Welcome to Wisconsin, California

We don’t need to travel all the way to Wisconsin to find the war against workers. We can go to our own Central Valley, where City and County politicians routinely vote against the rights of workers to organize and collectively bargain.

Take the City of Visalia, which recently imposed a contract on the Teamsters Local 856 affiliated Visalia Police Officers Association. Now the City wants to cancel retiree health care, breaking the promise they made to police, firefighters, and other public employees who served the p ople of Visalia.

Visalia also rolled out the red carpet for VWR International, giving this multi-billion dollar corporation millio s in subsidies to relocate to Visalia with no strings attached. Hundreds of VWR employee and Teamsters Local 853 members will lose their jobs if the current Bay Area distribution enter closes. The company won’t even give them the right to transfer.

So here we have a cash-strapped city giving millions to a giant corporation while they take it out of the pockets of their current and former employees. Welcome to Wisconsin, California!

But Teamsters are fighting back! Last month, more than 70 members and officers of Teamsters Locals 431, 517, 853, 856, and 948 met in Visalia to plan a long-term response. We also had allies from the Coalition for Clean Air, Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth, the California Labor Federation, the North Valley Labor Federation, GRAPE (Goshen Residents Against Polluting the Environment), IBEW Local 100, UFCW 8GS, and the Fresno-Madera-Tulare-Kings Central Labor Council.

Fighting back at the ballot box

It takes less than 8,000 votes to win an election in Visalia. With more than 1,000 Teamsters in Visalia and thousands more union members, we can start to take back Visalia. Registering to vote, getting to the polls, and contributing to DRIVE (our political action committee) is how we do it. Most importantly, Joint Council 7 President Rome Aloise engaged everybody on the big picture fight here, which is building power throughout the Central Valley to defend working families.

Looking at the census numbers from 2010, the population in the Central Valley is growing while it shrinks in the Bay Area. Political power is moving out to the Valley with it, and that’s a threat to us if we don’t get organized.

Joint Council 7 is working with other large unions and community allies to do a political power analysis of Central Valley cities and counties. Who is in office and when are they up for reelection? How many votes did they get? How much money did they spend to win? And how do we take out the bad ones?

Some other questions we will be asking include: What do they vote on in our jurisdiction? Do they contract out for solid waste, recycling, and transit services with non-union companies? Do they give tax breaks to distribution centers, grocery stores, and other industries to open up nonunion? Do they routinely side with employers during our contract fights? And what about agriculture?

With this research in hand, we can start to build a strategic program around organizing, contract campaigns, and politics so that we can win the best Teamsters contracts for current and future members!