In its first legislative conference since 2019, the California Labor Federation and State Building Trades Council brought back hundreds of union members to Sacramento on May 16 and 17 to promote labor’s legislative agenda. Joint Council 7 was there in force.
Every attendee had to take an on-site COVID test to gain admittance. Due to lines and the mandatory 15-minute wait time, many attendees (including this writer) missed several of the morning speeches.
Keep readingAmerican Automobile Association declares war on middle-class jobs
Teamsters Local 665 is condemning the American Automobile Association (AAA) for closing branches in Yreka and Stockton, Calif. during negotiations, likely terminating the jobs of insurance sales agents who are currently bargaining for their first union contract.
“These workers chose to organize with us because AAA is outsourcing high-paying, middle-class careers into churn-and-burn, low-paying, high-turnover telemarketing jobs,” said Tony Deloria, Local 665 Secretary-Treasurer. “AAA needs to stop acting like a hedge fund and start acting like a membership association.
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If you have a child who is graduating from high school this year and can use some extra cash for college or vocational school, now is the time to have them apply for a Harry Polland/Bob Morales Joint Council 7 Scholarship.
Joint Council 7 is pleased to announce the Annual Teamsters Joint Council 7 Harry Polland/Bob Morales Scholarship Fund. This program will provide $1,000 to the child of one member in each of the following affiliated Local Unions: 70,
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How would you feel if, one day in January, you opened your pay stub and saw that your wages were cut by up to $6/hour? You’d probably be angry, wondering how a company that’s been going gangbusters since the start of the pandemic and has recently raised its prices to customers could do this to you. That’s just what happened to about 4,000 part-time workers at UPS—most at big-city hubs where the cost of living is highest,
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In September, 2021, Joint Council 7 launched our campaign challenging Amazon’s rapid expansion plans in the Bay Area. In particular, we set our sights on the company’s plans to build a giant distribution center in San Francisco on property purchased from one of Teamster Local 350’s largest employers, Recology. This project directly threatened 1,400 Teamster Local 2785 members at UPS.
Our campaign won on March 22 when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation imposing interim zoning controls on that project and on all parcel delivery stations in San Francisco for the next 18 months.
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In June 2021, more than 400 AAA insurance agents organized with Teamsters Local 665 in a hard-fought campaign that covered 77 separate locations from Merced up to the Oregon border. Nine months later, these workers still don’t have a contract and AAA recently proposed a 40% wage reduction.
For the past 30 years, AAA has held its annual membership meeting in Walnut Creek or San Francisco, but this year, the company took the unprecedented step of moving the meeting to Farmington,
Keep readingIt may have taken over a year and a half, but the thousands of members across California who do sales for Southern Glazer Wine & Spirits & RNDC (formerly known as Young’s Market) ratified their richest contract to date. Local 853 alone has about 684 workers under this contract who received huge wage increases, full maintenance of benefits on their health and welfare, additional holidays, and more.
Business Rep Steve Beck was quick to acknowledge that the bargaining committee,
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After almost nine months of talks and hard-bargaining on economics, the members at Recology of the Coast ratified their new five-year successor collective bargaining agreement by a 94% margin on March 3, 2022.
“There was a considerable gap between the offers we were getting from the company and where we needed to be. We were set to vote a strike authorization but at the 11th hour, we received a proposal which stayed our vote and allowed us to resume bargaining,” said lead negotiator and Business Representative Robert Sandoval.
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OLAM and Teamsters Local Union 890 reached an agreement to extend the current contract for one year, into 2023. The extension includes a 6% wage increase.
Dole contract update
Dole farmworkers who are members of Local 890 are currently making their way back from harvesting vegetables from the desert to continue harvesting vegetables in the Central Valley through mid-April. Those vegetables are then sent for consumption all around the U.S. and Canada.
As of early March,
Keep readingKeolis Transit has come to terms and settled 40 labor charges with Teamsters 533 for violations of the National Labor Relations Act.
“These 40 charges, all resolved in the union workers’ favor, paints a clear picture of how the contractor for the Regional Transportation Commission mismanages public transit operations,” said Teamsters Local 533 President Gary Watson. “The settlement agreement was obtained as a result of our members’ dedication and resilience by standing strong together.”
The agreement includes a monetary settlement for two members who were retaliated against for honoring the picket line.
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