Campaign Ep 02(1)

The Teamster Power 767 campaign podcast is dedicated to educating Teamsters and discussing their concerns. They criticize the local for pressuring members to vote for a contract they believe is flawed. They highlight issues such as dishonesty terminations, lack of air conditioning in trucks, and the delay in forming heat-related committees. They emphasize the importance of empowering members through education and communication. They discuss the need for a centrally located union hall to increase member participation and suggest building a new hall to meet their needs. They prioritize taking care of members and creating a welcoming space for them. Welcome everybody to the Teamster Power 767 campaign podcast. This is a new podcast solely dedicated to the Teamster Power slate running for local 767 office in November of 2024. Regardless of the outcome, we intend to continue the Reality Check podcast dedicated to the education of the members locally and across the country. Our goal, in or out of office, is to educate as many Teamsters as possible. Hope everyone's doing well today. Welcome to the second campaign podcast. Today, Garfield, I'm going to ask you, where do you want to start this? It's your call. We'll start where you want. Listen, you know what I hate, Jeff? Tell me. I hate being told what to do. I especially hate being told what to do when I know I'm being told to do the wrong thing. That's what I felt like when our local started going around telling everybody they needed to vote yes on this contract. Yes, I know what you're saying. I'm not going to disparage anyone for making the decision that they felt was best for their family. You know, you look at the language in the contract, and you feel like this language is what you're okay with for the next five years, and you make that decision. Great. Then that's the decision you made. You talk to people that are informed. You read this language. That makes it informed. That makes you informed. But to just have a local going around and being like, hey, this contract's great. You should vote yes on it. And you know what? See, the same people that are in office now told us to vote yes on the last contract. And we all know how that worked out. Yes, absolutely. A lot of the things happening with the new contract are not good things that are happening. No. I mean, sure. You and I have spoken numerous times, and this contract is better, however so slightly, than the previous one. But it certainly didn't address a lot of the things that I think we should have. Like, you know, dishonesty terminations, you know. You know, the company can twist anything into dishonesty if you give them long enough. Yep. The three no-call-no-shows. Yeah, three no-call-no-shows. That's already becoming a problem. It is a problem. It's March. Has anybody seen air conditionings in their trucks? In any trucks? I mean, I keep looking. I mean, I don't see anything. Yeah, me neither. I don't see anything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure we were told they would be there in January, right? I mean, it seems like anything – like, they should be – we should start seeing them. It is starting to get hot. We've already had a 95-degree day, I think, here in North Texas, you know. Yep, yep, yep, yep. What about the committees for the heat? You know, like, how come those weren't put together? They were supposed to be done right away and they were never done. Yeah, it's interesting that, you know, we're all the way back around to the hot part of the year again and, like, we really haven't seen a lot of movement on that. Like, where are the committees? Where are the designated responders for heat issues? The guys that are designated to call 911 if an employee needs it? And wasn't our president on the Health and Safety Committee? He was certainly proud of a lot of the committees he was on. I know if I was a part of a negotiating committee on this contract, I wouldn't be very proud of it. But, you know, that leads me into, you know, so since I'm running for president, I – you know, something like this has bothered me as well, and this is something where you give that information to the members. You give as much as you can. You don't make it biased. You give that information, explain it to the members, and you let them make the decision. I mean, it's got to be – you know, it's not what you want. I mean, you're going to tell it – you're going to say no matter what, it's great. And certain things may be good, but you want to let them make that choice. But they were, you know, telling people what direction to go to and, you know, do this. And I just – it's just unreal. And that's something, you know, we want to change. And that's something – you know, that's one of those things where you let the members decide for themselves. But you give them plenty of information. You don't just give them, you know, a little. You give as much as they need. You answer everything they need. And what that comes down to is empowering them and, you know, by educating them. And it's just – it turns into a whole thing. And, you know, we want the membership to be educated and empowered. You know, we don't want a membership suppressed. That's a problem. That's going on right now. We want them to be in the know. And, you know, that goes, you know, with communicating with them and just making sure that they have the tools to deal with any situation. And, again, you know, they're in with stewards. You know, when they go in, you know, you've got your wine garden rights. But you want them to have those tools so they know what's going on when they're in a hearing, right? They're not just, okay, my steward's going to take care of it. You know what's going on. So maybe, hey, you have to step out. Maybe you have to say – maybe you come up with an idea to help out also. I mean, that's what you want. And, you know, it's unbelievably the opposite going on right now. And that's something that's not even a question. This will happen. You know, the members will be empowered. They'll be educated. You know, and it's – I don't know why it's been so hard for, you know, for administrations to understand that and, you know, just do that in general. But, you know, and that's part of what we talked about on the last campaign episode about having the members back. Now, having the members back means a lot of things. And one of the things is educating, giving them the tools, right? Absolutely. We need to do that. So, you know, when we talk about that, it involves a lot of things. And it's just, you know, and then communicating with them. That's part of it. And it's a lot. And this is what we want to give the membership. And they'll – once everyone's in the same direction, not kind of like turning different ways, and this culture we want to change, it won't happen overnight. No. But, you know, it will happen because we want it to happen. And we get the members on board. And instead of being 50% going at the company, we want to be 100% going at the company. Doesn't that make sense? And to me, that's the only way. We want to be as strong as possible. The more people that are empowered with the knowledge to fight back against the things that the company is doing right now, the better off the union as a whole is. And right now, all we have are some informed stewards, some, you know, a few BAs. And that's not enough. Like every member needs to have the knowledge. And not all members can make it to a union hall in the middle of BFE for, you know, once a month. I mean, for me, you know, I live up north. And when I got started, I started in one of the rural centers up here in Sherman. It's 101 miles from my driveway to the union hall. That's an all-day affair for me if I've got to drive down to that union hall. That's crazy. And, you know, that's going to actually lead me into my next thing. So, you know, last time I was in the hall, we actually looked at buildings, you know, just initially. Again, we got to run, you know, everything past the membership. But we didn't find anything that, you know, that suited, you know, what we needed. So, you know, the idea has always been, and we want to be centrally located, like you were saying. The problem is we're so far away from everything that, you know, it's like a lot of members aren't going to show up. And we want as many members to show up as possible. So not only do we want it centrally located, you know, and it's got to be in Tarrant County. You know, if you get another local, it's got to be in Tarrant County. Yeah. You know, you want to be around hotels, strip malls, you know, things like that, around areas where people, it's not just so desolate. Yeah. The idea is, you know, you want to find the ideal building. But, you know, what could be good is what also was thought of is building our own to our needs. Yeah. What we needed. You know, right now I'm not sure the size of the membership. And, you know, obviously not even close to that makes it to the meeting, you know. No. And we want more people to come. And, you know, you could build a hall if necessary. You know, again, you've got to run everything by the membership. But, you know, those are ideas we bring up. And you build a hall, right? And what you could also do, if you buy the piece of land, you could also build a separate hall, have the parties that we want to, right? I mean, you can just have different parties in there. You don't have to rent out a hall. That's done. Right there. We already have a place. And you want to get enough land. So, if you want to build something else or, you know, you want to do all that. I mean, also, the hall needs to be updated. And to put money into a place that's kind of falling apart and there's not enough offices for the BAs, you want to have something updated. And, you know, enough room. And just everything is set up the right way. We want members. We want to encourage them to come to the hall. And, you know, I know that Local 728, they recently, you know, last year they finished building their new hall. And it's nice. I mean, the way they set it up and everything like that. So, you know, the idea has been there for years. And, you know, we looked. You know, our time ran out at the hall. And I think that's important. I mean, listen, taking care of the members is number one. There's nothing that's going to be more important. But at the same time, we can look at another place to get for the members so more members can get to the hall. And, you know, you could throw some, you know, put some computers in there, you know, for members if they want to come there. You know, let's say it's on their, you know, break. Anything. Have a separate room for them, you know, where they can get educated, where there's things on different parts of the contract, videos on different parts of the contract. You know what I'm saying? You know where I'm going with this. Yeah. And, you know, this needs to be done. Again, number one is taking care of the members. Again, at the same time, we can, you know, getting a new hall, getting more people. And that goes to the change in culture. It will start educating people more. You know, they can come to the hall and get that education. So, like I said, this is something that I feel is important also. You know, I've spoken to the members of the slate. They agree it's important. You get the right building and you keep the membership. You know, obviously, they're going to have to decide yes or no if we can, you know, do it. Yeah. Everything comes to a close. We want to get them involved. We want to get them involved with everything, how we, you know, how they want. If we're going to build one, how would they like it? Get their input. Everything is going to involve members' input. That's one of the ideas, you know, that we've been talking about. I mean, it's important. I mean, think about that. You know, yeah, sure, everything costs money. We have the money. Okay? And to build this and to do this is important as well because you're getting more members involved because they'll be there and they're more apt to come if they want to come during the week, on break. They can, you know, go on the computers. Get with their BAs a lot easier at the hall. Yes. Well, and it just – it would do to just make the hall more advanced because, you know, that building is very much just like a, you know, an old metal building, it seems like, at this point. Like, when was this hall even built? I mean, it was – I don't know the exact year. I don't know. Okay. But it's – Needless to say, it's been there for a while. Yes. You know, it's definitely got some issues, the roof, this, that. Yeah. But, again, not enough offices. It's time to, you know, look towards the future. And, again, that's part of everything what we want to do also is looking towards the future, you know, not forgetting the present. And, you know, we've got BAs, business agents. Yeah. We've got business agents sharing offices. You know, like how much more efficient could their time be spent if they had their own space? I mean, it would. It would. Yeah. It has. And, like I said, we looked at, you know, we looked at different buildings and there was nothing we thought right off the bat, you know. We wanted to bring something to the membership and, you know, there was just nothing to bring to the membership, you know, at that point. It was like, you know, and then, you know, the time ran out. But, again, that's one idea, but that's been something that's been going in my head for a bunch of years now. So it's another thing I want to go to. You know, we see these stewards, you know, the newer stewards, and, you know, one day class and they're stewards. And, I mean, how strong can you be if it's just one class? I mean, some people get it. Some people don't. That's fine. I get that. What if they have to – there's no other stewards and they have to represent a member? They don't know what to say. Yeah. It's a problem. I mean, do you have any newer stewards that were put in your building? Yes. Actually, I'm sure I've spoken about this before. When my building was first opened, I was one of three stewards that were in the building. Each one of us came from a different building back in 2014. Shortly after that building opened, those other two stewards went to feeders. So I was the only driver steward in the building for like probably a solid year, maybe a year and a half, until we finally got some more candidates in there to go through their day of training. It was weird because when I started complaining about that stuff, about only being the only ones, like, we need to get some more people in here to help out, you know, they were like, well, when did you go through class? And I was like, well, about that. I was made a steward alternate when I was in Sherman. And then when I came down here, I was just kind of thrown to the wolves. And I had never actually been to a class. So I was just learning. I was learning from my other stewards. I was learning while doing. I was reading the contract. And, you know, finally they got me in a class. And I was like, okay, well, this is great. And then about six months later, we got a few other good stewards that have really, you know, they have turned out into good people. But it's like it's always something new. There's always something more you can learn doing this job. So, like, you're not really going to be able to learn all of it or even a fraction of it in a class, especially if it's only one day. Yeah. But what I would have liked to have done and something that when you guys were in office, they actually pulled me out to go to a panel one time. And that was fascinating to get to watch that stuff. And, like, I would love to see more stewards, like, maybe get brought to the hall, like, once every couple of months and be like, hey, this is the kind of stuff we have to do as a business agent. You know, if they have questions, they can ask their B.A. or the president or whoever happens to be there. They can. They can help out with whatever's going on. So they know the importance of them doing their job properly in order to help the B.A.s properly. Yeah. And we're hoping that, you know, any stewards, there's always a chance that they could become, you know, assistant B.A. or a B.A. Yeah. And that's the important part. I mean, we want all that. We want everyone to grow, right? Yeah. So here's the thing. This is what we're thinking. It's rough to estimate how we want to do this, but maybe make it, like, six months before a steward gets in there. And, again, you've got to, you know, and in that time, they're learning a lot of things. They're on the job. They're shadowing other stewards, right? Yeah. They're watching different things that the B.A.s are doing. You know, they're constantly getting education, right? And they're getting stronger and stronger. And, you know, even, you know, even some sort of test involved with it. Nothing crazy. Because we want the members, we want these stewards to pay attention. And so we want them to respect the position of steward. And I think that's the problem. You know, that's the thing. Not a lot of people. I'll say some people just want the title of steward, but they really don't want to do much with it, right? Exactly. And we don't want any of that. That's not going to happen. You're a steward. You're going to put yourself out there like every steward does. You're going to be educated. If you don't know something, it doesn't hurt to ask. I'm going to tell you this. Every single person that has a steward, we got your back. And that's an absolute thing. We're going to make sure every member, every steward knows that we have their back. Because that's what I'm seeing now. I mean, the B.A.s are just like, you know, they don't have the members back and the stewards. And it's like the stewards are, you know, put in a position by, you know, not being able to do certain things. And you don't want that. Give the back to stewards. Stewards need to be, you know, need to know that, yes, we got your back. And that's important. So whether it's six months we're able to get in the hall, that's something we'll decide. But it's going to be an extended period of time. It's not just going to be one day. It's not going to work. It's just you need the experience. And, you know, you need that education. Just say these four things. That's it. We got your back. These were important things. You know, we brought up some issues we saw. And we wanted to show you some solutions. We want to do. And they're important. Everything's important. And like I said, we're not hiding anything from the membership. We wanted you to know what we're thinking. And that's important as well. So I just want to say, everyone, you know, just wait. We're coming. And we've got a lot of ideas, a lot of things we want to talk about. And we want to make this, our local 767, the best version of itself. So thank you very much. And everyone have a good day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.