Every year, rank-and-file Teamsters from across North America come together for the Teamsters Women’s Conference to share their experiences, learn from one another, and talk about the issues shaping their workplaces. This year’s conference was held in Washington, D.C., August 23–26, bringing 1,500 members together for four days of discussion, trainings, and organizing.

During the closing plenary, a panel of Teamsters women working in non-traditional industries took the stage to talk about what it takes to succeed in workplaces where women have historically been underrepresented — and why having more women at the table makes the Teamsters Union stronger. Below is their full conversation.

Moderator: Erin Foley, Teamsters Local 2

Panel participants of rank-and-file Teamsters: Teresa Gavina, Teamster with Republic Services; Darice Gilliam, Teamster with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET); Andrea Marshall, Teamster in the pipeline industry; and Carrie Jones, Teamster with Cassens Transport.

Erin Foley: We have a large group of women here who are very excited and nervous to be on stage. So, I’m going to start with the hardest question first. Tell us who you are and where you work and what your job is.

Carrie Jones: My name is Carrie Jones. I work in Detroit as a carhauler for Cassens Transport Company. I have five kids — two boys and three girls. I’m really laid back, but I just really enjoy my job.

Darice Gilliam: I’m Darice Gilliam. I’m a locomotive engineer. I’ve worked on the railroad for 31 and a half years. I’m a wife. I’ve been married 30 years. I have three children. My youngest daughter is with me today, and I’m very happy. Oh, one more thing! I’m the very first Arizona State Legislative Board Chairman in the BLET.

Andrea Marshall: I am Andrea Marshall. I am out of Teamsters Local 697 in Wheeling, West Virginia. I work with Eastern National Pipeline. My girls are out there [in the crowd]. I’ve been a pipeliner for seven years, and I love my job.

Teresa Gavina: My name is Teresa Gavina. I’m originally from Mexico. I immigrated to the U.S. I’m a mother of three. I work for Republic Services as a trash truck driver on the residential side.

Erin: Tell us, what first brought you into this line of work, and did you know at the time that it could become a real career for you?

Carrie: I had come out of a very long-term job in retail, and I knew I did not want to do that ever again. I got to a point where I just hated people, and I didn’t want to be like that. So, my husband, who is my absolute biggest cheerleader, he convinced me and encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. And at the time, I thought, well, I want to be a truck driver. My grandpa was a truck driver. My dad was a truck driver. So, I really wanted to do that. I went to school for my CDL. Every day they had some company come in and tell us a little bit about their company and try to recruit new drivers. You know, I was so disheartened at first because they would be like, “Oh, you have to bring a video game with you because you could be sitting at a dock for three hours.” And my ADD would not allow for that. So, a couple guys came in from Cassens, and they said, “If you are afraid of heights, don’t bother. If you don’t want to work in every weather condition, don’t bother. If you can’t walk one to five miles a day, don’t bother. But if you would like to make a lot of money, come see me.” It was a Teamsters job, so the benefits were amazing, and now there’s a pension waiting for me. From that point on, I was determined to make it a career. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

Darice: I’m a second-generation railroader. My dad was a locomotive engineer. He retired in 2010. I always knew it was a good job. It afforded my mom to be able to stay home with the kids. I actually stuck with it, especially when I found out about the strong Teamsters retirement.

Andrea: Well, I guess I am probably the most non-traditional one here. I had no aspirations at all to be a truck driver or a pipeliner. I was a bartender and then I decided I was done with that life after 23 years. I was fortunate enough to fall into the pipeline industry. I had no idea what it meant. I had no idea what I was going to be doing, but the pipeline bug bit me quickly. I fell absolutely head over heels in love with my job. I drive every day. I basically haul rock product supplies away and up to support pipeline construction.

Teresa: For me, it was honestly the great health care that got me into the job. I was tired of only working contract jobs for less than a year. I was a school bus driver before, and I needed more money. I was tired having to work three jobs to take care of my kids. So, that’s what brought me into the Teamsters. I applied for a lot of jobs and I got rejected nine times, but I kept going and eventually I got into a great union job.

Erin: What is commonly misunderstood about your industry?

Carrie: I think the most common misconception, or the biggest question I get, is who puts the cars onto these carhauler trucks for you? Like, people don’t assume it’s me doing the work. It is absolutely me. But people don’t understand. Like, you know, they see us driving down the highway, and they’re probably annoyed because it’s mandated that I drive at 65 miles per hour. But I do it all. I’m trained in weight distribution. The cars that we haul on these trucks — it has to be a certain length, a certain height, and you need to know all the [Department of Transportation] regulations. The safety aspect of it is just crazy because you’re climbing on the truck like a spider monkey in the rain, the snow, ice. A lot of times we unload these cars on the side of the road. So, I’ll be in the middle of a five-lane road and my tires are on both the yellow lines, and I still have to walk around the truck. People do not like that. They pay very little attention. It’s just that people don’t see what goes on behind the scenes in an industry like this. To get from Point A to Point B, to maneuver through small parking lots, and to stay in hotels most nights. It’s a grind. It’s a demanding job. And you can’t just go to any hotel. You have to find a hotel that will accommodate an 80-foot truck. It’s not easy sometimes.

Darice: What’s most misunderstood about my job working on the railroad is my lack of schedule. I’m on call 24/7. I get a two-hour call when I have to leave for work. I’m gone anywhere from 36 to 48 hours. I could be on the train for 12 hours up to 16 hours. We also are not allowed to strike. We are under the Railway Labor Act and I think that legislation is really misunderstood. Even within our own membership, members get really jealous that other Teamsters are allowed to strike. You also can’t stop these trains that fast. Our trains are anywhere from up to three miles long now, and anywhere from 15,000 to 18,000 tons. So, you can’t stop real quick. It’s dangerous work.

Andrea: For the pipeline industry, I just think people aren’t aware of what we do. Pipeline is very important. It’s the industry that’s responsible for how most people heat their homes. It’s necessary. It also requires a lot of long hours, and I would really, really, really love to see more women in this industry. I’m one of very few. But the women who do work in the pipeline industry, they are badass women.

Teresa: Most people would think I’m just a trash truck driver, but I actually operate a very specialized heavy machine because I’m collecting cans all day. They don’t see how I go into tight spaces. I have to watch out for traffic, for my customers, for e-bikes. People just think, “Oh no, she’s just driving a truck. She’s just picking up trash.” But it’s so much more than that.

Erin: Have there been issues on the job that have affected you as a woman that you have had to deal with? What did you do to confront such issues?

Carrie: It wasn’t common for women to be in the carhaul industry for a long time. There are very limited women’s bathrooms in the places where we make our stops. If I go to a new terminal, I have to be buzzed in. If nobody’s there, you have to go somewhere else. Even at my own my home terminal, the guys have a bathroom that has a shower, two sinks, and three stalls. I have to go through the mechanics shop and through a storage room, and then there’s a bathroom where you have to have a special key so that the guys won’t use it. At one point, one of those keys came up missing, and I would go in there and the toilet seat would be up. It would be a mess. I wanted to hurt someone’s feelings, but instead I contacted my union steward and, within 24 hours, the locks were changed and I was issued a new key. But these problems are everywhere you go. Even at some truck stops, there’s a huge men’s bathroom, but it’ll be one stall for the girls. I’m hoping that when more women join these industries, we’re going to see such issues corrected at some point.

Darice: I agree with that. On the railroads, we didn’t have a women’s bathroom for four years. They actually took our bathroom away. The men had a locker room, a shower, a bathroom, and then management took away the only women’s bathroom. And the men still break all the toilet seats. It cracks me up. A manager will call and say, “Hey, how’d that toilet seat get broken?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the men that go in there and use it? Women actually take care of our stuff.”

Andrea: For me, being a part of the Teamsters Union is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. I absolutely love my job in the pipeline industry, but what I love more is the solidarity. I haven’t had a bad experience at work.

Erin: That’s what we want. We want every woman to have a positive experience at work.

Teresa: To me, honestly, it’s being able to use and have access to a women’s restroom as well. I need to speak up, not just for myself, but for others because I’m only one of two female drivers at our terminal. I have encountered harassment, not towards me, but towards someone else. And she wasn’t able to speak up at the time that it happened. But I spoke up on her behalf, and I was retaliated against. Management at Republic Services wanted me to quit, but I stuck out the fight with my union, and we protected my job, and I’m happy I stood up.

Erin: What difference has having a union contract made in your life?

Carrie: It has definitely leveled the playing field for wages. I have five kids and my carhaul employer pays all my benefits. The Teamsters benefits are really unmatched. I have a pension. And I know I have an entire brotherhood and sisterhood behind me, no matter what happens. Having had nonunion jobs before, you always had to kind of walk on eggshells. Like if you had somebody that didn’t like you, like a manager who was constantly riding you, you were on your own. You might still get that, but now I have people in the union who are going to stand up for me. That’s the biggest change and biggest impact that having a union contract has made.

Darice: I think for me, on the railroad, it’s the only place I know where they really want to hire you, and then they spend the rest of their time trying to fire you. I think having the union there to protect you is what I find most beneficial. The railroad industry gets worse all the time. I’m very fortunate to have a Teamsters contract and all the people who protect me.

Andrea: My feelings are roughly the same. I’m very, very thankful to be under a union contract. It’s security. I don’t have to worry that I’m not going to be able to pay my bills or I’m not going to be able to go see a doctor. I have great health care with the Teamsters.

Teresa: I’m a first-generation Teamster. I have job security and health benefits. Not only that but I was able to send my son to college and he is graduating this year.

Erin: So, here’s a big one question. Why does it matter for younger women to see Teamsters women doing your kind of work? What would you say to young women, and how would you motivate them to move into your field?

Teresa: I’m an immigrant and I have an accent. If I’m able to do this work in the waste industry, you can too.

Andrea: I am getting older. It’s very important for young women to know that there is opportunity for them in the pipeline industry. You can do whatever you want. You can be exactly what you want to be. You know, it’s all about strong independence.

Erin: You said you were nervous coming out here in front of a live audience. But what do you you every day that’s less scary than this?

Andrea: I operate a really big machine. And I usually get wenched over hills with a bulldozer on my back. It’s crazy work. But it’s great.

Crowd: We are proud of you!

Erin: See, this audience isn’t so scary.

Andrea: The support helps!

Darice: I would love to see more women engineers on our trains. We’re not macho. I think we run trains way better than men. We have nothing to prove. But you really need a strong partner and you need a strong support network to take care of your kids. It was very challenging raising my family on the railroad. My husband was also a railroader. We worked opposite shifts all our careers until he retired a few years ago. You can do anything you want to do. It’s actually easy to run a train. But men are so macho about it.

Carrie: I have three daughters — all teenagers — and we are raising a generation of young women who are done falling in line to dominating patriarchal society standards. You know, having a younger generation coming in is going to bring new perspectives, new problem-solving. These aren’t archaic times anymore. I mean, it’s 2026, and we need to start acting like it.

Erin: Any closing remarks before we go?

Teresa: I want to give a special shout out to my sisters from Teamsters Local 396, and my co-workers from the Republic Services Anaheim yard.

Andrea: I would just like to say I am honored and very grateful to be at the Teamsters Women’s Conference. I would like to send a big thank you back home to Teamsters Local 697 in West Virginia. My baby daughter is at home.

Darice: I just want to thank my fellow locomotive engineers. I’ve got three other women here with me at the Teamsters Women’s Conference. And I want to thank the women of Teamsters Local 104 out in Arizona. They’ve been very inclusive.

Carrie: This is my first Teamsters conference. I have gone to bed every night feeling stronger and more empowered. This has been an amazing experience. These Teamster women are badass. You all deserve recognition.

Erin: I want to thank the badass women up here. You are the reason the Teamsters are making a difference and making changes. I appreciate what you do. Thank you!

By Emily Sohl and Riley Nee

In summer 2025, Cameron Bowman, a United Parcel Service (UPS) package car driver from Teamsters Local 767, began feeling lightheaded and fatigued while working in temperatures above 100 degrees. Inside his package car, the heat was even more intense. Bowman notified management, but his condition worsened, and he eventually ended up in the hospital with heat illness.

Every year, more heat waves make headlines as workers around the world struggle to adapt to increasingly dangerous conditions. UPS Teamsters know that reality all too well. Long days, little rest, and sweltering temperatures can make summer especially dangerous for delivery drivers, particularly in the hottest states.

Fortunately, situations like Bowman’s are becoming less common at UPS — thanks to significant safety measures proposed and secured by Teamsters at the logistics giant.

Despite Americans experiencing heat-related injuries at higher rates than ever before, cases at UPS have decreased 35% from 2023 to 2025, according to incidents reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Does this data suggest that UPS is willfully and responsibly enacting measures to improve safety that other employers are missing? Or is the company being forced, kicked and screaming, to finally do right by its workers?

If you’re a Teamster, you already know the real answer.

In 2023, Teamsters negotiated the historic UPS Teamsters National Master Agreement, protecting 340,000 rank-and-file members. For the first time, this contract with UPS contained explicit heat safety protections and requirements for air conditioning to be installed in delivery vehicles.

“The 2023 contract completely overhauled heat protections. For the first time, heat safety is a real priority, and it’s making a difference,” said Karla Schumann, Teamsters International Western Region Vice President.

Through consistent and robust contract enforcement and by continuing to make heat protections a priority, the Teamsters are committed to get case numbers down to zero. But as the union prepares to launch another national contract campaign in Fall 2027, is UPS management just as committed to worker safety?

The Trucks

Nearly 80 percent of all heat-related injuries at UPS between 2023 and 2025 were reported by Regular Package Car Drivers making deliveries. That’s not difficult to understand when you see the environmental and structural conditions drivers face every day.

Nationwide, UPS drivers routinely work in extreme heat. The interiors of package cars are made almost entirely of metal, with little insulation to keep temperatures down. Drivers often describe the cargo area as an oven, and thermometers provided by the union have recorded temperatures upwards of 140 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer.

“The interiors of these trucks are scalding,” said Ryan Luu, a package car driver from Local 767 in Texas. “Just this morning, my skin was burned when it touched the floor of the truck as I was picking up a box.”

The 2023 Teamsters contract required UPS to install cab fans, heat exhaust shields to block heat from the floor, and air induction vents in existing package cars.

But the biggest change is air conditioning. Prior to the current Teamsters agreement, UPS took no proactive measures to improve ventilation or reinforce interior heat protections in regular package cars. It was long-standing UPS policy to actually dismantle and remove air conditioning pre-installed by manufacturers before the package giant handed off new vehicles to workers.

But under collective pressure from the Teamsters at the bargaining table, UPS finally agreed to retrofit 28,000 vehicles with air conditioning by 2028, when the 5-year agreement expires. Moreover, the Teamsters pushed UPS to guarantee that air conditioning would be installed in all new package cars purchased from the time the agreement was signed in 2023 — another monumental first.

Bowman’s package car was retrofitted with A/C in March. Since then, he has not been affected by high temperatures.

“Just because we’re in and out of our trucks a lot doesn’t mean A/C can’t make a huge difference,” Bowman said.

Even with the truck doors open, installation of A/C can make up to a 30-degree difference of conditions inside the cab.

Once the current agreement was signed in 2023, Teamsters didn’t simply stop at winning A/C commitments from the company. The union pushed UPS to move faster on A/C-equipped vehicles in states where workers face the most extreme heat. As a result, in 2025, UPS signed a letter of agreement with the UPS Teamsters National Negotiating Committee committing to expedite the retrofitting of 5,000 package cars with air conditioning in what the company and the union call Zone 1 — the hottest delivery zone in the country, comprised of multiple southern and southwestern states.

Under that supplemental agreement, UPS met its first deadline to expedite the delivery of 2,000 package cars with A/C by June 1 this year. UPS is required to speed up the retrofitting of another 3,000 by June 1, 2027.

This is what it looks like when Teamsters fight for heat protections: not just winning stronger contract language but also holding UPS accountable for putting those protections into practice, especially when workers’ lives are at stake.

The Warehouses

The Teamsters fight for worker safety from the heat doesn’t stop with package cars.

Since 2023, UPS is also contractually required to establish designated “Cool Zones” (cooling stations) inside warehouse facilities as well as on delivery routes. In facilities, these stations include access to both clean drinking water and a working ice machine. The company is also required to install and maintain 2,500 new water fountains over the life of the contract.

Warehouses are receiving 18,000 additional structural fans to boost building-wide air circulation. For inside workers, these protections make the difference between an uncomfortable day and a dangerous one.

Krista Longoria, a package car loader and member of Local 480 in Tennessee, said temperatures inside her warehouse have climbed to the triple digits this summer.

“We fought for fans in our facilities and won, and those fans definitely help,” said Longoria.

The equipment matters. But Longoria says another factor matters just as much: making sure workers know they don’t have to simply endure the heat.

“It’s really important that people know when to take breaks and cool down,” she said.

The Right to Cool Down

What has helped solidify the impact of gains won by Teamsters in the 2023 agreement has been education and contract enforcement: teaching Teamsters about their right to protect themselves from heat illness and how to recognize the warning signs.

Article 18 of the 2023 Teamsters contract guarantees workers the right to take a break in a designated Cool Zone whenever they experience symptoms of heat stress.

“I am always telling people that they are allowed to take a break and cool down and drink water whenever they need, as long as they need, to feel better,” said Longoria.

Beyond just spreading this information on the job, Teamsters across the country are organizing heat safety trainings, staffing information tables outside UPS facilities, distributing thermometers, and making sure members understand both the risks of extreme heat and the protections they have under the contract. Bowman works as part of the safety committee for Local 767 to educate and empower his fellow drivers to protect themselves in harsh heat.

“UPS like to say people over packages, but they don’t actually mean it. The company’s not looking out for my best interest, so Teamsters must look out for each other,” said Bowman.

From New York to Southern California, Teamsters are putting that message into action.

“If we don’t take care of ourselves, we might not go home,” said Dave Carew, a package car driver from Teamsters Local 84 in Long Island. “The goal isn’t to reduce heat-related injuries by 35 percent. The goal is zero.”

Recognizing the warning signs of heat illness is one of the most effective ways to prevent a medical emergency.

According to OSHA, the seven most reported symptoms before a heat-related injury or hospitalization at UPS were muscle cramps, dizziness, fatigue, headache, lightheadedness or fainting, nausea or vomiting, and abnormal sweating.

The protections won in the 2023 contract are making a difference, and they work best when workers know how to use them. Better equipment, cooler workplaces, and stronger contractual rights have all helped reduce heat-related injuries. Safety on the job improves when a workforce that knows its rights and recognizes warning signs unites and communicates to look out for one another.

And the Teamsters aren’t stopping anytime soon to improve working conditions for members at UPS. The gains won in 2023 show what workers can accomplish when they organize, bargain collectively, and enforce their contract. As the union prepares for the next national contract campaign, Teamsters will build on those victories and fight for even stronger protections, better vehicles, and safer workplaces.

The 2023 Teamsters National Master Agreement at UPS raised the standard. The next campaign is set to raise it even higher.

If you’ve seen WALL-E, Pixar’s Oscar-winning film from 2008, you remember the premise: an abandoned Earth buried in trash, a single mega-corporation running life from a spaceship above, and fat/lazy/unemployed humans drifting on autopilot while robots do all the work.

It was supposed to be an exaggerated allegory. Nearly 20 years later, it feels like the not-so-distant future.

Because if you look beyond the animation and love story, WALL-E isn’t really about a robot. It’s about work — what happens when it disappears, who controls it, and what’s left behind when corporations decide people are no longer necessary.

In the movie, the fictional mega-corporation, Buy N Large, doesn’t just sell products. It runs production, distribution, even government. Everything collapses into one system built on consumption and convenience. Humans don’t need to work anymore. And that’s the underlying problem that anchors the film. People have lost all agency and purpose. They become completely dependent on a system they don’t control.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, there’s still only one worker left: WALL-E.

He’s the last laborer, stuck doing an endless, thankless job rummaging through the wreckage of a society built on overconsumption and corporate neglect. It’s a sad, lonely routine. The work never ends. The people responsible are long gone. WALL-E is essentially a janitor, tasked with cleaning up centuries of human excess.

The modern convenience economy runs on the same promise WALL-E warned about: push a button, get whatever you want instantly. Packages and groceries show up at your door in hours. Everything feels frictionless and invisible. At least for the customer.

Just like in WALL-E, that seamless e-commerce experience is built on a system most people never see. Companies like Amazon, Uber, Target, Wal-Mart, and even UPS and DHL have spent years building a logistics and delivery model around the same idea: remove all the “hassle” for the consumer by pushing pressure onto the worker — and call it “flexibility.”

In theory, it sounds like a utopia. In practice, it looks a lot like WALL-E’s world. And what once felt futuristic is quickly becoming the new normal.

The pandemic didn’t create this model, but it poured gasoline on it. What might have taken a decade to normalize happened in a matter of months, and the pressure never eased.

Overnight, millions of people became dependent on delivery for everything from groceries to medicine. Companies scaled at breakneck speed, locking in consumer expectations for instant access while quietly intensifying the demands placed on workers. Routes got computerized, jobs got automated, corporate accountability got looser, and worker surveillance got tighter.

In the new gig economy, the risks are put on the worker while the profits remain concentrated at the top. Workers today can be terminated by an app notification. Routes expand while pay stagnates. AI algorithms increasingly dictate schedules and performance. In too many workplaces, technology is being used to monitor, discipline, and even replace workers altogether.

One of the most important lines in the American workplace used to be between employer and employee. It defined who had responsibility and who didn’t. That line is disappearing. In its place is something closer to what WALL-E imagined: a sprawling system where responsibility gets pushed downward and outward until it’s almost impossible to pin.

Look no further than last-mile delivery to see this new normal at work. Major corporations rely on layers of contractors, subcontractors, and “partners” to move goods that still carry their logo. This structure creates distance, both legally and morally, and when something goes wrong that distance becomes paramount.

If a driver gets injured, if wages are cut, if safety is ignored — the company at the top can point and shift blame further down the chain. The worker is always the last stop in the chain, and the first to get screwed when things go wrong.

But a worker who can’t negotiate pay isn’t an entrepreneur. A workforce that’s split into a thousand separate pieces has no control. And surely any job that can be deactivated by an algorithm isn’t independent. That’s the tradeoff at the center of the convenience economy.

What feels effortless on one end requires pressure somewhere else. Faster delivery means tighter timelines. Tighter timelines mean more strain on the people doing the work. Every minute shaved off a delivery window has to come from somewhere, and it almost always comes from the worker.

That’s the part no one sees. And when something goes wrong, that distance becomes the point. In WALL-E, the system runs so quietly and smoothly that people forget they’re even part of it. Until something breaks. Because convenience always comes at a cost. The difference now is that more workers are deciding they’re done paying it.

WALL-E is the most pro-union movie Pixar accidentally made. Its world is what unregulated automation plus monopoly capital produces. It’s a world where humans have no purpose and no power.

As workers, the ability to withhold our labor is one of our only tools to improve our lives. What happens when that disappears to AI? It’s a real existential issue. At the same time, you can’t watch that movie and not root for the little robot that desperately needs a union contract.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The action movie: it’s a staple of Hollywood’s success. Some of the most enduring and well-known movies in history fall within the action and adventure genre — franchises like “The Terminator,” “Die Hard,” and “Mad Max.” The film industry knows the action movie is a proven way to see a good return at the box office.

There was a time when the biggest action heroes in America looked a lot like the people sitting in the audience. They weren’t billionaires with limitless resources. They weren’t genetically enhanced super soldiers or heirs to immense fortunes. They were cops, truck drivers, waitresses, and mechanics — ordinary people who found themselves in extraordinary situations.

Throughout the 1980s and into the early 2000’s, heroes in action movies had a classic shape. A protagonist who did a hard, working-class job is thrown into a dangerous environment. Think John McClane in “Die Hard,” Jack Burton in “Big Trouble in Little China,” or Sarah Connor in “The Terminator.”

They weren’t heroes because they possessed superhuman abilities. They became heroes because they were resourceful, resilient, and willing to keep fighting. These characters weren’t an accident — they reflected the kinds of stories Hollywood was willing to tell.

For decades, studios routinely invested in original, smaller-budget films. They were willing to take chances on new ideas and unfamiliar characters, hoping a few would take off.

Today’s landscape looks very different. Hollywood increasingly relies on remakes, sequels, and massive crossover universes built around existing franchises. Studios have concentrated larger budgets into fewer new and unique productions, instead favoring familiar characters and stories they know will produce a return on investment.

It’s an understandable business decision in an industry where every film is a risky venture. But it’s changed more than just what appears on our screens. It’s changed who gets to be the hero.

The action heroes of today often arrive with advantages before the story even begins. They have significant wealth, supernatural powers, or the command of futuristic technology. They may be entertaining, but their struggles are fundamentally different than working men and women who are just trying to make it by and end up in the right place at the right time to turn into a hero.

John McClane used his skills as a cop to outsmart and defeat Hans Gruber. “Captain America” Steve Rogers, got pumped full of sci-fi steroids and was handed a large piece of the American defense budget. They are not the same.

The jobs of these working-class heroes weren’t minor details. They grounded the characters in a world audiences could recognize.

Hollywood’s shift away from them speaks to something much larger than just the film industry. The decline of the working-class action hero mirrors a broader shift in Corporate America: as corporations grow larger and more consolidated, the people who keep the country running become less visible. Not because they don’t matter, but because they’re easier to overlook.

America doesn’t have fewer working-class heroes than it did 40 years ago. Corporate America just stopped making them the main character.

But maybe that’s why these films continue to endure and resonate decades later — they remind audiences that courage doesn’t require unthinkable wealth or superhuman abilities. Sometimes it looks like showing up for work, solving problems under pressure, and refusing to quit even when the odds are stacked against you.

Hollywood may have stopped telling these stories as often, but the American workforce never stopped living them.

By Maura Drumm

August 4 marks the 123^rd anniversary of the founding of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. This anniversary is not just a milestone — it is a reminder that the notion of workers fighting as one is still the most formidable force for change in America.

The Teamsters’ story began long before tractor-trailers and package cars. The union’s earliest members drove horse-drawn wagons, hauling freight, coal, beer, ice, and every other essential good through America’s growing cities. They understood that whether you held the reins of a horse or the wheel of a truck, working people were strongest when they stood together.

That spirit of solidarity was cemented in 1903, when two rival organizations — the Team Drivers International Union and the Teamsters National Union — set aside their differences and met in Niagara Falls, New York, to unite as one organization: the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. It was an extraordinary decision. Rather than competing against one another, workers chose unity, recognizing that a single, stronger union could accomplish far more than divided organizations ever could. More than a century later, that same principle continues to define the Teamsters.

For those of us who come from Teamsters families, this anniversary isn’t just a story you read about once a year — it’s something you grow up with.

My great-grandfather immigrated from County Derry to Philadelphia and worked at Schmidt’s Brewery, first taking care of the delivery horses and then worked as a truck driver, always as a proud Teamster. He took great pride in delivering Schmidt’s products to thirsty Philadelphians, knowing his Teamsters paycheck helped secure a stable life for him, my great-grandma, and their five children. He later found comfort that his union benefits would help my mom, his granddaughter, after the early death of her own father.

My dad and his brother were Teamsters as well, working in a UPS warehouse while putting themselves through college. As the sons of an IUEW member and the grandsons of two members of the FOP and a union seamstress, they understood that a good union job wasn’t just a paycheck — it was a path to a better life.

Being a third-generation Teamster means that countless stories were told at the dining room table about hard routes, long strikes, and the difference a union contract made to a family’s future.

That kind of upbringing teaches you that unions are about dignity, fairness, and leverage in a system that tilts heavily toward the employer. A union contract takes individual vulnerability and turns it into collective strength.

In a Teamsters household you learn that the benefits of a union contract aren’t just given, they are fought for, often over years, and are then defended over and over again. Every generation holds the responsibility to hold onto and build upon the gains they negotiate.

I’m proud of my family’s history with labor unions and grateful to have been given a firsthand look at the importance of solidarity.

The work of my dad and great-grandpa, and the union stories they told during my childhood, inspired me to pursue my own career with the Teamsters, as a member of the Strategic Initiatives Department of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

On this 123^rd anniversary, the story of the Teamsters is not only written by contract wins, strikes, and organizing victories, it is written in families like mine, where labor is not just a job, it is a career and path to success.

The Teamsters were founded because workers understood that unity was stronger than division. That lesson remains just as important today as it was in Niagara Falls in 1903. From horse-drawn wagons to modern logistics, from my great-grandfather’s delivery route through Northeast Philadelphia to my dad’s years in a UPS warehouse and now to my own career with the union, the thread connecting every generation has been solidarity.

The enduring strength of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is not in one moment in history but in the way its message is passed from worker to worker, family to family, and encouraging future generations to continue building, protecting, and believing in the power of collective action.

By Emmett Rainville

It’s a glaring contradiction these days: the more connected we become, the more isolated many of us feel.

Never before have people had so many ways to communicate. Through endless waves of messages and notifications, we can reach almost anyone at almost any time.

And yet, meaningful human connection feels scarce.

Growing up in the digital age, it was routine to hear adults reminisce about the past through the rosiest of colored glasses. Parents and teachers remembered a version of community that felt absent from my own experience.

Neighborhoods where everyone knew each other. Friendships that seemed to happen naturally.

Despite spending most of my life tethered to today’s digital platforms, I find myself searching for the same things they’re nostalgic about.

Political scientist Robert Putnam saw this coming. When he wrote Bowling Alone in 2000, smartphones didn’t exist. Social media hadn’t yet transformed everyday life. Putnam still argued that America was already drifting away from the institutions that once connected ordinary people.

Churches. Rotary clubs. Elks lodges. Bowling leagues — the inspiration for the book’s title. Across the country, membership and participation was declining among most of America’s fraternal institutions.

More than a quarter century later, many of Putnam’s observations feel even more relevant now. As society’s institutions fade, so do many of the opportunities people have to build meaningful relationships.

Instead of making friends, people are left to form synthetic, parasocial relationships through screens. While these are connections, are they real? Do they mean anything?

There is still one place where that trend hasn’t entirely taken hold. The union workplace remains one of the last places where ordinary Americans come together every day — not simply to earn a living, but to support one another in pursuit of a common goal.

As a Teamster under 30, my eyes have been opened to what the world can and should be. Just last month, I had the chance to participate in the union’s 31^st International Convention where thousands of Teamsters from across North America came together, united by camaraderie and a shared purpose. All walks of life — different backgrounds, industries, generations, and experiences — standing together as one, in one place, and in-person. In how many more places in America today do you witness such community?

For many union members, co-workers are far more than colleagues. They’re the people we share life’s most special moments with. They sign retirement cards because they genuinely mean it. They pass the hat when someone gets sick. They show up when someone needs help of any kind.

Within a union, neither success nor hardship is faced alone. Workers understand that the goal isn’t simply to find a seat at the table. It’s to make sure nobody else is left standing alone.

When a worker goes on strike, they don’t go by themselves. They stand together and lean on one another during hard times so everyone succeeds in the end.

That idea runs directly against the philosophy shaping much of the modern workplace.

Corporate America has built cultures around individual struggle. Employees are forced to compete with one another rather than depend on one another. Increasingly, many Americans find themselves declassified as employees at all. They’ve been relegated to gig work — working alone and surviving alone by corporate design and decree.

I almost envy anyone who lived before the smartphone. They at least have something stored in their collective memories to weigh against today’s world. For younger generations, isolation is becoming the default.

Such isolation can have devastating consequences. Too many people my age are distracted and consumed by false realities. Most have trouble connecting in real life.

A society cannot function on individual achievement alone. America’s problems are too large for any one person to solve. Yet people are encouraged to interpret every outcome as a personal success or individual failure.

Whether you yet belong to one or not, unions will continue to prove Putnam’s thesis that a healthy society requires connection between people of all backgrounds.

It’s still possible to connect IRL. Me and my co-workers under 30 have already discovered how. It’s not on the smartphone you’re clutching right now. It’s across town in your local union hall. Take a real chance and pop in some time. The real humans you’ll meet there may just connect you to the more meaningful life we all find ourselves seeking.

By Maura Drumm

Most mornings, Andy Ferris follows the same routine: he wakes before dawn, brews a cup of coffee, and heads to work. There, he is greeted by a longtime co-worker. Unlike most places of work, Andy’s colleagues don’t gather around the water cooler for small talk or ask about his weekend. Instead, they splash, whistle, and eagerly await their breakfast — up to three pounds of fish each.

Andy is an animal care specialist for marine mammals — what most people would simply call a zookeeper — at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. He has been with the zoo for 31 years. For the past 27 years, one of the first to greet him each morning has been Tapeko, a 1,000-plus-pound Atlantic bottlenose dolphin and, as Andy affectionately calls her, his “work wife.”

In addition to being a dedicated zookeeper, Andy is a proud Teamster. Teamsters Local 727 represents more than 200 workers at the Chicago Zoological Society (CZS), operating as the Brookfield Zoo Chicago. In addition to animal care specialists like Andy, the union represents the zoo’s groundskeepers, patrol officers, seasonals, aides, and custodians.

Zoos are big business in the United States. According to the Institute for Environmental Research and Education, American zoos generate up to $4 billion annually. They draw massive crowds with over 181 million people visiting zoos and aquariums across the United States each year. The Brookfield Zoo shares in this success, accounting for over two million of those visitors.

Workers like the members of Local 727 are essential to the smooth operations of these wildlife institutions. While you and your family enjoy seeing rare animals, the workers keep you safe, care for the animals, tend to the grounds and gardens, ensure a clean environment, and do everything in their power to make your experience the best it can be.

This past May, these dedicated professionals were forced to go on strike after their employer refused to bargain in good faith. CZS gave its CEOs more than a 70 percent boost in compensation while offering union members a four percent wage increase. The workforce was also severely understaffed, creating a potentially unsafe environment for the animals, workers, and visitors. The company leveraged our members’ pride in working for an animal conservatory and love for animals against them for years.

After two days on strike — with an essential animal care contingency plan in place — the union was able to come to an agreement with CZS.

Too often, employers treat passion as a substitute for fair compensation, as though workers should be grateful simply for the opportunity to do meaningful work. But dedication is not a discount, and loving your job should never come at the expense of your economic security.

The Brookfield Zoo workers remind us that passion and professionalism are not mutually exclusive when demanding a fair contract. Whether you care for dolphins, drive a truck, or teach in a classroom, every worker deserves dignity, respect, and a fair wage.

By Ryan Luu

I drink three gallons of water a day, never drink soda or alcohol, and I’ve never lit a cigarette. I meal prep on Sundays, wake up at 5 a.m. sharp, and go to the gym five times a week to keep my body functioning like a well-oiled machine. I stretch and prioritize sleep like it’s part of my job, because in many ways, it is. But I’m not an athlete. I deliver packages.

The average American household receives approximately 167 packages per year which translates to about three packages a week. The total number of packages shipped daily across the United States is 61.3 million. Twenty-one percent of the total package volume in the U.S. is delivered by UPS — and that’s where I come in.

From Tuesday to Saturday every week, for around 10 hours a day, I am in and out of a brown truck — called a package car — making deliveries for UPS. In the middle of a Texas summer, my package car feels like an oven. The interior averages about 20 degrees hotter than outside air. On a 100-degree day, I’m working in 120-degree heat. Just doing my job makes me sweat through my shirt in the first half hour, burn thousands of calories without setting foot on a treadmill, and dehydrate faster than I can drink those three gallons of water.

I shouldn’t have to do all that. I don’t want to prepare like I’m training for a decathlon just to do a job that should be safe. This level of preparation isn’t noble, it’s necessary, because UPS has failed to do what they promised.

In 2023, 340,000 workers like me at UPS — all represented by the Teamsters Union — came together to demand real change. As a part of our new national contract, UPS made a commitment to deploy 28,000 new air-conditioned vehicles. This isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s a lifeline. We endure brutal temperatures every single summer day, especially in states like Texas where UPS agreed to deploy air conditioning first.

Before I started working at UPS, I was a dance instructor. I’ve always stayed in shape as part of my daily routine, but I never imagined being fit would become a survival measure. This job isn’t just physically demanding — it’s relentless. I lift, carry, squat, sprint, climb, and hustle for hours without a break. This is a job that demands discipline, endurance, and a mindset that most people reserve for marathon training or boot camp.

My fitness is not for aesthetics. It’s functional, and it’s necessary. It’s the reason I can make it through a 200-package day without collapsing. It’s the edge that keeps me sharp, consistent, and most importantly, safe. No one should have to train like an athlete just to make it home alive from work.

Last year, UPS finally agreed to Teamsters demands to expedite the delivery of air-conditioned vehicles by retrofitting 5,000 package cars with A/C for the hottest delivery zone in the country, which includes my state. Now UPS must finish the job and make sure every driver can face the summers ahead with the protection, dignity, and safety we deserve.

By Alec Monnie and Evan Torma

Greed in America has been turbocharged by a cabal of CEOs and corporate executives completely disconnected from the lives of everyday people. These out-of-touch elites use the wealth they extract off the backs of American workers to pay for a level of extravagance that’s hard to fathom.

Despite their enormous wealth, these corporate stooges can’t stop demanding more. More concessions. More control. More money in their overstuffed pockets. They are assaulting collective bargaining rights, trying to replace good careers with nonunion gig work, and widening the divide between the people who do the work and the executives who profit from it.

It’s time to name and shame the most notorious offenders. Here are the worst of the worst of inductees in the Teamsters CEO Hall of Shame:

Everyone knows the saying that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Republic Services CEO Jon Vander Ark took it too literally.

Since taking over as CEO of Republic Services, Vander Ark has stopped at nothing to plunder more money from his workers. He wasted $50 million in just three months trying and failing to break a Teamsters strike. He has let a Missouri landfill sitting next to nuclear waste burn for years on end. And he has jammed tens of millions of dollars into his pockets while subjecting devoted sanitation workers to dangerous conditions.

The Teamsters Union represents thousands of Republic Services workers across North America. We are fighting back against Vander Ark’s aggression. And we’re kicking his ass. Union workers will keep winning — no matter how many times Vander Ark decides to blow shareholder money trying to stop us.

UPS hired Carol Tomé for one reason: to undermine workers. They saw the damage she caused as a lead henchwoman for one of the most anti-union corporations in America — Home Depot — and they wanted her to bring her ostrich-skinned handbag of dirty tricks to the package giant’s headquarters in Atlanta.

Tomé’s time atop UPS has been marked by egregious failures of leadership. She blew hundreds of thousands of dollars on high-paid outside union busters during negotiations for the historic 2023 UPS Teamsters National Master Agreement. She has desperately tried to weasel her way out of the commitments she made in that contract. And in the process, she has repeatedly shamed herself in the eyes of the hundreds of thousands of hardworking rank-and-file UPSers who make the company a multibillion-dollar delivery institution.

Tomé ranks high on the list of the worst executives in UPS history. But she’s likely not worried about that. Everything is going according to plan so long as she gets to keep feeding from the trough while tending to her sprawling 650-acre country estate.

Amazon’s insane production quotas have made it the worst offender of any employer in causing workplace injuries and chaotic turnover. Amazon is worth more than $2 trillion, but its workers are paying the price for the company’s greed. Many are paid so little they are forced to rely on public assistance or struggle with housing and food insecurity. In addition to spending more than any other American employer on union busters and compromised politicians, Amazon is so anti-union that its suing to have the National Labor Relations Board deemed unconstitutional.

Alongside a truly deadly labor record, the company aggressively avoids paying taxes, its monopolistic practices are damaging the entire American economy, and its surveillance apparatus threatens the very concept of privacy as we know it.

None of this seems to bother Bezos, who basks in extravagance built on the exploitation of the masses. A few of his recent receipts include $500 million for a yacht, $75 million for a smaller yacht to support the big boy, $80 million for a private jet, $56 million for his latest wedding, and $42 million on a clock. Yep, just a big ol’ clock.

Bezos is also infamously preoccupied with multibillion-dollar vanity rocket launches that keep ending in explosive failures.

The third-richest dude in the world isn’t just the most nefarious and greedy businessman of our lifetimes — he’s a tumor jeopardizing the life of dignified labor in this country.

On Monday, June 15, at its 31^st International Convention, Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien announced the labor union had organized 100,000 workers in the past four years.

On Tuesday, June 16, O’Brien won reelection to a second term by a vote of over 96 percent — the first time ever that a Teamsters General President was reelected without opposition and a leadership slate was directly elected by white ballot at the convention.

On Wednesday, June 17, O’Brien made an historic announcement that the Teamsters and the Department of Justice had filed a joint motion to end government monitorship of the union.

Eventually, nearly a full week following all this news, The New York Times got around to publishing the following headline. It reports the facts, albeit with a political bent.

Then the news outlet took it down and replaced it with this:

The lesson from The New York Times: If you’re not getting enough clicks, just change the headline. Sensationalize. Take a page from the New York Post.

It’s no secret that the Times has a long history of denigrating the Teamsters. It took decades for the paper to finally stop lowercasing the “t” in Teamsters, a diminutive meant to diminish the union in typeface.

Here’s what the Times chose not to report in its story about the reelection of O’Brien and the end to government monitorship:

Corporate monitorship: The federal monitorship of the Teamsters Union is set to end after 37 years. It is virtually unheard of for the government to monitor or exercise control over a public or private entity for this length of time. That alone is newsworthy.

The Times failed to provide real context for what this means. On the rare occasions that corporations face monitorship, they often declare bankruptcy, change their names, or enter into non-prosecution agreements. Most monitorships last no more than three to five years.

The Teamsters’ external oversight has lasted nearly four decades. It is long past time for it to come to an end, and even the Times couldn’t find a single person to argue otherwise.

Mob Ties: Despite the clickbait headline, the Times knows there hasn’t been an organized crime case involving the Teamsters in decades. But “mob ties” remains a convenient trope when the goal is to attract readership revenue.

The Teamsters Union operates under more rigorous auditing, financial disclosure, and review requirements than the majority of organizations — including The New York Times, where NewsGuild members had to fight just two years ago to receive the wages they were owed.

F-Bombs: Multiple references to O’Brien’s use of “profanity” condescends the Teamsters. Curse words may offend the sensibilities of the graduate-educated, high-income Brooklynite readership bracket of The New York Times. But the 4,000 Teamsters who participated in the convention didn’t mind one damn bit. They joined in.

What is offensive is the reductive reporting that continues to dominate coverage of this union in the Business section.

The New York Times had an opportunity to report comprehensively on the successful conclusion of nearly 40 years of monitorship, the reforms that made it possible, and what this union did to make it happen.

Instead, the paper’s reporters and editors chose to ignore and disparage the accomplishments and milestones that benefit 1.3 million Teamsters by reaching for clichés about mobsters.

What a fucking disgrace.

By Matt McQuaid

If you live in New York City, you may have recently seen a giant blue box on wheels taking up space in the bike lane. You might think it’s a spaceship, or a golf cart on a hunger strike, but it’s actually an Amazon e-bike, the trillion-dollar company’s newest mode of cost cutting.

Amazon, a company that had carbon emission levels comparable to all of Washington State last year, has framed its expansion into NYC e-bike deliveries with a corny PR blitz that emphasizes its commitment to the environment, using made-up buzzwords like “micromobility.” But whether Amazon delivery drivers are operating a bike or a van, don’t be fooled — it’s just another way for the company to exploit workers, cut costs, and shift legal liability onto its network of third-party contractors known as “Delivery Service Partners,” or DSPs.

Amazon uses DSPs to shield itself from accountability, tightly controlling every aspect of operations and forcing “contractors” to abide by inhumanely high delivery quotas. DSPs are not in fact small businesses, but the setup allows Amazon to enjoy the benefits of its cutthroat distribution model while avoiding responsibility for worker injuries, labor violations, pollution, and safety hazards. A perfect example of Amazon’s exploitative DSP model carrying over to its e-bike expansion program can be found in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen.

The New York City Department of Building Standards recently fined an Amazon e-bike facility located at 637 W. 46th Street for multiple egregious safety violations that pose fire hazards and other threats to the entire surrounding block. These include installing HVAC equipment and a power generator without a permit, improper storage of highly flammable lithium-ion batteries, and ignoring serious structural problems. The agency said at least four of these violations “pose a threat that severely affects life, health, safety, property, the public interest, or a significant number of persons so as to warrant immediate corrective action.”

This flagrant disregard for safety by Amazon last-mile operators is consistent with findings in a study by the New York City Comptroller detailing in great length the ways the e-commerce behemoth has increased harm to the communities where it operates.

In addition to the hazards both e-bike operators and traditional Amazon DSPs pose to their communities, Amazon’s last-mile delivery scheme drives down labor standards across the entire industry. Most Amazon drivers who operate vans in New York City earn a fraction of their union counterparts, and Amazon’s e-bike drivers barely make minimum wage. Most union package carriers have health care and retirement benefits, but Amazon DSP drivers have little or none. By exploiting its delivery fleet to such a lethal degree, Amazon undercuts wages for package delivery workers throughout all five boroughs.

The Teamsters have partnered with New York City Councilmembers to address Amazon’s negative impact on workers and public safety by working to pass the Delivery Protection Act (DPA). The DPA would require last-mile delivery facilities to abide by higher safety standards and directly employ workers as a condition of licensing, thereby forcing Amazon to end its corrupt DSP model or treat subcontractors as actual small businesses.

Predictably, Amazon has responded with a misinformation campaign. The company paid DSP drivers to attend a fake rally ahead of a city council hearing on the DPA, spent vast sums of money on advertising propaganda, and somehow hornswoggled the New York Times into publishing a puff piece about its e-bike initiative.

Whether it’s bikes or vans, Amazon’s glossy talking points can’t obscure the real harm the corporation imposes on workers and our communities. It’s incumbent upon organized labor and the broad coalition supporting the Delivery Protection Act to push beyond the spin and expose the truth behind Amazon’s delivery expansion.

By Emily Sohl

Growing up, I always knew there was something different about my dad.

While my two sisters and I played with our American Girl dolls in the living room, my mom would put a finger to her lips and remind us, “Shhh, keep it down. Your father is sleeping.”

On Friday nights, while my mom made dinner, she also packed four meals, four sandwiches, and four snack bags for my dad. He wasn’t always around on weekends, or even during the week. But I always knew why.

While most people slept, my dad was on the road. As a UPS driver based in Secaucus, New Jersey, he spent his nights hauling freight across the country, driving routes that could take him anywhere from Connecticut to Missouri to New Mexico.

My dad has worked at UPS for 18 years. He is the hardest worker I know, and he has made tremendous sacrifices to provide for our family.

Because he is a Teamster, that hard work has been rewarded with what every worker deserves: job security, quality health care, a strong pension, and the protection of seniority.

Those protections made a real difference in our lives. They meant my dad could take us to the dentist when we needed care. They meant family trips to my grandmother’s beach house. They meant that when it came time for college, my sisters and I had opportunities that many families can only dream about.

My dad’s schedule looked very different from those of my friends’ parents, but he always found a way to be there when it mattered. He worked nights so he could pick us up from elementary school every day. In fact, he was often the only dad waiting in the pickup line. He would sleep during the day, and as soon as my mom came home from work, he would head out to begin another shift.

And because his hard work was backed by a strong union, those sacrifices paid off. Last year, I graduated from American University, and both of my sisters are now attending excellent colleges too. My dad has earned the paid time off, retirement security, and quality of life that every worker should be able to count on after decades on the job.

When I think about the Teamsters, I don’t just think about contracts, wages, or benefits. I think about my dad. I think about the long nights on the road, the missed weekends, and the sacrifices he made to build a better future for his family.

The Teamsters helped ensure that his hard work was met with dignity, stability, and opportunity. Because of that, my sisters and I grew up knowing that if you work hard and stand together, you can build a life filled with possibility and one that resembles the American Dream.

For that, I will always be grateful.

By Emily Sohl

Whenever I see a major corporation branding itself as a “sustainability leader,” I tend to raise an eyebrow.

That skepticism only grew when I started looking into Republic Services, a waste management giant whose website is saturated with promises about protecting the environment and supporting communities.

Republic Teamsters have long known how vile, immoral, and dirty the world’s second largest waste company truly is. For most of the public, though, Republic is just a name on trash cans, dumpsters, and trucks.

For others, it’s something else entirely: a polluter that has ruined lives, and in some cases, even killed.

Across the country — from Los Angeles to Murfreesboro, Tennessee — Republic Services has faced lawsuits over contamination and public health hazards. In Pennsylvania, a judge ruled that a Republic-operated York County landfill polluted the Susquehanna River and violated clean water laws hundreds of times.

In Georgia, the company backed away from a coal ash agreement only after significant public backlash.

And in Bridgeton, Mo., the reality is more alarming: an unlined landfill owned by Republic Services has been burning underground for years, releasing a steady stream of chemical fumes into nearby neighborhoods and exposing residents to radiation.

After speaking with a resident just miles from the site, I began to understand that this was not a misunderstanding or a one-off mistake. Republic Services made a calculated decision to protect its bottom line instead of the people breathing its pollution. And for the families living with the consequences, it raises a simple question: how much harm is this company willing to inflict in allegiance to higher corporate earnings?

A few years after Dawn Chapman and her family moved to Bridgeton, a small Missouri town northwest of St. Louis, a suffocating smell filled their home and neighborhood.

“The odor was horrific,” Chapman said. “If you’ve ever cut onions and your eyes start to tear, that’s what it was like.”

The source Chapman discovered was far worse than she could have imagined.

Just three miles from her home, an underground fire had been smoldering inside the Bridgeton landfill. Even more concerning, it was burning only 500 feet from 43,000 tons of nuclear waste left over from the World War II–era Manhattan Project. For decades, that waste has exposed nearby residents to radiation and contributed to elevated cancer rates.

As community members learned the truth and public outrage grew, Republic Services — despite branding itself as a leader in sustainability — refused to remove the nuclear waste. Instead, the company pushed to cap it in place and spent millions on lobbying efforts aimed at downplaying the risks to residents.

The radioactive waste had been sitting in the Bridgeton landfill since the 1940s, long before residents became aware of the hazard in their own backyards.

As concerns over the odor intensified, Chapman and her neighbors pressed regulators for answers and eventually discovered the dangers they were facing. In response, she founded Just Moms STL, a grassroots organization advocating for cleanup and accountability. Through this group, residents demanded stronger odor controls and warned that the underground smoldering fire could spread to the nuclear material.

Instead of addressing these concerns, Republic hired a lobbyist who posed as a local mother and created a deceptive online group called the Coalition to Keep Us Safe. The group ran Facebook ads warning that excavation “could take 40 years and cost taxpayers $400 million,” a deliberate misinformation campaign aimed at turning public opinion against cleanup efforts.

“They lobbied EPA, lobbied elected officials, lobbied state lawmakers that we were crazy moms and that there was nothing happening,” Chapman said. “They even said the site wasn’t on fire.”

Despite Republic spending millions on lobbying efforts, the Environmental Protection Agency approved a plan to excavate the waste in 2025. The $205 million cleanup will be shared among Republic, the Department of Energy, and Exelon Corp.

Republic has opposed the EPA’s plan, insisting the landfill should remain capped — a temporary solution that fails to address community concerns and potential long-term health risks. The company has also filed lawsuits against Citigroup and EverZinc LLC, the two previous owners of the landfill, in an effort to shift remediation costs.

“Once Republic found out about the waste, all they saw was a chance to minimize how much they’d have to spend,” Chapman said.

Since the nuclear waste was dumped, Bridgeton-area residents have reported a rise in illnesses linked to radiation exposure. A Reuters investigation identified 33 current or former residents from a small neighborhood near the landfill who were diagnosed with cancers associated with radioactive contamination. Additionally, the Missouri Department of Health recently issued an alert noting a 40 percent higher risk of cancer in zip codes near the landfill.

For Chapman, the impact is personal. She believes exposure to toxic landfill fumes contributed to serious health conditions in her family. Her husband was diagnosed with severe Crohn’s disease and required emergency surgery only a few years after they moved to Bridgeton. Her son has also suffered from autoimmune complications.

“Living next to this site has absolutely flipped my life upside down,” Chapman said.

Republic Services publicly promotes itself as an environmental leader, stating that sustainability means supporting the communities where its employees and customers live and work.

But in Bridgeton and communities across the country, those words ring hollow.

When residents demand protection from environmental risks, Republic Services has too often responded with lobbyists, delay tactics, and disinformation. That same approach extends beyond environmental issues. In 2025, the company reportedly spent roughly $50 million on union-busting efforts rather than bargaining in good faith with the Teamsters. 

Whether dealing with communities or their own workforce, Republic Services’ pattern of behavior is consistent: fight workers and communities, not the problem.

When profit is the driving force, safety becomes negotiable, workers are obstacles, and communities are collateral. If companies like Republic Services are allowed to treat responsibility as optional, Bridgeton will not remain an exception — it’ll be the blueprint.

By Elizabeth Randolph

Union support in the United States is at historic highs, yet labor coverage in American newsrooms in shrinking.

Over the past four years, record numbers of Teamsters have organized, struck their employers, and negotiated strong contracts. About 70 percent of Americans support unions, and polling shows younger workers are hungry to organize. But you wouldn’t necessarily know this from watching the nightly news or reading most major U.S. newspapers.

The space once devoted to labor news has steadily disappeared. For decades, newspapers have cut reporters dedicated to the labor beat, folding workplace issues into sections called “Economy” or “Business.” These labels reflect how workers are viewed — through the lens of Wall Street and the market.

Labor stories often become newsworthy only when a strike impacts business operations. The story becomes about the effect of a work stoppage on GDP and stock prices as opposed to workers fighting for their families and livelihoods. When a strike is averted, the story usually ends there.

TV news segments hype AI as a novel tech development, but the impact automation could have on millions of workers gets short shrift. Reporters climb into autonomous trucks for test drives while dedicating less time to what mass job losses could mean for communities across the country.

Politics dominates much of what passes for labor coverage. Changes at the National Labor Relations Board or Department of Labor receive outsized attention from national outlets, while worker actions are left to a declining number of local news outlets to cover. Institutional coverage misses the real story — workers themselves are taking direct action.

Coverage of Amazon’s labor battles is a prime example of missing the forest for the trees. Reporting framed as a play-by-play of the company’s court appearances and legal filings misses the point entirely. Amazon is worth trillions of dollars while its workers struggle to get by. Amazon is violating the law, refusing to bargain, and trying to break workers.

But these same workers are courageously fighting back. And that is the story that matters — the momentum on the ground.

Telling that story requires reporters to spend actual time on picket lines and at workplaces. The public would be shocked to find out how often reporters covering companies like Amazon do not even attend Amazon Teamsters rallies or actions in their own cities.

To be clear, there are still excellent journalists who want to tell these stories. But editors and executives work inside corporate structures with their own pressures and priorities.

American media outlets are owned by a handful of major corporations, hedge funds, and billionaires. In 2025, just six massive conglomerates controlled most of the U.S. media landscape. The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Rupert Murdoch owns both The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. The Los Angeles Times is owned by a biotech billionaire. The list goes on and on.

When major news outlets are controlled by many of the billionaires who spend tens of millions to union bust in their own companies, it without a doubt shapes coverage.

In 2024, most labor coverage became inseparable from reporting about the presidential race. The populist shift on the Right was met with skepticism, while the alignment with mega-corporations on the Left went largely unexamined. There was little sustained scrutiny of the corporate interests influencing both parties.

In yet another loss, Politico recently announced it was ending its daily employment newsletter after 12 years, folding labor coverage into broader economic and regulatory reporting.

Meanwhile, journalists with McClatchy papers like the Miami Herald and Sacramento Bee protested the use of AI-generated bylines at the hedge fund-owned chain. At least those reporters still have jobs worth defending.

In February, the Washington Post gutted a third of its newsroom. Not long after, the Post’s Editorial Board got into full gear, using the paper’s Opinion section as a homepage for their obsession: repeatedly making the case for billionaires — without mentioning their billionaire owner, Bezos — while publishing vehemently anti-worker, anti-union commentary on a weekly basis.

There is an old saying in journalism: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Corporatized news is not just bleeding. It is already using its own AI tools to draft its eulogy.

Far from ushering in greater democracy, this dying business model is turning once-venerated media institutions into propaganda pulpits for corporate strongmen while growingly increasingly disconnected from the lives of working Americans.

As the mainstream media loses public trust, along with advertising revenue and subscribers, the only thing that may save it is a divine rebirth in the public interest.

By Lena Melentijevic

Two summers ago, a Texas Teamster at UPS suffered two separate heat-related injuries for which he was hospitalized and diagnosed with serious long-term health problems.

“With about 20 stops left on my route, I started feeling extremely sick and experiencing cramping throughout my body,” said Cameron Bowman, an 18-year UPS driver and member of Teamsters Local 767. “It quickly escalated to lightheadedness and nausea, and I had to slow my truck down, afraid I would faint behind the wheel.”

Businesses are required to report incidents like this to the government. The government is required to keep track of that information and make it publicly available. Yet Cameron Bowman’s true experience is nearly impossible to find in the official record. How is that possible?

Because Corporate America exploits government red tape to hide their role in causing workplace injuries.

Here’s how.

When a worker gets injured on the job, employers have to fill out and submit a form documenting what happened to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The government establishes guidelines determining which injuries must be reported. In 2023, there were over 2.5 million such incidents. Yet that number is almost certainly a substantial underestimate of the true number of work-related injuries.

That’s because the government’s method of identifying and tracking workplace injuries relies exclusively on information provided by employers. Workers have no real voice in the process.

To begin with, it is largely up to the discretion of a worker’s direct manager whether and under what circumstances an injury is reported to OSHA. Assuming the manager does choose to report the incident, confusing government guidelines make it easy to distort what truly happened.

“While I was experiencing serious symptoms of heat illness, my manager struggled to remember the address of our building while on the phone with a 911 operator that I urged him to call,” Bowman said. “I ended up having to take the call myself to make sure I actually got help. A few hours later, that same manager asked me if I was coming to work in the morning.”

The system is such that employers are given only vague instructions on what they must document about the injury and its circumstances. This lack of standardization results in major discrepancies from facility to facility and manager to manager. It also leaves room for interpretation as to what information is relevant to include — often leading supervisors to use the space where they are supposed to explain the incident to instead shift blame onto the employee.

“It felt like the company and my manager didn’t really care about what happened to me as long as I’d be back at work as soon as possible,” said Bowman, reflecting on his first heat injury. Not even three weeks later, he experienced another.

UPS is notorious for abusing this process, particularly in the summer when heat-related injuries spike. Often when the company chooses to report these injuries, it does everything possible to dodge responsibility — whether it is submitting reports with vague descriptions, blaming employees, or failing to mention that workers are exposed to temperatures up to 120 degrees for hours on-end.

Apart from placing the responsibility of reporting injuries in the often-unreliable hands of managers, access to OSHA data is very limited. When you download an OSHA workplace injury form, the word you see repeated most is REDACTED because of supposedly proprietary data.

In addition, companies are only required to release reports of their injury data once a year — so public records always lag far behind. The most recently available record spans from January to December 2024. While there are rules on when an incident must be reported — such as within 24 hours for a fatality or a week in some milder cases — many companies like UPS seem to take this as a mere suggestion.

So, why is the system like this? Why don’t businesses honestly report the injuries that happen under their watch? The reason is money.

Companies like UPS benefit from underreporting and misrepresenting their injury rates. By doing so, they avoid higher insurance costs. They promote a false image of their business to the public. And they are fined less by the government for causing serious harm to their workers.

Whether they work at UPS, Waste Management, or any other employer, Teamsters everywhere are fighting to fix this rigged system. Every day, rank-and-file Teamsters secure strong safety provisions in contracts. They blow the whistle when companies put them in harm’s way behind closed doors. And they assemble safety committees that spread awareness on how to advocate for and protect themselves on the job. As Teamsters well know, if Corporate America is ever to be truly held to account, workers must unite and start doing such lifesaving work themselves.

By Lena Melentijevic, Maura Drumm, Paul Tsikouras

Corporate greed has a name. Many names to be exact. The following chief executives in hospital systems, food production, and beverage distribution are living proof that no industry is immune from profit-driven attacks on workers. These CEOs have squeezed the workforce harder, stalled contract negotiations, and put profits over people. We know exactly who is responsible — and it’s time to call them out.

Robert G. Riney

CURRENT TITLE: President and CEO of Henry Ford Health (2022-Present)

More than 700 Teamsters nurses and case workers at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc, Michigan, have been forced out on strike for nine months. During that time, CEO Robert Riney released six episodes of his podcast, The BOBcast, including one titled, “Lessons in Humanity and Healing” — qualities that have been notably absent in his treatment of workers.

Riney pocketed over $7 million in compensation in 2024, landing his name on the list of the highest paid health care executives in Michigan. His bio on the Henry Ford Health website highlights one of his “most ambitious initiatives,” the joint venture with Ascension Michigan. While the merger meant bigger checks for Riney and the hospital’s executives, workers faced job cuts.

Riney touts his philanthropy and civic engagement, but no number of accolades can outweigh the damage done when the people providing health care are treated as disposable.

Brian Sikes

CURRENT TITLE: Board Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Cargill Meat Solutions (2023-Present)

On May 20, more than 1,700 Teamsters at Cargill Meat Solutions’ facility in Fort Morgan, Colorado, were locked out by their employer. Cargill CEO Brian Sikes has made clear where his priorities lie — and it’s not with American workers.

Sikes spent more than 35 years climbing the corporate ladder at Cargill, holding management and executive level positions across the company before becoming CEO in 2023. After decades inside offices and boardrooms, he knows exactly how much wealth workers create for Cargill — and how little the company is willing to give back.

While Teamsters in Colorado fight for fair wages and benefits, Sikes has prioritized international expansion, including in China.

Instead of negotiating a fair contract for 1,700 American workers in Fort Morgan, Sikes is more focused on global operations than investing in the workforce that drives Cargill’s success.

Tom Bené

CURRENT TITLE: President and CEO of Breakthru Beverage Group (2021-Present)

Tom Bené has a long history of being at the helm of companies with anti-worker track records. He brought those union-busting tactics to Breakthru Beverage from his time as President of Sysco Corp., PepsiCo North America, and the National Restaurant Association.

Teamsters at Local 710 in Illinois and Local 600 and Local 688 in Missouri are on strike, demanding an end to Breakthru’s unfair labor practices. Breakthru management wants members to waive their lawful right to not cross or work behind a Teamsters picket line. The union will never agree to a contract that fails to include this critical protection.

Teamsters at Breakthru Beverage facilities in Florida were on strike for five months and fought for 400 days from organizing to ratifying their first contract. Meanwhile, Bené and his company wasted millions on a failed union-busting campaign.

Shame on Bené and his fellow CEOs who fail to understand that Teamsters will fight for as long as it takes to organize and win the contracts that workers deserve.

By Carl Cunningham

If you grew up in the Southern labor movement like I did, you know what it means to fight uphill. You know how hard it is to organize workers in states where the law was deliberately written to keep wages low and unions weak.

In the South, the labor movement was never large. But it was tight. A handful of true believers. The same faces at every rally. The same worn, wood-paneled union halls filled with folding chairs. The smell of coffee and cigarette smoke. Old-timers telling stories about strikes from 30 years ago. Business agents who knew every member by name. Organizers who drove hundreds of miles down two-lane highways to meet workers in church basements, Waffle Houses, and truck stops.

The labor movement is always David versus Goliath. But in the South, the odds felt even steeper — a small army of organizers, local leaders, and rank-and-file members taking on corporations, politicians, and a legal system rigged against working people.

We didn’t have the numbers, but we had conviction. We believed Southern workers deserved the same wages and protections as workers anywhere else in America.

Our fight has lasted generations. Which is why what happened in Virginia last week is so infuriating.

For the first time in decades, Virginia had a chance to strike a real blow against one of the most destructive anti-worker laws in American history. The General Assembly passed legislation to repeal Virginia’s public-sector “right to work” law. Then Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger vetoed it. She had an opportunity to stand with workers. Instead, she sided with the same failed ideology that has kept Southern wages depressed and unions on the defensive for nearly 80 years. Spanberger’s party affiliation makes the betrayal even worse. Aren’t union members consistently told — or even scolded — that it’s the Democratic Party alone that stands with us?

I say this as a proud lifelong Democrat.

It’s true that the Democratic Party has historically been on the right side of labor, especially compared to Republicans and especially in the South. And for generations, Southern unions poured its most precious resources — money and manpower — into electing Democrats. Union members knocked on doors in the heat. They made phone calls after shifts and donated the money they could spare to their campaigns. They trusted that when the moment came, Democrats would stand with them and, one day, repeal the anti-worker laws created by pro-business Republicans.

“Right to work” is one of the most dishonest phrases in American politics. It has nothing to do with worker freedom. It was designed to weaken unions by allowing employees to receive all the benefits of a union contract without contributing to the union that negotiates and enforces it.

In other words, it legalizes freeloading. Its purpose is to divide workers and drain unions of the resources they need to fight. For decades, Southern Republicans used “right to work” to market our region as a low-wage bargain for Corporate America.

Come here, they said, labor is cheap and unions are weak. And corporations did exactly that. Since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, companies took advantage of “right to work” laws by moving their nonunion operations to places like Florida, Texas, and my home state of Georgia.

Executives got rich and workers got screwed. But the Southern labor movement never stopped fighting. After decades of struggle, the tide finally started to turn. Unions were popular again, and the South was no longer the exception. All we needed was for elected officials to do their part.

Virginia could have been the first domino. The first Southern state to dismantle one of the most powerful anti-union weapons ever devised. Spanberger had that chance. She blew it.

Spanberger represents a breed of corporate Democrats who ask workers for their votes but balk when asked to challenge the very laws that hold them back. We can’t keep getting fooled by them. When Abigail Spanberger ran for governor of Virginia, she made herself an outlier among Democrats by openly opposing the repeal of “right to work.” Too often, labor is expected to ignore these red flags in the name of party unity and the assumption that candidates will remember who got them elected.

That’s why this one hurts. Because so many of us still held out hope that the governor would understand the importance of this moment — or maybe, just maybe, she would remember the hardworking Virginians who put her into office.

I still believe the Democratic Party is the best vehicle for advancing workers’ rights in this country. But Democrats like Spanberger take labor’s trust for granted. And when that trust is broken, workers do not forget — especially in the South. Because if we’re sticking with the biblical metaphors, her veto was a Judas-level betrayal. Not just of policy, but of history.

Few people are as qualified to speak about the plight of the American trucker as Gord Magill. As a professional lifelong driver, his resumé reads like a tour of the English-speaking world — from the frozen ice roads of the Great White North, to the desolate tracks of the Outback, to the endless miles of the U.S. highway system. Over more than two decades, he’s driven them all.

Many people who talk about trucking have never driven a truck. They may know the industry well — owners, insurance adjusters, brokers, shippers — but they have not done the job. And it is refreshing to hear about the industry from a driver.

The End of the Road poses an important question: Who speaks for truckers? Across nearly 300 pages, Magill searches for that answer while cataloging the many indignities and injustices facing drivers.

That catalog is expansive: the erosion of professional training and mentorship; mandates that have made equipment more expensive and less reliable; the destruction of trucking culture through consolidation and surveillance; and the pernicious myth of the “driver shortage.”

Magill shows how that lie has been used to lobby Washington to put undertrained and unqualified drivers on the road — and how the predictable consequences are now being used to justify replacing drivers altogether with what he calls “Truckzilla,” the autonomous truck.

Throughout the book, Magill points to the work of trade professionals and grassroots groups that have recently begun to mobilize. They’ve taken their concerns to Washington, using social media as their primary tool, and have started the difficult work of raising awareness. That effort is admirable — and necessary — but it is a beginning, not a solution. It doesn’t fully answer the central question. Who speaks for truckers? Too often, it seems, everyone except the truckers themselves.

The better question may not be who does speak for truckers, but who should. The answer is obvious: truckers. Magill is an effective spokesperson, too. But speaking out is only the first step. The harder part is how that momentum turns into real solutions. As Magill demonstrates, no matter the regulatory framework, corporate interests will find ways to exploit the trucking industry.

The independent drivers and small operators Magill identifies with are collateral damage in a much larger fight. The New Deal era prioritized labor over corporate interests, but that began to change with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. In the decades since, corporations have waged a sustained campaign to weaken organized labor — and the Teamsters have been a primary target.

Magill is not a union man, but his account reflects a consistent truth: strong unions raise standards for everyone who works for a living. When unions are weakened, nonunion workers suffer even more. Deregulation — which he describes as the opening salvo in the war on truckers — is the culprit for most of today’s problems and is considered as the most effective union-busting effort in American history. Its success, Magill writes, depended on dismantling the Teamsters’ power.

For any reforms to come from Magill’s work, and from others raising these issues, truckers will need to organize.

If that happens, End of the Road may not read as a eulogy for a once-proud profession. It could instead stand as a record of the moment when working drivers decided enough was enough.

Rating: End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers is a Worthy Cause.

Rating Scale
Lost Cause: 1/5
Probable Cause: 2/5
Common Cause: 3/5
Worthy Cause: 4/5
Just Cause: 5/5

Good morning!

Your alarm goes off. You reach for your phone. The device, the operating system, and the wireless plan that connects it all come with binding arbitration clauses buried deep in terms you accepted long ago but never read.

You order your coffee on an app to save time. You’ve just agreed to arbitration. You tap your contactless transit pass to commute to work. Arbitration. You check the status of a package from Amazon. Arbitration.

By the time you actually start the day, you’ve probably agreed to arbitration multiple times without even realizing it. Not because you’re careless, but because arbitration is designed to live in the background — quiet, automatic, unacknowledged.

But what exactly is arbitration? In simple terms, it’s fine-print contract language that replaces the right to sue. Instead of taking a dispute to court, you agree to settle it through a private third-party decision-maker — an arbitrator — whose judgment is typically final and cannot be appealed.

In theory, arbitration is supposed to reduce the burden of cost on both parties and improve the efficiency of dispute resolution. In reality, it allows employers to circumvent the justice system, especially when it comes to cases of discrimination or harassment.

So, if arbitration is so ingrained in our everyday lives, why don’t we ever notice it?

Think about that “terms and conditions” box you check. Buried in the fine print is an arbitration clause. In a world where everything is “on demand” and attention spans are rapidly decreasing, consumers aren’t going to read a lengthy document full of legal jargon that waives their litigation rights. Corporations know this, and they’re capitalizing on it, using longer and longer arbitration clauses with increasingly complex language. Uber’s 2024 terms of use update featured a whopping 14-page arbitration clause.

These legal documents are often buried in one-sided contracts that businesses impose as mandatory conditions of employment, which a potential employee has no real leverage to challenge. Workers are faced with the choice of either accepting the contract as-is or losing a job opportunity. And it’s no surprise that the companies that abuse these contracts most often are some of the most anti-worker, like Amazon and Walmart.

It’s worth drawing a line here, not between forced arbitration and no arbitration, but between arbitration without power and arbitration with it.

Union workers have power to fight back against this unfair system, because for them, arbitration isn’t buried in onboarding paperwork — it’s bargained for up front. Unionized workplaces are governed by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), instead of individual employment contracts. A CBA typically defines the arbitration process very clearly, putting more power in the hands of workers to object to legal violations.

Other than the use of the word “arbitration,” this well-established system used by organized labor has nothing in common with the take-it-or-leave-it, sign-your-rights-away kind of arbitration corporations try to impose.

Instead, union workers help decide how the process will work through their bargaining representative, including receiving paid time off to participate in arbitration, defining what the steps are, and even selecting who the arbitrator can be. The result? A more structured process between two organizations who both have strong resources and experience and are thus more likely to find a balanced and fair resolution. But most American workers are not union members and do not have access to this extra line of defense.

With such an imbalance of power in favor of Corporate America, it’s encouraging to see a bicameral, bipartisan coalition in Congress emerging in support of the Faster Labor Contracts Act — a Teamsters-backed bill that would level the playing field for workers. One of the FLCA’s most important provisions would create a binding arbitration process to ensure that workers who vote to unionize receive a first contract in a timely manner, as they’re supposed to under the law.

Yet politicians like Senator Rand Paul, who have no qualms with Big Business abusing arbitration clauses, have led a major outcry against this pro-worker proposal. Their alligator tears make it clear that their real objection isn’t to arbitration as a matter of principle but to workers having access to it on equal terms as major corporations.

Arbitration has become an invisible, automatic part of our everyday lives. But invisibility isn’t inherently neutral. Someone built this system, and someone benefits from its subtlety. When arbitration is negotiated collectively and with the participation of those who will be impacted by it the most, it can be a fair and functional way to settle disagreements. When it’s hidden in fine print and imposed without awareness, it becomes a way to ensure that harm can happen quietly.

We may begin our days tapping our screens, agreeing to terms we never actually considered, but we shouldn’t have to. Arbitration is already all around us. The question now is whether we want to see it — and if we want to have a say in what it becomes.

By Jonathan Hezel

When people think of Mother’s Day, they often picture flowers, cards, and sentimental messages. But in a Teamsters family, especially mine, Mother’s Day has always meant something deeper. It’s recognition of the work that never stops.

My mom started working for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission in 2000 and became a proud member of Teamsters Local 77.

That decision was about more than finding a job. It was about stability, protection, and solidarity that made it possible for her to raise a family on her own.

As a single mother, that stability shaped every part of our lives. It meant a reliable paycheck, strong health benefits, and peace of mind that came from knowing we would be OK when life became difficult.

With the Teamsters, there was an ability to keep the household running without constantly fearing financial collapse.

It meant she could work early shifts, handle long hours, and still make it back for school events, doctor’s appointments, and everything in between.

She became a mom in 2002 and raised two children who eventually became first-generation college graduates. That didn’t happen by chance. It was built through years of sacrifice and the protections that came with being in a union.

Long before she joined the Teamsters, my grandfather introduced her to the meaning of union work.

As a child, she would ride through the Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls with him, and he would point out the workers and tell her they had strong union jobs with good benefits.

That lesson stayed with her and eventually shaped her own path into the Teamsters.

When my mom talked about the union, she often described it as being part of a larger family. No matter what happened, her Teamster brothers and sisters had her back.

Together, they fought for fair wages, sick leave, overtime protections, vacation time, health care, and retirement security.

In a household where every paycheck mattered, those protections made all the difference.

For 20 years, she worked as a toll collector, a job many people pass through without a thought.

But that work helped keep Pennsylvania moving and supported essential infrastructure across the state.

Later, she transitioned into maintenance work as an EO1 operator, taking on even more physically demanding responsibilities and earning her commercial driver’s license along the way.

That kind of work was not easy. It takes long hours, physical endurance, and constant responsibility.

And like many Teamster moms, she carried that workload while also carrying the weight of raising children.

That is the reality of Teamster motherhood: labor on every front.

Showing up every day on the job while showing up at home in every way that matters.

Neither role pauses for the other.

In 2022, my mom retired from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, but she still proudly says she will always be a Teamster.

My grandfather was right — it was a strong union job with life-changing benefits, and her years of hard work carried into retirement through a well-earned pension.

As her son, I carry enormous pride in where I come from.

I am proud to have been raised in a union household, proud to be a son of a Teamster mother, and proud of the sacrifices she made so our family could have opportunities she never had growing up.

That pride is what inspired me to continue the Teamsters legacy in my own career.

Today, I work in the Strategic Initiatives Department of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington, D.C.

In my role, I help support campaigns and amplify the voices of rank-and-file Teamsters across the country.

And when I perform that work, I think about people like my mom — the hardworking Teamster mothers whose stories deserve to be recognized and heard.

To me, Mother’s Day is more than celebration. It is about honoring women like my mom who keep this country moving while raising families at the same time.

Women who balance exhausting workdays with motherhood, sacrifice with strength, and responsibility with resilience.

I will always be proud to be the son of a Teamster mom. And now, through my own work, I’m honored to help give a voice to more Teamsters like her.