Teamsters Who Haul Cars OK Pact by 2-1 Margin
A renegotiated contract covering 20,000 Teamsters around the country who drive auto transport trucks was approved by a 2-1 margin in voting tabulated Friday.
The original car haulers contract, rejected in July by slightly more than 72% of those voting, was among four of five big Teamster contracts this year that failed to win the approval of rank-and-file majorities. But the others took effect because they were rejected by less than the two-thirds majority required to scrap a contract proposal submitted to the union’s membership.
The decades-old rule was changed this week to allow a simple majority to scrap a contract proposal if more than half of those covered by the offer cast ballots.
The vote in favor of the renegotiated pact was 9,034 to 4,498, said Steve Kindred, an organizer for Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a 10,000-member dissident group that had branded the first contract as too favorable to employers.
The overwhelming approval of the contract avoids the possibility of a strike like the 23-day walkout that took place in 1985 after car haulers rejected a contract with the 39 companies belonging to the National Automobile Transporters Assn.
“Although we don’t think the contract was nearly as good as it could be, it did remove some of the worst features of the first offer,” Kindred said. Among other things, the new contract grants a 2.7% wage increase and a similar increase in benefits, he said.
The rejection of the previous contract proposal had presented the first major internal challenge for Teamsters President William J. McCarthy, who was selected to succeed the late Jackie Presser little more than a week before the original contract was turned down.
The top Teamster negotiator in the first round of talks had been Walter Shea, McCarthy’s chief aide. TDU called on McCarthy to appoint a new negotiating committee, saying Shea and other negotiators were out of touch with the drivers’ needs.
Shea, who had been negotiating car hauler contracts for 20 years, was subsequently replaced by Ernest Tusino, who negotiated the contract that was approved Friday.
