O’Brien, a fourth-generation member of the union, has Hoffa was a fierce critic of Hoffa and the contract his administration negotiated with UPS in 2018. That contract was rejected by 54% of senior members of the company. League. But because less than two-thirds of eligible union members at the trucking giant voted to approve it, Hoffa was able to put the contract into effect despite opposition.
“We’ll take UPS as an example,” he said CNN Business in an interview earlier this week. “Attack is a last resort, but if a company doesn’t negotiate in good faith, we get what our members deserve.”
UPS is by far the largest trucking company in the country and the largest employer of Teamster members, with 327,000 on payroll as of earlier this year. If there was a strike it would be the union’s first nationwide strike since it hit UPS for 17 days in 1997. And it would be a much larger strike, as UPS just employed 180,000 Teamsters at the time.
Teamsters once represented a large percentage of US long-haul carriers, but today most of that industry is non-industrial, with the exception of UPS. Still, with 1.4 million members, Teamster remains one of the nation’s largest and most powerful unions.
Elections ended on Monday and votes have been counted by an election supervisor since then. Voting was not completed in the early hours of Thursday night, but O’Brien had a lead of nearly 58,000 votes and only 35,000 votes left to count, according to totals from the election monitor.
O’Brien thanked his supporters in a statement posted on the campaign’s website.
“You have chosen a team dedicated to rebuilding Teamsters as a warrior, fighting alliances from the bottom up. You are the reason for our victory. Thank you. Recruiters and politics Families are paying attention – the Teamsters alliance is back,” he said. “Fighting for workers is a full-fledged contact sport. We urge every Teamster to wear helmets and buckle up as the fight starts today.”
His father, Jimmy Hoffa, led the union from 1957 to 1967, negotiating a groundbreaking employment contract in 1964 with most of the nation’s long-distance trucking companies at the time. That is the height of the union’s power, and it made Jimmy Hoffa one of the most famous union leaders in the nation’s history.
But at the time, the union was also plagued by allegations of links to organized crime. The union eventually had to agree to operate under federal supervision because of those constraints. That oversight doesn’t end until 2020. Ending that process marks one of the key achievements of James Hoffa’s tenure.
Jimmy Hoffa resigned from duty but was not Teamsters president when he entered federal prison in 1967. He was released early when President Richard Nixon reduced his sentence in 1971 in exchange for relinquishing his post. .
