Rank and file was key in Chittenden
ALTHOUGH TEAMSTER Local 597 (which includes all Vermont Teamsters) Principal Officer Ron Rabideau wants to get the "facts straight" regarding the recent Chittenden County Transit Authority (CCTA) contract impasse, information from bus drivers leads me to question his assertions ("Wrong about Chittenden contract").
While Mr. Rabideau may indeed "work an average of 70 hours per week," CCTA drivers--including elected bargaining committee members Nate Bergeron, Kim Tanner and Mike Walker--describe doing "ALL the legwork, ALL the organizing and...ALL the strike preparation" (with the support of the independent coalition formed to support them, but without Rabideau or other Teamster officials).
Rabideau's response implies that the CCTA negotiating team and bargaining unit were kept fully informed and engaged in the process. Yet bargaining unit members recount being kept from viewing the fact-finder's report--one stating he was told by the CCTA acting general manager that a Teamster official "explicitly instructed her to withhold the report" from members--until union officials, on half-sheets of paper with text minimized 50 percent, sent it to them a week later.
Drivers report being left out of the "conversation" that led to a second tentative agreement. Conducted behind closed doors, without any bargaining unit members--not even the elected negotiators--present, the subsequent agreement worked out between Local 597 officials and CCTA management not only failed to address drivers' safety concerns, but also added more part-time drivers and included a reduction in hours for full-timers amounting to a $2,600 a year pay cut.
This second "Tentative Agreement" was rejected by drivers with a vote of 52 to 6 on April 10, with a strike scheduled to begin April 15.
It is true that the information above came to me from "Sunday Breakfast Club" drivers, and Rabideau may be correct that I do not know what he does to protect and support the members of Local 597. But despite attending over a dozen drivers' meetings and public activities building support for the drivers, I have never met, nor seen, him or any other Teamster officials in attendance. I even publicly inquired, on February 6 at Contois Auditorium in Burlington City Hall, if any were present.
Despite Rabideau's claims to the contrary, the tentative agreement won by Vermont's CCTA drivers on April 14, with elected negotiators present and within four hours of the scheduled strike, was accomplished by rank-and-file union members without much support, if any, of union bureaucracy.
In the words of the "Sunday Breakfast Club," a.k.a. "52 Never-Been-More-Unified CCTA Bus Drivers," labor's real power "is in the hands of the rank-and-file and always will be."
Brian J. Walsh, Burlington, Vt.
