Ups Teamster Contract

Sandy Pope insists an upset is possible in her bid for Teamsters presidency

Sandy Pope acknowledges straight away that she faces an uphill battle &#x97; she is the first woman to run for the presidency of the very macho Teamsters union, and she is running against a three-term incumbent, James P. Hoffa, who has the most famous last name in American labor.</p><p>But Pope, president of Teamsters Local 805 in Queens in New York since 2005, insists that she can pull off an upset. She argues that the rank and file are tired of Hoffa and fed up with contracts packed with concessions.</p><p>&#x93;The anger among the membership is at an all-time high,&#x94; said Pope, who ran unsuccessfully for the union&#x92;s No. 2 spot, secretary-treasurer, in 2006 as part of a dissident slate that lost by a ratio of nearly 2-to-1. &#x93;The members are much more willing to look for change than five years ago.&#x94;</p><p>Although the mob influence that once pervaded the Teamsters has been largely rooted out, thanks to two decades of federal supervision and scores of indictments and expulsions, the union and its 1.4 million members face other problems. </p><p>Membership has steadily declined as nonunion trucking companies have taken over much of the market, and the economic downturn has made it hard to negotiate sizable wage increases or, in some cases, to avoid contract concessions.</p><p>Pope&#x92;s campaign is shifting into a higher gear after her official nomination Thursday for the presidency at the Teamsters convention in Las Vegas. A third candidate, Fred Gegare, a former supporter of Hoffa and leader of a Teamsters local in Wisconsin, also was nominated. The members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are scheduled to vote by mail this fall.</p><p>Like many political candidates, Pope hopes to capitalize on an anti-incumbent fever that has been fueled by the weak economy, and she said she thinks the three-person race will give her an edge, as she&#x92;s the person least identified with the old guard and a problem-plagued status quo.</p><p>But David L. Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John&#x92;s University, questioned Pope&#x92;s chances. </p><p>&#x93;I would suspect Hoffa has a lock on the presidency,&#x94; he said. &#x93;He seems to have solidified his base.&#x94;</p><p>Pope, who is affiliated with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a powerful faction that has long opposed Hoffa, said she wants to make the Teamsters a more dynamic, more combative union that energizes its rank and file far more. But even if she loses, she said, she is confident that her campaign will improve the union by propagating her vision and prodding Hoffa to adopt some of it.</p><p>She said she would have the locals do far more organizing and would move money from headquarters to the locals to pay for it. She also intends to push locals to cooperate more to increase their clout when negotiating with regional employers.</p><p>Pope said Hoffa has not been nearly aggressive or tough enough in bargaining or organizing. </p><p>She criticized several contracts negotiated in recent years, especially the one with YRC Worldwide of Overland Park, the biggest unionized long-haul trucking company, which included a 15 percent pay cut and exempted the company from making pension contributions for nearly two years. </p><p>Union leaders justified that as an effort to keep the company out of bankruptcy and save more than 25,000 jobs. In addition, some equity in YRC was granted to union members.</p><p>Pope, 54, is far from the traditional image of a burly, male Teamsters president. A member of the union since 1978, she drove trucks in the Midwest for years, hauling steel and delivering auto parts and obtained a black belt in taekwando to protect herself.</p><p>Supporters say she is a smart, savvy operator and a charismatic speaker. And she is plenty tough, having faced sexual harassment as a driver and a lot of boos when she ran for secretary-treasurer.</p><p>&#x93;I&#x92;ve had to take a lot of guff,&#x94; Pope said. &#x93;Driving a truck is a hard job. It&#x92;s hard to drive in snow and ice in Cleveland and Buffalo, going to places you don&#x92;t know and making deliveries in the middle of the night.&#x94;</p><p>She recalled arriving covered in grease to truck stops that had only men&#x92;s showers, often asking a waitress to stand guard while she washed up.</p><p>Still, Hoffa&#x92;s forces say they are hardly worried about Pope.</p><p>&#x93;She can wish upon a prayer of a rainbow,&#x94; said John Murphy, a Teamsters vice president for the Eastern Region who is a member of Hoffa&#x92;s slate. &#x93;She&#x92;s very critical, but she doesn&#x92;t offer any solutions. She doesn&#x92;t have a rationale to justify her campaign. She&#x92;s a vanity candidate.&#x94;</p><p>Murphy said Hoffa &#x97; who has led the union since 1999, after Ron Carey was forced out from the presidency in a campaign finance scandal &#x97; has done an excellent job.</p><p>&#x93;By any measure, what Jim Hoffa has achieved over the past 12 years has been quite remarkable,&#x94; said Murphy, whom the Hoffa campaign put forward as its spokesman. &#x93;He&#x92;s unified the organization. He&#x92;s restructured the finances. He&#x92;s built up a solid strike fund, and he&#x92;s stepped up our organizing efforts.&#x94;</p><p>Under Hoffa, the union has organized 30,000 private school bus drivers, monitors and mechanics and 7,500 ramp workers at Continental Airlines.</p><p>Murphy said Hoffa is negotiating the best contracts he can in tough times. He pointed to the flexibility shown in the rescue of YRC and the jobs there.</p><p>&#x93;It&#x92;s in times like these that the value of your union shows through,&#x94; Hoffa and Ken Hall, his running mate and a candidate for secretary-treasurer, say in their campaign literature. &#x93;Your Teamsters union leadership is working tirelessly, at every level possible, to protect Teamsters jobs and benefits and to balance the scales that have tipped so far toward Wall Street and away from Main Street.&#x94;</p><p>The Hoffa campaign, at the website TruthAboutSandyPope .com, accuses Pope of running down the assets from her local to less than half of the $1.75 million it had in 2005, saying she has spent extravagantly by going to Teamsters meetings around the country.</p><p>Pope calls the Hoffa criticisms hypocritical, saying she goes to the same meetings that most Teamsters local presidents do. She said the main reason that her local&#x92;s assets have dropped is that she has spent so much trying to organize non-union workers, especially 900 at FreshDirect, the grocery delivery company.</p><p>In an unusual strategy, Pope is not fielding a full slate of two dozen candidates for national and regional positions but is instead running alone. She said many union officials back her or want to work with her, but they are reluctant to join a slate because they worry that Hoffa and his allies would retaliate &#x97; a fear that Hoffa&#x92;s supporters say is unjustified.</p><p>Pope said she hopes to again see the Teamsters become the nation&#x92;s most powerful union, as it was in the 1950s under Hoffa&#x92;s father, Jimmy Hoffa.

The Washington Current: In Face Of GOP Plans, Union Vows To Fight ...

"I've seen the good times. When our economy was flourishing, we all benefited," says Nancy Aleccia, a 33-year union member in Covina, Calif. "And when our economy went into a downturn, we were faced challenges...Going through that time has made me appreciate more than ever the value of my Teamster contract. We have seniority and recall rights, something nonunion employees do not have.

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