Globalization has been tough on unions, but at least one major group is seeing an increase in its numbers.
The Teamsters count 1.45 million members in North America, after a net gain of about 40,000 last year. This year, the union expects to do even better, general president Jim Hoffa said during a visit to Fort Wayne.
“Our numbers are up and we’re growing,” he said shortly before addressing about 60 workers at a SuperValu warehouse on Executive Boulevard Thursday afternoon. Hoffa was in Fort Wayne as part of an Indiana tour to endorse presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. He visited Yellow Freight and USF Holland, both on Merchant Road, later in the day.
Hoffa said he likes Obama’s plans to revisit the North American Free Trade Agreement and calls him the best candidate for working families. Fellow Democratic hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has also called for changes to the agreement, which became effective in 1994 after her husband and former president, Bill Clinton, signed it into law.
Hoffa blames the agreement for moving jobs to Mexico. But he thinks other factors, including a poor economy, have hurt American workers as well. Despite its membership growth, the Teamsters union has not been immune to job cuts, including at SuperValu, said Walter Lytle, president of Teamsters Local 414. In 2001, the company announced it would layoff 425.
But Hoffa said negotiations with employers have been promising.
“We have relatively stable relationships with our employers.”
He added that the union’s diversified membership from freight to school bus drivers has helped it stay strong and increase membership, while another major union tied to manufacturing jobs, the United Auto Workers, has seen its membership decline.
Still, Hoffa – the son of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa who mysteriously disappeared in 1975 – thinks the American worker is facing difficult times.
“The economy’s bad, you’ve got these high gasoline prices … (and) people are losing their houses.”
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