Rank and File

Teamsters Highlight Renewed Militancy At 50th Annual TDU Convention

November 16, 2025 Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Rank and File, Teamsters, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

At the 50th annual Teamsters for a Democratic Union convention, 550 Teamsters talked about building power in their workplaces, from UPS barns to school bus yards to the San Diego Zoo. They swapped tips on running for local union office and debated TDU’s strategic priorities. A major theme at the convention, held in Chicago November 7-9, was the union’s renewed militancy. Teamsters elected Sean O’Brien in 2021 to head the 1.3-million member union; the TDU-backed O’Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters United slate ran under the slogan “new leadership and a new direction.”

TDU At Fifty: From Rank-And-File Rebels To Establishment Defenders

November 9, 2025 Dan La Botz, Counter Punch. Strategize! Rank and File, Teamsters, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which will be celebrating the group’s fiftieth anniversary at its convention being held in Chicago this November 7 to 9, has for decades been known as the voice of reform in the Teamsters Union. But this year there will be those inside and outside the convention hall challenging TDU’s direction and arguing that it has abandoned its ideal. At the center of the controversy is TDU’s support for Teamster president Sean O’Brien who is allied with President Donald Trump. Some Teamsters no longer see TDU as fighting for reform but rather as part of the establishment.

Inside Your Union, You Have Due Process Rights

July 18, 2025 Cathy Highet, Labor Notes. Strategize! Legal System, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights

Suppose you run for local union office on a reform slate, and nearly win… but then the incumbent leaders trump up charges against you. You’re sure your only crime is challenging them, but they brand your organizing “dual unionism” or “conduct unbecoming a member.” They hold a trial, find you guilty, and suspend your membership. Do you have any recourse? Most unions have an internal discipline process—a way to expel, suspend, or fine members for breaking the union’s rules. Most members have a legal right to due process, and protections against improper discipline, under a 1959 federal law called the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.

Engaging Critics Can Create A Stronger Local

May 29, 2025 Paul Ruth, Labor Notes. Organize! Inclusion, Labor Movement, Rank and File, Unions

Factions often emerge in local unions—and they aren’t necessarily a bad thing. But a local union’s “divided government” can be problematic, especially when a contract campaign is on the horizon. Often “factions” happen when certain members frequently criticize the local leadership, and leaders push back. The division may appear to be hostile, but often the underlying tension comes from frustration and lack of communication on both sides. For union leaders, pushing back against critics is often the natural human reaction. But as the leader of a teachers’ union local, I have found that it’s usually better to be inclusive.

UAW Reformers Close Caucus, Launch New Organization

April 30, 2025 Jane Slaughter and Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. Strategize! Democracy, Labor Movement, Rank and File, UAW, Unions

Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the reform caucus in the Auto Workers, voted to dissolve at its quarterly online membership meeting April 27. “It was a heartbreaking decision to come to,” said UAWD founder and chair Scott Houldieson, a 36-year electrician at Ford. “UAWD had become a caucus that is ‘resolutionary,’ and focused more on caucus discipline than on actually organizing workers. Meetings had become dreadful. We can have differences as long as we make a decision and move on.” A majority of the group’s steering committee had brought a resolution calling for the dissolution. It was hotly debated. About half of the caucus membership attended the meeting.

Member-Run Unions

April 20, 2025 United Electrical Radio And Machine Workers Of America (UE), Portside. Organize! Democracy, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Hundreds of workers are crowded into a high-school gymnasium. Their union leaders carefully go through each article of their employer’s last, best and final offer. Hands are raised, questions are asked and answered, and members share their thoughts with their officers and with each other. In the previous two months of negotiations, the union negotiating committee has been seeking language to help curb the company abuses that have become rampant in the plant. The company has not agreed. Each union member weighs whether they will take the company’s offer, and accept ongoing problems in the workplace in exchange for modest economic improvements, or reject the offer and strike for a better deal.

How Rank-And-File Democracy Transformed The Teamsters And UAW

March 3, 2025 Michael J. Goldberg, Power At Work. Strategize! Democracy, History, Labor Movement, Rank and File, Teamsters, UAW, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s well known in labor circles that the 2020’s opened with a tremendous resurgence of rank-and-file activism in the workplace. Beginning with 2021’s “Striketober” and sparked initially by the hardships of the pandemic and emboldened by the labor shortages that followed, that upsurge targeted union and nonunion workplaces alike. Among the collective bargaining breakthroughs in already unionized workplaces, two of the most important involved the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the United Auto Workers (UAW). In 2023, the IBT won a historic contract with its largest employer, UPS, without having to follow through on its threat to strike.

From Gripe Sessions To Grievance Tracking

February 7, 2025 Bonny Hulberg, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

When I joined my local union, I dove in headfirst and became a steward. I was excited to see how things were run and where I might fall in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t quite what I expected; then again, I had never been in a union before. So I sat back and watched our organizer run our steward meetings, listened to the other attendees—and realized our meetings were gripe sessions, lacking structure and focus. Stewards and members alike were expressing frustrations, but there was little tangible action to address these issues, as far as I could tell.

Leadership In AFSCME DC 37 Is Stifling Rank And File Engagement

August 2, 2024 Duncan Freeman, Labor Notes. Resist! Labor Movement, New York City (NYC), Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Members of District Council 37's Local 3005 in New York City say that attempts to mobilize their coworkers over the last two years have been stonewalled and met with apathy by union leadership. Current and former members say that since the pandemic, they have presented proposals to create a membership committee, speak out about city budget cuts, fight for telework rights and other efforts and that all were slow-walked or shot down by the union’s president Jeff Oshins. Most recently, some members have wanted to introduce motions calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and for the New York City Employees' Retirement System to divest from Israeli bonds and securities.

Our Big Push Was For Union Democracy And A Plan To Win

March 21, 2024 Luigi Morris, Left Voice. Strategize! Amazon, Democracy, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In 2022, Amazon workers on Staten Island made history. The JFK8 warehouse in New York voted to unionize, forming the first U.S. union in the company’s history — an independent union known as the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), representing over 8,000 workers. Since then, Amazon has been intransigently refusing to start contract negotiations. Union-busting tactics, such as the persistent firing of pro-union activists, continue at JFK8 and other facilities. Amazon even filed a case arguing that the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that enforces labor law, is “unconstitutional.”

Union Democracy Stands Up

January 5, 2024 Barry Eidlin, Dollars & Sense. Organize! Democracy, Labor Movement, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The First Weekend of November, 2023, Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) held its annual convention at a hotel near O’Hare Airport outside of Chicago. It was the 48th convention since the rank-and-file union reform movement’s founding in 1976. The mood was confident and upbeat, with organizers announcing an attendance of 500 Teamster members from across the country. It was the largest TDU convention since 1997. The Friday dinner banquet speaker was Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, who took stock of what his administration had accomplished since taking office in March 2022.

For Open Bargaining, Start Early And Build

August 3, 2023 Ellen David Friedman, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Labor Unions, Negotiations, Rank and File

In many unions, ratification of a collective bargaining agreement can leave members alienated and angry. Sometimes members will be learning about the major features of a tentative deal for the first time. Little time is given to discussion—members are expected to approve what leadership recommends, and officers may get defensive at questions or complaints. In some unions, members know their opinion doesn’t matter and may not even bother to vote. But there’s another way to go, to build a powerful, participatory, energized union through the bargaining process: open bargaining.

There Is No Substitute For The Rank And File

April 18, 2021 Tatiana Cozzarelli, Left Voice. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Labor Unions, Rank and File

The Bessemer Amazon unionization effort was full of potential. It held the promise of a union bringing together the Black Lives Matter movement and a struggle for labor rights in order to take on one of the biggest, most odious corporations in the country. Maybe a Southern state would set off a movement again, like West Virginia and Oklahoma kicked off the teachers’ spring. Alongside Left Voice comrades, I decided to go to Bessemer, Alabama the week before voting ended. As I prepared to go, I had a weird feeling. I kept looking at interviews and I saw just two Amazon workers, over and over and over. They were great spokespeople, no doubt. But where were the other 5,698 workers?

assetto corsa mods

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