What the Trucker Knows: A Checkup on the Card-Check Law (great story by a Teamster)

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/card-check-legislation-062309

June 23, 2009, 12:16 PM

As Capitol Hill takes on union rights at the behest of corporate lobbyists, Esquire.com's political columnist continues to tell the stories of our time from the ground-up — this week with a workers-rights organizer whose company followed him, filmed him, emasculated him, and left him the victim of picket-line brutality in a hospital for several weeks. This is what we're legalizing?

By John H. Richardson

"How do you know when a Teamster is dead?"

"The donut falls out of his hand."


"I lost my truck," Kenneth Tucker says. "I had to take my kids out of Catholic school. You gotta excuse me, just talking about it is rough — two-and-a-half years later, I'm still playing catch up. You feel less of a man. You let your family down."


That's one of the oldest Teamster jokes — one of many I compiled years ago during the course of a lengthy investigation into union corruption and thuggery in Hollywood. So you don't have to convince me that America's business leaders have some legitimate reasons (globalization, competition, and, yes, lots of union corruption and thuggery) for further crushing the "union movement." This time it's in the form of a massive campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), popularly known as the "card check" law.

That's one of the oldest Teamster jokes — one of many I compiled years ago during the course of a lengthy investigation into union corruption and thuggery in Hollywood. So you don't have to convince me that America's business leaders have some legitimate reasons (globalization, competition, and, yes, lots of union corruption and thuggery) for further crushing the "union movement." This time it's in the form of a massive campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), popularly known as the "card check" law.

But what remains odd is that business corruption and thuggery never bring out the same passion for crushing the "business movement." Especially now, when the financial sector is taking unions down — and, hell, the Great American Middle Class — down with it, because Tim Geithner can tinker with our banking system 'til Judgment Day and the working man will still never be able to pay a mortgage on "Do you want fries with that?"

Even with a Democratic majority, however, the odds for the EFCA do not look good, as this terrific article by Ken Silverstein, ominously titled "Labor's Last Stand," explores in rich detail.

Consider, then, the story of one union member with whom I spoke recently: Kenneth Tucker, a 41-year-old truck driver from Baltimore with a wife and three kids. He was working for a company called Giant Foods until March 2006, when it downsized his ass by spinning off its truckers to a Nashville company called Quickway Transportation. The way he tells it, Tucker's story is a tragic one, sure. But more than anything it's emblematic of how backwards our legislative priorities have become: We're taking trucks away from truck drivers.

KEN TUCKER: They started off paying us a flat salary rate — about $1,000 a week, same as we made at Giant Foods. Then they took that away and started paying us by stops and miles, which isn't suitable for this area because of the traffic and congestion. After six weeks, I was down to $700 a week. To make it up, you had to work seven days a week. You go from being a family man to never seeing your kids.

ESQUIRE: So you organized a union.

KT: Me and a guy by the name of Angelo Jackson. We went to our old union rep at Teamsters Local 639.

ESQ: So Giant Foods was unionized?

KT: Yeah. It was owned by Izzy Cohen until '01. Izzy, he loved the truck drivers and he took care of us, because he believed the truck drivers were responsible for getting the produce to the store in a safe manner, which helped them get a profit. Izzy was for the union. We didn't have any problems under Izzy.

ESQ: What happened to Izzy?

KT: He died in '01. Then it was owned by a company from the Dutch Netherlands named Royal Ahold.

FULL story at link.

Giant has gone downhill ever since he died. We used to shop ther exclusively, not anymore.

I'll put that article to good use!

pnorman