972) 850-2500. This is an easy phone call that any member can place.

Members who want to get in touch with the Dept. of Labor at the above number to express concern regarding this election are likely justified. In the last election, which was the 2006 delegate vote, a labor protest was won by member Eric King against the local and Wesley Jenkins’ executive official who supervised the election. Because of the difficulties this local has experienced in the past with True Ballot, members and candidates wanted a different third party involved this time to ensure a fair ballot count as many members were NOT even afforded the opportunity to vote in the 2006 instance. However, the rules governing our delegate elections (in which the executive board does NOT have complete control over the decision regarding who handles the election) and the rules governing our executive board elections differ. We were essentially forced into dealing with, as members, who Wesley Jenkins and the current executive board selected to handle the election. The company they chose, True Ballot, is over a thousand miles away, thus making it impossible for members to observe or monitor all aspects of the electoral process. Why would Jenkins want that when he could have hired a more neutral, reputable ballot-counting company in north Texas that has never been named in an upheld labor protest against the local?

I agree, the duplicate ballot situation is definitely weird. Who was stopping anyone from re-ordering MY ballot by calling True Ballot, requesting a new ballot for me because of whatever reason or another, and then changing my vote and returning the ballot, thus making my legitimate ballot completely invalid? For that oversight alone, we should be afforded a fair rerun.

The local ALSO was in possession of the P.O. Box key for FIVE days before it was presented to the other slates to be sealed in an envelope, signed by witnesses, and then locked in the safe. Why was the local’s secretary-treasurer, a candidate in this election, allowed to obtain this key alone? Why was he allowed to rent the P.O. Box using his name only and with no witnesses? Why would he not have asked the witnesses and candidates, who have always accompanied him in the past when the secretary-treasurer secures the official P.O. Box for the ballots, to observe this time? Because of this suspect behavior, the P.O. Box for this particular election had to be sealed in the presence of slates by the USPS. That is ridiculously sloppy.

Members, some of whom voted for Members First and alerted the slate of the following issue, were called by 767 business agents and executive officers who currently work at the local. These workers were coerced to send in ballots marked for the Experienced Slate. Some were advised to re-order them through True Ballot’s recorded system as well. In fact, some stewards were acting on behalf of the union officials from the Experienced Slate by unethically requesting and harassing co-workers to resubmit and change their votes. This, in itself, is not illegal, but it IS a major labor department issue if the local generated any calling lists from its TITAN system that were not made available to the other candidates who were not given hard copies of this incredible advantage. As a former employee of the local, I can’t imagine how some of these agents would just happen to have the phone numbers of certain members who they don’t know from Adam, but I CAN imagine how it would take about five minutes for them to have a list printed in the hall — during office hours, even, and possibly by unsuspecting office staff, as the agents don’t generally know how to generate specific lists, while we were paying them to work and NOT campaign. I believe there is a way for such information to be retrieved from TITAN, as well, but would imagine it would have to be requested in writing from the IBT itself. This would all have to be verified, naturally, before one could make a valid assertion.

Any agent or executive officer, etc., who phone banked with a list of numbers gathered from the local in any way violated DOL election laws by utilizing an unfair advantage over other slates who were not given or allowed the same materials.

The only way to ensure fairness in our future elections is for members to band together and eliminate all possibilities of the voting process that are not completely reputable. We should not be expected to settle for anything that lends itself to potential fraud. All men and women who are members in good standing have the right to run for office and should be able to do so without reproach or neglect.

Even in light of this matter, I encourage every member, regardless of views on this topic, to continue to work together in a cohesive manner representative of our duties defined by the Brotherhood. We are Brothers and Sisters and, thus, obligated to put matters of labor advocacy first and foremost as that is the main objective as Teamsters.

Teamsters Local Union 767 paid the entire bill.

The luxurious Venetian Resort in Las Vegas

The Venetian opened in 1999 after Adelson purchased the Sands Hotel, which was union, and then decided to re-open it as a non-union facility. There have been many well-publicized labor marches over the course of the past ten years in front of the Venetian where thousands of union members have been in attendance. Sheldon Adelson is one of organized labor’s most notorious adversaries as well as one of the biggest contributors to funneling money into political campaigns for candidates who share his anti-union views. It does not get worse than this.

As the president of the largest Teamsters local in the state of Texas, there is no excuse for such behavior. Jenkins’ actions are either arrogant or ignorant, both of which are completely unacceptable given his position.

Furthermore, Las Vegas travel reports show plenty of available space for the month of the convention at neighboring union hotels to Bally’s.

Much nicer than the union hall, at least.

As union brothers and sisters, we must stop this misuse of our dues money immediately.

Venetian billiards, anyone?

This is how the other half lives.

Cesar Lira, MLK Parade, Dallas, TX

During the past ten years, Allied Waste has torn through several increasingly bad contracts, loss of retirement benefits, two failed decertifications, and numerous human rights and labor violations in the workplace — all of which have gone without quality representation in most cases. These workers refuse to give up no matter how many battles they’ve lost, no matter how many times they’ve been forced to stand against their company alone.

“We are loyal to the Teamsters and the brotherhood here, not the President or any one man or woman. If the President was doing his job right now, he’d have no reason to worry about this election,” Cesar told me in an interview earlier this week. “Everything was good in the beginning, but it didn’t last too long. It all started to change little by little until we were left out in the cold. Now things are not getting fixed, and my people are very upset about that.”

We talked about the long strike Allied Workers faced year before last and the effect it had on Cesar and his fellow union members. He paused, “You know, we lost seven guys during that strike. Some of them were injured when we went out, but when their short-term benefits expired, those seven were told to return to work or they wouldn’t have a job. We knew our jobs were protected, and they couldn’t fire us for refusing to cross a picket line, so those seven stood with us and didn’t cross. The company said they should have come back to work and fired them. All seven of them, gone, and that was it.”

Apparently, the local even went as far as to tell Cesar and his co-workers they had a contract, but then Lira said the Labor Board ruled against it. “We didn’t have a contract. It all boiled down to bad communication between the local, its agents, and the members. Finally, we were back four months or so, and then they dragged us through another de-cert. It was terrible, so much so that they had to call in John Mahoney and Chuck Stiles from the IBT to help clear everything up with the mess from that last contract.”

Unbelievably, Cesar managed to keep his group unified and strong through this last decertification procedure. He knew they weren’t being treated fairly by our local and its leadership, but he stated, “We won’t give up. We believe we are doing something good if we stay together. My people want change.”

When asked about what he’d like to see improved at Allied, Cesar replied, “I am filing grievances we’ve won in the past — the same ones! And now, we’re losing them all the time, and that’s if they get processed. We definitely need protection there. We also have repeatedly asked for our contract books to be printed in Spanish, but the leadership at the local keeps refusing. My guys, most of them understand English, but they have a hard time reading it still. They aren’t sure what their rights are as a result of that, and that’s when violations occur. I have seen contract books from other locals that are printed in English and Spanish for cases like this, but the guys at our local won’t listen to us. I don’t think it’s a lot to ask.”

Cesar said he knew things weren’t going well for the rest of us in other buildings, too. “I remember there was a nice woman named Sheila from UPS who brought us food while we were on the strike line. I saw her not too long ago at a union meeting, and we were talking when John Shorts walked past her and said, ‘F*** you, B****.’ Then he circled around and said it again to her. I couldn’t believe it. It was incredibly rude, and I thought it seemed like a weird thing for him to do. I mean, I felt real bad for her. She said he’d done that because she’d requested a copy of the local’s by-laws, and he must have thought she was planning on running against him. Shelia just wanted to know what was going on; she didn’t want to run for office. Why did he have to lose his temper like that? It wasn’t necessary.”

Lira has met the Members First slate and says they’re definitely good guys. “Billy is serious about making a big change. I asked them for more representation, more involvement, and that’s his biggest point. I also like how they are from all over and not just from one area. I really like them and believe they’ve got what it takes to help lead us in a better direction.”

So what about the other guys? “Yeah, we have seen the BA lately, but that’s just because it’s election time, and we know it. If they come out here, they won’t be received well. I can tell you that. We will keep walking without them.”

Luckily, Allied workers never have to walk alone again. This election process has closed embarrassing gaps within our membership and brought brothers and sisters together with the help of Billy Smith and his Members First slate.

Many thanks to Cesar Lira for standing his ground and granting this interview.