I supported an opposition candidate, Fred Gegare, rather then incumbent General President Jim Hoffa. Gegare made it onto the ballot, along with Sandy Pope for the October elections.
What I saw at the convention was disheartening to any true Unionist. For the first three days our Teamsters Joint Council 32 DRIVE representative came up and told me "Fuck You." He was a Hoffa supporter. What is a DRIVE representative? He's a lobbyist we pay $115,000 a year to, to represent us at the Minnesota State Capitol. Why wasn't he at our State Capitol with a shutdown imminent? You'd have to ask him. Minnesota shut down during the convention and hundreds, if not thousands of our members were laid off, yet our paid lobbyist never left!
Then there was the daily walk through the gauntlet of drum beating, yelling Hoffa supporters to enter the convention hall. Most of Hoffa's delegates had the inability to even listen to an opposing view. Hoffa supporters tried to yell and boo down the nominations of Fred Gegare and Sandy Pope and then WALKED OUT before their acceptance speeches. I caught it on video:
There was much lip service about "solidarity." To be sure there were lots of great trade unionists at the convention. But the overwhelming impression I left with was that big labor is big labor, and those at the top were more interested in maintaining big salaries and fat benefits. They had armies of "supporters" to shout down the successful opposition and no heart to listen to rank and file members. Most of whom have taken wage freezes and pay and benefit cuts over the last few years while the Union "leadership" has taken raises.
If the modern labor movement is to survive we need to get back to basics: Hours, Wages and Working conditions.
Big Union leadership needs to act more like Labor leaders and less like CEO's, that is our biggest threat.
2 comments:
This is interesting...so you are saying that the labor union leaders are kind of acting like the pigs in Animal Farm.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
My observation is that the leadership is very disconnected from the rank and file members. While we have suffered lay-offs and wage freezes they continue to take raises on CEO level salaries paid for with our dues and when the membership cries foul they turn on the members as if they are the enemy. They have lost sight of the fact that they exist as a representative of the members. They now believe the members owe them loyalty rather then the other way around.
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