Can Teamsters “Change To Win” With Hoffa At The Helm?

D uring last year’s debate about revitalizing the AFL-CIO, members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) watched with amazement and then dismay as their national union leader was repeatedly described as an “insurgent,” “dissident,” and “reformer.” 

For three decades, such labels have been routinely applied to TDU activists—for good reason—but never to a Teamster president backed by the union’s conservative officialdom. James P. Hoffa earned these media sobriquets as a strange new bedfellow of Service Employees (SEIU) President Andy Stern and his breakaway AFL-CIO faction, now known as the Change to Win Coalition (CTWC). Yet, recent press clips aside, many working Teamsters see little evidence that their own union has “changed to win” since Hoffa took office eight years ago. 

This matters now because Hoffa, unlike Stern, is up for re-election— not at a typical union convention dominated by headquarters staff and officials, but in a membership vote involving 1.4 million Teamsters in November. At TDU’s 30th anniversary convention last Fall, 300 rank-and-filers helped launch the “Dump Hoffa” campaign that has been gaining momentum ever since. Their candidate is Tom Leedham, a Portland, Oregon local officer who ran against Jimmy Hoffa’s son in 1998 and 2001 when the latter succeeded in convincing Teamsters that he alone could “restore the power” lost since Hoffa, Sr. 

In just one month TDU members collected the 50,000 signatures necessary for initial certification of Leedham’s “Strong Contracts, Good Pensions” slate last winter. Then Leedham backers won convention delegate slots in more than half the local races they entered, giving Hoffa’s challenger the support he needed to be officially nominated at the upcoming Teamster convention. Within the Teamsters, Leedham and his slate are rallying members against what they call “celebrity business unionism”— Hoffa’s reliance on PR consultants, rather than membership mobilization in organizing, bargaining, and strikes. But this year’s Hoffa- Leedham contest is shaping up to be a referendum on crucial questions facing all of organized labor—some of which were little debated last year. If Leedham wins, the current alignment of national unions, inside and outside the AFL-CIO, may be altered as well. 

One of Leedham’s main issues is pension and health-care cuts affecting hundreds of thousands of truck drivers, active and retired. Most Teamsters at major employers are covered by Taft-Hartley welfare and retirement funds that have union (as well as company) trustees. Recent benefit reductions sought by profitable firms like United Parcel Service (UPS) have thus been implemented by union representatives closely allied with Hoffa—and members are not happy about it. “I started driving full time at UPS in 1990 and had already done five years part-time,” says Kansas City package car driver Ross Thompson. “My goal was to raise my family and retire by age 55. Now it looks like I’m going to be forced to work until I’m 59 if I want to collect on a full pension.” 

The national agreement covering Thompson and 200,000 other UPS workers expires next July—a major reason why Leedham is gaining ground among disgruntled members in the union’s largest bargaining unit. “We can’t let Hoffa negotiate another UPS contract,” contends Dan Scott, secretary-treasurer of Seattle Local 174 and a candidate for Teamster vice-president on Leedham’s slate. “He had the best bargaining position ever in 2002 on the heels of our 1997 strike—but he settled short.” The union’s bargaining leverage has recently been eroded by management’s acquisition of Overnite Transportation, a viciously anti-union outfit that defeated a disastrous Hoffa-led strike in 2002. Ten thousand former Overnite workers are now employed by UPS Freight, a non-union division of the company. Says Scott: “We need to mobilize tens of thousands of Teamster members—our best organizers—in a coordinated national campaign at UPS.” 

Since last May, the Hoffa ad- ministration has said only that it will “closely monitor” the new UPS/Overnite Freight operations “to make sure members’ jobs are not adversely impacted.” Teamster vice-president, Ken Hall, who heads the union’s UPS division, told the Wall Street Journal that he foresees former Overnite employees becoming part of the same union “family with other UPS workers” through bargaining with the company. TDUers are doubtful because they see no signs of the kind of militant contract campaign that enabled Teamsters to make an equivalent breakthrough in 1997 when Hoffa’s predecessor, Ron Carey, led a nationwide walk-out over the issue of part-timing.  

“We wanted to put more decisions in the hands of the members,” explained Joe Wright, a commercial mover who helped introduce the changes.