BREAKING NEWS:  Teamsters defy membership – ratify contract despite “NO” vote.

Under a Teamsters’ rule (Article XII in the union’s constitution), the Teamsters ratified the UPS National Agreement, despite a majority of voters voting against the contract.
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Unions like to present themselves as similar to a nonprofit organization. One of the best ways to evaluate the trustworthiness of a nonprofit is to look at the percentage of total spending that goes directly into their stated programs, versus what they spend on running the organization.

Charity watchdogs like the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance and the Charity Review Council say this percentage should be no lower than 65%.

The average spending on programs of the top 100 charities in the country, according to the Forbes Top Charities list for 2017, was 86% – far above the minimum.

The image above is a list of how some well-known nonprofits stack up to this measure.

Click to see Teamster financial details

Did the Teamsters even come close?

Hardly!  The Teamsters posted total income of over $204 Million in 2018, yet spent only 28% on Representational Activities. The rest was spent on salaries, benefits and perks, and other overhead expenses.  Almost the exact opposite of organizations whose stated purpose is to help people.

The Marble Palace

Click to see the image source

An old adage reminds us to “choose our friends wisely.”

The table at the left provides some indication of the “company you keep” with the Teamsters. If you know anything about the history of unions, you’ve probably heard the mystery of the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, a former Teamsters President, and the alleged connection of the Teamsters (and other unions) with the mafia.

Another indication is how many Unfair Labor Practice charges have been filed against them.  Over the last 10 years this totals 7,132, for an average of about 713 ULPs per year. That’s some serious misbehaving!

They have also averaged about 29 strikes per year during that same period.  Fifteen of those strikes were over 100 days long, and two of them were over 650 days – just a couple of months less than 2 years long!  That’s quite a while to be without a paycheck.

Rome Aloise

Top Teamster Official “Guilty On All Charges”

In October 2017, California Judge Barbara Brown found Rome Aloise, the Teamsters western region power broker, “guilty on all charges,” including:

  • engaging in acts of racketeering
  • using union influence at two employers to force them to hire his cousin
  • negotiating a sham union contract with an investment broker friend
  • illegally used union resources and power to ensure the election of his supporter in Local 601

What was his “punishment” for such behavior? Despite the recommendation of a lifetime ban from participating in union affairs, Aloise received just a 2-year suspension by the union’s “independent” review board!  The Independent Investigations Officer who recommended the lifetime ban, Joseph E. diGenova, lamented, “Aloise has repeatedly shown his contempt for all legal restraints on his conduct. The only way to ensure Aloise’s non-involvement in IBT affairs is through an associational ban where both he and those IBT employees and officers who have knowing contacts with him can be held accountable.”

Ken Paff, a founding member of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, said the roots of corruption go deeper than Aloise. “The fact is the Hoffa administration is too [inclined] to say ‘too bad you got caught’ … they don’t take the attitude that someone who does something wrong is betraying the union,” Paff said. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to clean up an institution by taking bad apples and throwing them out. They can just replace them with other bad apples.”