Teamsters to endorse Obama!

Obama's union endorsements are piling up, SEIU, UFCW and now the Teamsters. This is significant because these are three of the largest, most effective and fastest growning Unions in the United States.

Here are the largest as of 2003:

NEA - National Education Association 2,679,396
SEIU - Service Employees International Union 1,464,007
UFCW - United Food & Commercial Workers International Union 1,380,507
IBT - International Brotherhood of Teamsters 1,350,000
AFSCME - American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees 1,350,000

Should this reflect on Hillary?

I am sure many of the you have heard that Mark Penn, Hillary's chief strategist has a bit of a besmirched past from a liberal Democrat point of view. His primary transgression is his consulting firm running union busting campaigns and having Blackwater as a client. Assuming the allegations are true, what should Hillary do?

His connections would be unacceptable to many important parts of the Democratic coalition and should be addressed if she wants to lead our party. I think this highlights her fatal flaw as a candidate. She is at times Bush like in her stubbornness. And before Hillary supporters have me drawn and quartered, I like Hillary and think she would make a good president. Unfortunately, she very cautious and will not jettison Penn partially out of stubbornness and partially out of the belief that only way to win is through triangulation. The difference between Edwards or Obama and Hillary is that I think they are both true believers who would be offended by his behaviour and would likely give him the boot. Hillary is about winning at all costs, but I think at times wanting to win at all cost leads to losing. Candidates need to stand for something...

NAFTA and the Teamsters

Here is an article about the Teamsters trying to stop the Bush Administration from allowing Mexican trucks full access to the United States. It seem patently unfair to allow Mexican trucking companies into the US and not forcing them to follow US law.


It is time for our leaders to stop selling out the US through International agreements. There are two ways to do free trade, the first is the race to the bottom where everyone relaxes regulations and safety to become competitive at the expense of workers. Or there is an untried model where we uniformly raise standards as a condition of trade. The first, I would argue does not work very well when it comes to protecting the environment, consumers or workers, so maybe we should take a look at the second?


Just to be clear, I don't have a problem with the Mexican truck drivers. I just would like the regulations applied evenly. The same goes for any immigrant labor... Applying things like minimum wage laws to everyone protects both immigrant laborers from exploitation and provides a level playing field to American workers to compete.

The Idea of Union Bullying Cracks Me Up...

For most people, when they think of union organizing, they think of something from a movie set in the time before the AFL (American Federation of Labor) and the CIO (Congress of Industrialized Organizations) were one organization. It was a time when the stakes were high and union organizing was a full contact activity. The employers used Pinkertons to crack skulls and unions fought back. It wasn't always pretty...

Guess what the world has changed... Most employers hire union busting lawyers and consultants. They wage legal and PR campaigns (not to mention firing workers) to achieve their goals. The unions employ a lot of fresh out of college organizers because they are the only people with the energy to work 80 hour weeks in what can be a thankless task.

There was this letter in the Arizona Republic today and it made me laugh... It also made me wonder who is this Steve Haegele character? I will go out on a limb here and guess he is probably not bagging groceries or ringing people up at the check out...

Just them Vote Eddie Part 2: Union Innovation

There was this editorial on Wed in our ever biased Arizona Republic. What I think is interesting about this is how unions are always criticized for living in the past and being dinosaurs, but when they think of an innovative way to try to convince an employer to allow employees to vote, they are still criticized.

Do not let anyone confuse the issue... This is about voting pure and simple. Bashas doesn't not want to take the chance of letting their employees vote on having a union. It is a tactic used by many employers these days because the NLRB is toothless.

UFCW and Bashas: Eddie just let them vote

If I shopped at Bashas I would stop... (Sorry I don't have a Bashas nearby). This article from the Republic goes into some of what is going on. Basically, UFCW is trying to organize Bashas, Food City and AJ's and Bashas (the parent company) is being anti-union.

UFCW has decided to use other tactics to try to embarrass Bashas and apply pressure. Unfortunately, this is what union organizing has come to because the National Labor Relations board is a joke. At this point, there is almost no protection for workers wanting to organize. I know it seems simplistic, but why can't the workers at Bashas have an up or down vote on the Union without a lot of interference?

Bashas claims that workers don't want the union, so put your money where your mouth is, let them vote.