International Brotherhood of Teamsters

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    Trump Meets With Teamsters President as Union Weighs 2024 Endorsement

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    Sean M. O’Brien, the general president of the Teamsters union, sat down with former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday at Mr. Trump’s seaside mansion, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla.Kara Deniz, a spokeswoman for the union, said the meeting was simply one of a series of meetings the Teamsters plan to have with all the presidential candidates.But this particular meeting, which the union detailed in a lengthy post on social media that was accompanied by a picture of Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Trump, came at a remarkable moment. At a public hearing in November, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a staunchly pro-Trump Republican from Oklahoma, called Mr. O’Brien a “thug,” a “bully” and a coward, and challenged him to a fight.President Biden has called himself the most pro-union president in history, as have several leaders of organized labor, and the Teamsters endorsed his candidacy in 2020. In December, Mr. Biden issued an executive order mandating what are known as project labor agreements — which establish fixed work, wage and labor standards at construction sites — for all federal contracts exceeding $35 million. That order was a potential boon to the Teamsters union, which is likely to control transportation at many of those sites and would have to be brought into contract talks as funds from Mr. Biden’s signature domestic achievements start to flow.Just last week, the Biden administration named Cole Scandaglia, the Teamsters’ senior legislative representative, to a high-profile advisory board at the Transportation Department. And in 2022, the administration moved to shore up a pension fund that affected 350,000 Teamster retirees.Yet there was Mr. O’Brien next to a beaming Mr. Trump, whose appeal to working-class voters will be key to his re-election bid. Mr. O’Brien promised the former president a seat at another meeting later this month in Washington, this time with rank-and-file members.Serious issues need to be addressed “to improve the lives of working people across the country, and the Teamsters union is making sure our members’ voices are heard as we head into a critical election year,” Mr. O’Brien said in a statement. “We thank the former president for taking time during this private meeting to listen to the Teamsters’ top priorities.”Teamsters leaders have met with other candidates, mainly on the margins of the 2024 election and none with Mr. Trump’s profile. The first two meetings came last month, with former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, whose presidential campaign has barely registered with voters, and with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine independent who qualified this week for the presidential ballot in Utah. The union has also met with Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips, Democratic candidates, as well as Cornel West, who is running as a left-wing independent.A spokesman for the Biden campaign, Ammar Moussa, said the president “looks forward to continuing to work with the Teamsters and workers across America to ensure working Americans get a fair share of the wealth they’re helping to create.”In September, Mr. Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line when he stood with members of the United Auto Workers striking in Michigan. Pressure from the administration helped resolve the strike, and has helped other unions expand their organizing.Still, while the U.A.W.’s brash new president, Shawn Fain, has praised Mr. Biden and castigated Mr. Trump, the U.A.W. has so far not endorsed the president’s re-election bid, and Mr. O’Brien may have added to the White House’s frustration. As the Teamsters line up meetings with each presidential candidate, the union’s leadership appears intent on maintaining its leverage, just as Mr. Fain has. More

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      Matt Damon, Fran Drescher and an Indian Soybean Farmer on 2024

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      What are your hopes for 2024? See how they compare with those of 11 people I put that question to. (Most of them replied by email. The people from Afghanistan and India spoke by phone.)Fran Drescher, an actress and the president of SAG-AFTRA, which staged a 118-day strike against movie and television producers this year:In 2024, I am looking forward to a sudden and essential collective human emotional growth spurt, whereby empathy becomes the main emotion that informs all behavior.Andrew Marsh, the chief executive of Plug Power, a fuel cell supplier:My hope is to see 2024 as the year we get serious about decarbonizing hard-to-abate heavy industrial manufacturing sectors. Building out a nascent U.S. hydrogen industry is essential to moving these industrial processes to carbon neutrality.Uri Levine, an entrepreneur and a co-founder of Waze:I want people to find a purpose in life. When you have a life purpose or figure out what your destiny is, your life becomes simpler, everything is clearer, and you’re happier, healthier and richer. You know what you have to do. The purpose becomes the north star to guide you. My purpose is to create value.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      United Auto Workers reformers prevail in vote to choose president by direct election.

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      Members of the United Automobile Workers union have voted decisively to change the way they choose their president and other top leaders, opting to select them through a direct vote rather than a vote of delegates to a convention, as the union has done for decades.The votes on the election reform proposal were cast in a referendum open to the union’s roughly one million current workers and retirees and due by Monday morning. Nearly 64 percent of the roughly 140,000 members who cast valid ballots favored a direct-election approach, according to a court-appointed independent monitor of the union.“It is time to move forward on behalf of the over one million members and retirees of the U.A.W. in solidarity,” the union said in a statement.The referendum was required by a consent decree approved this year between the union and the Justice Department, which had spent years prosecuting a series of corruption scandals involving the embezzlement of union funds by top officials and illegal payoffs to union officials from the company then known as Fiat Chrysler.More than 15 people were convicted as a result of the investigations, including two recent U.A.W. presidents.Reformers within the U.A.W. have long backed the one member, one vote approach, arguing that it would lead to greater accountability, reducing corruption and forcing leaders to negotiate stronger contracts. A group called Unite All Workers for Democracy helped organize fellow members to support the change in the referendum.“The membership of our great union has made clear that they want to change the direction of the U.A.W. and return to our glory days of fighting for our members,” said Chris Budnick, a U.A.W. member at a Ford Motor plant in Louisville, Ky., who serves as recording secretary for the reform group, in a statement Wednesday evening. “I am so proud of the U.A.W. membership and their willingness to step up and vote for change.”David Witwer, an expert on union corruption at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, said the experience of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which shifted from voting through convention delegates to direct election in 1991, after an anti-racketeering lawsuit by federal prosecutors, supported the reformers’ claims.Dr. Witwer said the delegate system allowed seemingly corrupt union leaders to stay in power because of the leverage they had over convention delegates, who were typically local union officials whom top leaders could reward or punish.“Shifting the national union election process from convention delegates to membership direct voting was pivotal in changing the Teamsters,” he said by email.At the U.A.W., leadership positions have been dominated for decades by members of the so-called Administration Caucus, a kind of political party within the union whose power the delegate system enabled.Some longtime U.A.W. officials credit the caucus with helping to elevate women and Black people to leadership positions earlier than the union’s membership would have directly elected them.But the caucus could be deeply insular. The Justice Department contended in court filings that Gary Jones, a former U.A.W. president who was sentenced to prison this year for embezzling union funds, used some of the money to “curry favor” with his predecessor, Dennis Williams, while serving on the union’s board.Union officials have said Mr. Williams, who was recently sentenced to prison as well, later backed Mr. Jones to succeed him, helping to ensure Mr. Jones’s ascent. More

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      Teamsters Vote for Sean O'Brien, a Hoffa Critic, as President

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      Sean O’Brien scored a decisive victory among union members after criticizing the current leadership as too timid in UPS talks and Amazon organizing.Sean O’Brien was a rising star in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 2017 when the union’s longtime president, James P. Hoffa, effectively cast him aside.But that move appears to have set Mr. O’Brien, a fourth-generation Teamster and head of a Boston local, on a course to succeed Mr. Hoffa as the union’s president and one of the most powerful labor leaders in the country.A Teamsters vice president who urged a more assertive stand toward employers like the United Parcel Service — as well as an aggressive drive to organize workers at Amazon — Mr. O’Brien has declared victory in his bid to lead the nearly 1.4 million-member union.According to a tally reported late Thursday on an election supervisor’s website, he won about two-thirds of the votes cast in a race against the Hoffa-endorsed candidate, Steve Vairma, another vice president. He will assume the presidency in March.The result appears to reflect frustration over the most recent UPS contract and growing dissatisfaction with Mr. Hoffa, who has headed the union for more than two decades and whose father did from 1957 to 1971. The younger Mr. Hoffa did not seek another five-year term.In an interview, Mr. O’Brien said success in organizing Amazon workers — a stated goal of the Teamsters — would require the union to show the fruits of its efforts elsewhere.“We’ve got to negotiate the strongest contracts possible so that we can take it to workers at Amazon and point to it and say this is the benefit you get of being in a union,” he said.David Witwer, an expert on the Teamsters at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, said it was very rare for the Teamsters to elect a president who was not an incumbent or backed by the incumbent and who was sharply critical of his predecessor, as Mr. O’Brien was of Mr. Hoffa.Since the union’s official founding in 1903, Dr. Witwer said in an email, “there have been only two national union elections that have seen an outside reformer candidate win election as president.”During the campaign, Mr. O’Brien, 49, railed against the contract that the union negotiated with UPS for allowing the company to create a category of employees who work on weekends and top out at a lower wage, among other perceived flaws.“If we’re negotiating concessionary contracts and we’re negotiating substandard agreements, why would any member, why would any person want to join the Teamsters union?” Mr. O’Brien said at a candidate forum in September in which he frequently tied his opponent to Mr. Hoffa.Mr. O’Brien has also criticized his predecessor’s approach to Amazon, which many in the labor movement regard as an existential threat. Although the union approved a resolution at its recent convention pledging to “supply all resources necessary” to unionize Amazon workers and eventually create a division overseeing that organizing, Mr. O’Brien said the efforts were too late in coming.“That plan should have been in place under our warehouse director 10 years ago,” he said in the interview, alluding to the position of warehouse division director that his opponent, Mr. Vairma, has held since 2012.The outcome appears to reflect frustration over the union’s growing dissatisfaction with the tenure of James P. Hoffa.Calla Kessler/The New York TimesIn an interview, Mr. Hoffa said that the union was broke and divided when he took over and that he was leaving it “financially strong and strong in every which way.”He said he was proud of the recent UPS contract, calling it “the richest contract ever negotiated” and pointing out that it allows many full-time drivers to make nearly $40 an hour.He said Mr. O’Brien’s critique of the union’s efforts on Amazon was unfair. “No one was doing it a decade ago,” Mr. Hoffa said. “It’s more complex than just going out and organizing 20 people at a grocery store. He sounds like it’s so simple.”Mr. O’Brien did not elaborate on his own plans for organizing Amazon, saying he wanted to solicit more input from Teamsters locals, but suggested that they would include bringing political and economic pressure to bear on the company in cities and towns around the country. The union has taken part in efforts to deny Amazon a tax abatement in Indiana and to reject a delivery station in Colorado.Mr. O’Brien, who once worked as a rigger, transporting heavy equipment to construction sites, was elected president of a large Boston local in 2006. Within a few years, he appeared to be ensconced in the union’s establishment wing.In a 2013 incident that led to a 14-day unpaid suspension, Mr. O’Brien threatened members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reform group, who were taking on an ally of his in Rhode Island. “They’ll never be our friends,” he said of the challengers. “They need to be punished.”Mr. O’Brien has apologized for the comments and points out that the reform advocate who led the challenge in Rhode Island, Matt Taibi, is now a supporter who ran on his slate in the recent election.The break with Mr. Hoffa came in 2017. Early that year, the longtime Teamsters president appointed Mr. O’Brien to a position whose responsibilities included overseeing the union’s contract negotiation with UPS, where more than 300,000 Teamsters now work.Understand Amazon’s Employment SystemCard 1 of 6A look inside Amazon. More

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      Sean O'Brien, a Hoffa Critic, Claims Victory in Teamster Vote

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      The head of a Boston local who urged a more assertive stand toward employers like the United Parcel Service — and an aggressive drive to organize workers at Amazon — declared victory Thursday in his bid to lead the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.If the result is confirmed, the victory by Sean O’Brien, an international vice president of the Teamsters, would put a new imprint on the nearly 1.4 million-member union after more than two decades of leadership by James P. Hoffa, who did not seek another five-year term.The outcome appears to reflect frustration over the union’s most recent contract with UPS and a growing dissatisfaction with the tenure of Mr. Hoffa, whose father ran the union from 1957 to 1971.With about 90 percent of the ballots tallied, Mr. O’Brien had more than two-thirds of the vote in his race against Steve Vairma, a fellow international vice president who had been endorsed by Mr. Hoffa. The election was conducted by mail-in ballots that were due Monday.Mr. O’Brien, 49, railed against the contract that the union negotiated with UPS — where more than 300,000 Teamsters work — for allowing the company to create a category of employees who work on weekends and top out at a lower wage, among other perceived flaws.“If we’re negotiating concessionary contracts and we’re negotiating substandard agreements, why would any member, why would any person want to join the Teamsters union?” Mr. O’Brien said at a candidate forum in September in which he frequently tied his opponent to Mr. Hoffa.Mr. O’Brien has also criticized Mr. Hoffa’s approach to Amazon, which many in the labor movement regard as an existential threat. Although the union approved a resolution at its recent convention pledging to “supply all resources necessary” to unionize Amazon workers and eventually create a division overseeing that organizing, Mr. O’Brien said the efforts were too late. More

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      Amazon Union Vote at Alabama Warehouse Should Be Redone, Official Says

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      A hearing officer for the National Labor Relations Board found that Amazon illegally discouraged organizing at an Alabama warehouse. The company can appeal to block a new election.A hearing officer of the National Labor Relations Board has recommended that the board throw out a union election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., where results announced in early April showed workers rejecting a union by a more than two-to-one ratio.The union announced the recommendation on Monday, and Amazon quickly said it would take steps to ensure that the original election result prevailed.The hearing officer’s recommendation, which includes holding a new election, will be reviewed by the acting regional director of the agency, who will issue a ruling on the case in the coming weeks. If the regional director rules against Amazon, the company can appeal to the labor board in Washington.The union campaign at the warehouse, which had more than 5,000 eligible workers, was the highest-profile domestic organizing effort so far at Amazon, which has a history of aggressively deterring worker activism.The challenge by the union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, accused Amazon of engaging in unfair labor practices to keep workers from unionizing.“Throughout the N.L.R.B. hearing, we heard compelling evidence how Amazon tried to illegally interfere with and intimidate workers as they sought to exercise their right to form a union,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president, in a statement. “We support the hearing officer’s recommendation that the N.L.R.B. set aside the election results and direct a new election.”The union first filed paperwork for the election in November, and the voting took place by mail between early February and late March.The union complained frequently during the campaign that the company was intimidating and threatening workers.Amazon disputed the accusations and continues to do so. “Our employees had a chance to be heard during a noisy time when all types of voices were weighing into the national debate, and at the end of the day, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of a direct connection with their managers,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement on Monday. “Their voice should be heard above all else, and we plan to appeal to ensure that happens.”Wilma B. Liebman, who was chairwoman of the labor board under President Barack Obama, said regional directors typically followed the recommendations of hearing officers in such cases.About one week after the labor board announced the results in April, the union filed a formal objection to the conduct of the election and asked the board to overturn it. An officer for the board held hearings over three weeks in which both sides called and questioned witnesses.The union objection contended that Amazon consultants and employee relations managers had created an atmosphere of fear by identifying and removing workers from mandatory anti-union meetings if they questioned company officials, and by telling employees they risked losing pay, benefits or even their jobs if a union was established.The union also contended that Amazon consultants and managers had illegally asked workers how they intended to vote, and that Amazon fired a union supporter for distributing union cards. It said the company took several measures — such as increasing pay and giving away merchandise — to defuse pressure for a union. It is illegal to begin to take such steps once a union campaign is underway.The union objection focused heavily on an on-site collection box that Amazon had repeatedly pushed the U.S. Postal Service to install shortly before the voting began. The union said the box was not authorized by the labor relations board. Amazon has said that it pushed for the box to make it easier for employees to vote and that it did not have access to ballots that workers placed inside.The union argued that the presence of the collection box gave workers the impression that Amazon was monitoring who voted, and possibly even how they voted. It is not clear whether the union would improve its showing if the election were rerun. Labor law allows companies to hold frequent mandatory anti-union meetings, and Mr. Appelbaum, the retail workers’ president, has said that high turnover at the warehouse was a significant obstacle to the union campaign. More