All Posts Tagged With: "union busting"

The Wall Street journal said Monday Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption. The WSJ contend its conclusion is reached “according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.”

It’s an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union. Obama is reported to have said he thinks the ongoing effort has runs it course.

The ongoing probe has been a burr under the Teamster’s saddle blanket. Most observers think mob influence over the union has diminished in recent times. The Teamsters if the largest Union in the United States with about 1.4 million members with 32% in the Central state anchored in Obama’s hometown of Chicago; 26% in the West; 28% in the East, and 7% in the South. About 2% are in Canada.

Two-thirds of Teamsters members work in one of five divisions: Warehouse, Parcel, Freight, Public Employees and Industrial Trades. The Public Employees sector is the union’s fastest-growing division, and organizing more Federal employees is a lucative segment for the union, and some say a friendly person in the White House who would block Federal oversight would be pehaps the biggest coup possible for the union at this juncture