The Teamsters is my life

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Tyson Johnson relates the joys and difficulties of his role as regional (southern) vice president and national freight director of the Teamsters (IBT) union in the US

Why did you get involved in the Teamsters?

The Teamsters is my life. I joined in 1966 when I went to work as a dock employee for Yellow Transportation. My father spent his life driving a truck and he was a union official, so from an early age I clearly understood that for working people there is no other source to success than being part of a labour union. For a fair standard wage, for benefits, and to protect your family, and in my opinion more importantly just for respect in the work place.

What obstacles do you face in organising members?

The freight division has really suffered a slump since the early 1980s when the trucking industry deregulated. Our membership has shrunk considerably as a result of cutbacks in unionised freight carriers, from around 400,000 in the early 80s to around 88,000 members today.

In the US there has been an orchestrated effort, through legislation, to de-unionise the American workforce. The current administration has presided over free trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA, where our central government will probably bear the costs of a major interstate highway that runs from South America to the US. This will allow additional foreign trucks that are non-union, and that are on sub-standards wages, to enter and exit our country with goods.

Our National Labour Relations Board is not headed now by favourable administrations to labour. In essence, the NLRB now shows very real interest in protecting the employers, in big business, rather than the people it was designed to protect, who are the working people.

We now have many, many cases of clear violations of the law, which may go through due process but at the national level, they die.

Do you feel you share concerns with other unions?

We have a great interest and concern in establishing a close knit working relationship with other international unions. It is very clear to us that globalisation is taking over, and part of that agenda is to eliminate labour unions throughout the world.

One of the most immediate common interests we share with other unions is in DHL, who in the latter part of 2003 acquired Airborne Express, a long established US company in which we represented 7000 members.

It was a historic move for us when DHL acquired the company, and we went into bargaining with them. They attempted to merge and give seniority to non-union employees, because DHL was buffer to buffer non-union in the US. But through our negotiations we succeeded in integrating the Airborne operation into the DHL operation.

We also succeeded in maintaining union organisation, and have been very successful since that time in organising three of the four major gateway operations in the US.

We protected the seniority of all existing members. At the same time we protected the seniority of around 235 DHL employees and brought them into the union. Numerous others came in as new hires at the bottom of the seniority scales. They have the full rights and terms and conditions of the labour agreement.

Were these successes easy to secure?

No. They were the result of lengthy and tense negotiations, over many months. I put our success down to being stubborn, hard headed and holding our ground, nothing more. DHL may be a powerful company, but they are no more powerful than the Teamsters union when they cross into US boundaries. Whatever it takes, we will protect the interests of our local affiliates.

The problem comes for our unions when they are beaten off in the election process, during that interim from the day you submit a petition for recognition to the company board, through to the day of an actual vote. Employers in the US spend millions of dollars on anti-union law firms, in order to brainwash people who are not in the labour unions.

Do any factors work in your favour?

When new hires arrive at a company that we represent, there is no argument – that person willingly joins. And that has really been the source of our growth over the last 10 or 15 years– the growth of members in existing companies. Based on retirements and company closures, the loss is greater than new people coming in, but we are a very strong union. We have numerous unions under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO who merge in to become Teamsters because they like the power and negotiating strength of the Teamsters as a general union.

The Teamsters’ direct identity is with trucking, but we represent nurses, police officers, attorneys, clericals, mechanics, warehouse workers, bakers, principals, school teachers and many other categories.

What do you feel are the key strengths of the union?

The union really focuses on local union autonomy. If you are a group of principals and you organise in Philadelphia, you will have a lot of control over your collective bargaining, what goes in your contract, and how to get represented, because most of the money stays in your local union. Most of the organising is also done locally. It doesn’t necessarily come from international organising campaigns. They come to the international union for research, legal assistance, corporate strategies, financial assistance and communications. So the national union sends in ground work to help, but the campaign is still controlled by the local union.

The Teamsters have grown in so many different ways, primarily at a local level and in organising, but in another important way too. We have been able to secure national contracts, where you have wording in the contract that says wherever that company opens up a new facility, that new facility will be unionised.

We struggle initially with the companies where we don’t have representation anywhere, but then we get one newly organised group. Many companies that start that way, we now represent on a national level. Although they may be under individual contracts in each local union, it starts and it grows and it spreads across the US.

How do you feel about global union cooperation?

Since meeting with other ITF unions representing the integrator companies around the world, we look forward to being part of an ongoing working group that will continue to communicate and exchange information on how to deal with these multinational companies. What we have to do is become a virtual union of solidarity throughout the world, wherever these companies operate. X

Interview by Kay Parris.

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Issue 21 October 2005

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