Today more than ever we need a strong and active membership to overcome the challenges our union is facing. We learned from the early days of the labor movement that our strength in winning good contracts and protecting workers’ rights lies with members. However, the reality today is that union leaders often feel that they are overworked while their members are not involved. In some situations, apathy has taken over at a time when we can least afford it.

What can Teamsters locals do? Many locals have begun setting up a way to systematically reach out to members, educate them on what’s happening to working people and get them involved in campaigns to fight back.

The information contained in this manual offers ideas for building and maintaining membership participation within your local through a structured communication system, on-going education and planned actions.

What Are We Up Against?
Today’s Organizing and Bargaining Environment

Is this what the balance of power looks like?

In today’s anti-union environment, reality looks more like this:

Today, employers have the advantage over workers mostly due to anti-union legislation such as weakly enforced labor laws and the right to permanently replace strikers.

What can Teamster locals do to change that balance of power? We can increase the number of people who support issues of concern to working people. Who are those people? Members, workers not yet organized, community organizations, elected officials, members of the media and others. Organizing those groups to work together can increase the weight of unions that face employers. Given the current climate, Teamsters have to take the lead to show how our issues as working people are everyone's issues. Our first job is to start with involving our own members.