Dave Baker
president of Teamsters Local 421
Though only 45, the son and grandson of long-time union members is in his second decade as president of one of Dubuque's largest and most influential unions.
As Labor Day 2002 approached, Baker spent nearly two hours of a "catch-up day" to visit about his organization, the labor movement and unions' role in the nation and community.
Following are highlights of the interview.
TH: What made union leadership something that you aspired to?
Baker: Actually, I did not aspire to be the president of the local. I had a good job at Flynn's (Ready-Mix Concrete). I had just learned how to run the plant and batch the trucks and was being groomed to be the back-up batch man.
I was recruited by members from the freight industry, UPS, and others in the construction industry. They said, "You know, you go to all the meetings, you're not afraid to speak up. Why don't you throw your hat in the ring?"
Well, the executive board, which I was part of, they kind of talked me into going in as a business agent, to get my feet wet. The Flynn family was good enough to give me a leave of absence to try it out. I did that. I ran and just got an overwhelming vote in that first election (1991).
TH: Is a step up into some official position in the international hierarchy something that might interest you?
Baker: I'm not campaigning for that. Obviously, if Jim Hoffa (Teamsters general president) came to me with something, I'd have to consider that. But I don't want to leave Dubuque, and he knows that.
TH: How many members do you have in Local 421?
Baker: Approximately 1,500.
TH: How has that been trending?
Baker: When we came - when I say "we," it's my board, which has been very supportive of my efforts - but when we basically took the local over in 1992, we had about 1,150 members. So we've trended up in numbers and we've organized many new groups.
TH: Your membership totals, then, are running contrary to the national trend?
Baker: Just to throw some numbers around: In the mid-1970s, the Teamsters represented 2 million members, and today, we have 1.4 million members. The Teamsters have experienced a decline in numbers, and a lot of that can be attributed to the deregulation of the trucking industry.
The National Master Freight Agreement used to have more than 500,000 people covered by it. Now we have 150,000. That really hurt the Teamsters Union when trucking was deregulated. It (deregulation) hasn't been successful. It's resulted in lower wages for truck drivers. But we told them that.
TH: With the accounting scandals and some of the problems at the corporate level, do you see the labor movement getting a positive bounce?
Baker: I think you'll see a couple of things. I think you'll see, because, of that people with legitimate questions and concerns about the safety of their retirement plans. I think you'll see a bounce, if we want to call it that, in organizing. I also think you'll see in the elections this fall negative results for those who have tied themselves to corporations and positive results for the grassroots candidates, probably some independents.
TH: Could you give me an idea of the employers where you have members working?
| Dave Baker |
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Age: 45. Family: Son of Dick and the late Juanita Baker, of Dubuque. He and his wife, Kathy, have been married 25 years. They have three daughters (Jessie, Andrea and Cassandra) and one granddaughter. He also has three brothers and one sister. Education: 1975 graduate of Hempstead High School. Attended Holy Trinity Catholic School. Employment: Teamsters Union Local 421. President since 1992, business agent, 1991. With his wife, owned Bake's Windsor Tap, 1984-93. Previously worked at wholesale food distributor Continental-Hoxie Inc. (1975-76), Dubuque Packing Co. (1976-78) and Flynn Ready-Mix. Concrete Co. (1978-1990). Professional associations: Vice President of the Iowa Conference of Teamsters and Joint Council 45; National Master Freight Negotiating Committee; Dubuque Area Labor-Management Council. Honors: Dubuque Fast-Pitch Softball Hall of Fame. Various awards from United Way and labor organizations. Community activities: Vice-chair, city of Dubuque Enterprise Zone Commission. Secretary, Dubuque Fast-Pitch Softball Hall of Fame. Board member of Dubuque Community School District Foundation, Greater Dubuque Development Corp. and Dubuque Area Labor Harvest. Past-chairperson, United Way Labor and Public Employee divisions. Member, North End Gun Club. Hobbies: Golf, fishing, darts and bowling. |
Probably the marquee Teamster company is United Parcel Service. More than 210,000 Teamsters work for UPS, just in the U.S. and Canada. UPS is not the biggest employer in our local, however.
TH: So UPS would be the largest nationally?
Baker: Correct. Our largest bargaining units actually are the associates with the Dubuque Community School District and Area Residential Care employees. Some people would say those are non-traditional Teamster groups. Area Residential Care was one of the first groups that I organized. We have a lot of active members from ARC. I think they appreciate what the union has done for them.
Some of the more traditional groups, Swiss Valley Farms Dairy has certainly been a Teamster success story locally. In 1991 or '92, we had about 65 or 70 members there. Now we're pushing 130. Decent pay, good benefits and a company that's growing.
TH: What others?
Baker: Construction, and specifically construction trucking. Flynn Ready-Mix, where I came from. The ready-mix industry in this area is in good shape. Obviously, I had a lot of experience in that field, but the other company in town, Apex Concrete, is signed to a Teamster contract as well. Even in some of the smaller towns, we have organized ready-mix.
Tschiggfrie Excavating is our largest construction employer. But we've organized new groups, and construction is kind of different than the rest of the world, as far as organizing goes. In construction, many of the employers realize the value of the union because we provide a source of drivers for them.
Even though we're not a hiring hall, we keep a roster of people looking for work. People stop in here on a daily basis and I keep their resumes and do some background checking and that type of thing. Then, if an employer calls, I might send them out three or four people. It makes their work search that much easier.
They're more likely to just sign on to our area agreement, our area standards agreement, that provides good pension, good health and welfare, good wages. It's the going rate for drivers and they want to get the best drivers and they don't want to have to train somebody who's never driven before, that type of thing. So in construction, it's not unusual, again, to have an employer contact us and say, "We'd like to be union." We've had several of those.
In the non-construction fields, employers will spend more money than it would cost, in many cases, to settle a contract to keep a union out. I don't understand that, but apparently if they go to a union-busting firm, or an anti-union firm, they make them believe that the union is the end of the world. But the track record, the reality, with companies like UPS and Swiss Valley, etc., is it's not true.
TH: Is Dubuque any different than what some of your peers see nationally, in terms of getting a phone call, "Hey, we want to sign up"?
Baker: I think two things have been driving construction, trucking companies to the Teamsters Union. One is the manpower supply - trained drivers, the availability of trained drivers.
Also, our health plans. In many cases, our health plans provide Cadillac benefits but not at a Cadillac price. As some of the local plans - the Blue Cross, the Medical Associates plans, even the self-insured plans -experience tremendous increases, our plans look pretty good for various reasons.
If we have a construction plan, for example, construction workers are traditionally pretty healthy people and they don't run to the doctor every day. So, we're able to control costs because they don't require as much care. That's a fact.
TH: The early history of Dubuque and the history of the labor movement are pretty interwoven. Is Dubuque, in 2002, still a strong union town?
Baker: I think Dubuque is a very strong union town. Again, back in the '50s and '60s - and I think all these are estimates - but the number that was tossed around was 60 to 65 percent union. I think we were credited with being the most union-dense city in the country. We still run about double the national average.
I believe in Dubuque, the percentage of union workers is in the 30 to 35 percent range. That's counting every worker. That includes busboys and every job that's out there. I believe that's a fair number. I think that we're strong.
The methods are different, the rules are different, the laws are different than they were back in the '30s and '40s. Back in the '30s, the organizer had to be the toughest guy on the block. The union organizer, because the companies then could and did hire people such as Pinkertons; they were brought in to beat them up and scare them off or worse. It was a kind of a King of the Hill thing back then. The toughest guy was the organizer and the next-toughest guy was the steward.
But back then, the workers were definitely being abused. I think everybody knows that. The robber barons of the early 1900s, they squeezed every ounce of blood, sweat and tears out of their workers. The union movement took off like gangbusters because everybody was tired of getting pushed around.
I think we've been kind of a victim of our own success. We've helped push for labor laws, overtime laws, OSHA standards, making the workplace safer. A lot of this, we've lobbied to get the laws changed. There are a lot of non-union workers - actually all non-union workers now - have benefited from what we've done in the past.
So what's happened in the last few years is the minority groups have been organizing in higher numbers than the traditional European white male in the early 1900s.
But also, we've noticed organizing by industry or by occupation. Health care. Both the hospitals in town have had major organizing attempts. The Teamsters, our local, took on Finley with the registered nurses, and the Service Employees union had a vote at Mercy. Both were close votes. The Mercy vote was, I believe seven votes difference. Health care workers have been organizing at a faster pace than anybody. So, we've shifted into some of those areas. We represent some nurses, we represent the workers at the Julien Care Facility, Area Residential Care, Hillcrest Family Services. So, we've shifted, we've adapted. If anything, it probably has made us stronger in that we're in more different segments of the economy.
TH: Similar to Dubuque's economy when it was largely based on the Pack and John Deere and the whole community seemed to rise or fall based on what those two employers did.
Baker: Absolutely, right. And back then, you know, we had 6,500 bargaining unit people, hourly people, at Deere's and probably 3,000 at the Pack. Maybe not at the same time. Those were significant historical employers in Dubuque.
TH: Was your dad (41 years at Dubuque Packing Co. and successor companies) strong union?
Baker: Oh, yeah. He was a strong union member. But he didn't run for any leadership positions. His dad - my grandfather - was probably more active. He was an elected sergeant-at-arms in the local. He was a big man: 6-foot-3, probably 270. He was probably more of an activist.
I think back then, as a whole, the groups were probably more inclined to support the union's directives. Just times have changed a little bit now. Now, for example, politically, we don't come out and say, "Here's who you vote for." Now, we put out their voting records and we don't try to dictate to our members who to vote for, nor should we. We put the voting records out and let them choose because there might be other issues that they want to consider.
TH: That makes it more challenging for you as a president of a local.
Baker: I would say that we're more diverse politically now. The majority of our membership are Democrats. But a growing number are independent. I would say, a few years ago, there probably were just a handful of Republican members in our union. I would say now it's more like 20 percent. Probably the rest are 40 percent Democrat and probably 40 percent are independent.
The Teamsters on the national level have taken a position that we're going to support those with the voting record that support working families. For example, they endorsed Gov. Pataki in New York, a Republican with a good labor record. Teed off the Democrats in New York, I'm sure, but true to his word, Hoffa said, "We're going to vote for the candidate. We're going to put the voting records out there; we're going to endorse people based on their records, not on their party."
TH: A few minutes ago, you mentioned UPS. The mail-in referendum on the proposed contract is under way. How significant do you feel that particular negotiation and contract is for your members?
Baker: I think it's a victory for working people, not just union people. To see that we can go out and negotiate $5-an-hour pay raises - of course, that's over six years - $6 an hour for part-time people, keep a Cadillac health insurance plan fully funded for the next six years and increase pensions for our part-time employees.
We don't know if there's going to be a full-time pension increase, but they already have, our full-timers already have a "30-and-out" pension, $3,000 a month at any age and it goes to $3,500 with 35 years at any age.
It's hard to improve on some of those things, but if there's a downside to the contract, it probably is the full-time pension is a question mark. We were told there definitely won't be an increase the first two years and then they'll have to look at the money that was negotiated.
The entry-level wage for part-timers was a concern that I had. That got tweaked. Admittedly, it's a lot of college students that go to work there. They seem happy with it. It was $8.50 an hour. It's going up 50 cents and then it's going to increase faster, the progression will increase faster. That was a concern of mine.
But I've never been in a negotiation where we've been able to get everything we wanted. There's some give and some take.
TH: How would you contrast this contract with UPS, which apparently is going to go through, from five years ago when you had a (15-day) strike?
Baker: I think UPS back then saw a weakness in the leadership of our union, in the international. Ron Carey was the president. UPS came in with a very aggressive agenda. One of them was to take over our pension funds and turn them into company-sponsored pension funds. What happened, and what the company hadn't counted on, was even though we were politically divided - because at that time Hoffa was already running, he was campaigning to run against Carey - everybody pulled together. We forgot about politics, we forgot about Teamster politics, and showed a very large employer what we could do when we pulled together. We struck and we won.
TH: You're still predicting passage (of the proposed UPS contract).
Baker: I think that certainly it is too good and too rich of a contract to hit the bricks over. I think I can look our members straight in the eye and say, "This is a better contract that you struck for and ultimately ratified in 1997."
TH: Another difference from five years ago - and you alluded to it earlier - is you have Jim Hoffa as your general president. What has he meant to the Teamsters?
Baker: Well, Jim Hoffa obviously was born and raised in the union movement. He was on picket lines when he was 9 years old with his dad. He's not the same man his dad was. James R. Hoffa was legendary for his vision and his toughness. James P. Hoffa is an attorney who worked for the Teamsters for 26 years, for the Michigan Teamsters, for various locals in Michigan. But he has good people around him. He has set a good agenda. He's putting the interest of the members first.
For example, there were rank-and-file UPSers sat in on the actual negotiations with Jim Hoffa and Ken Hall in this most recent negotiation. He's a strong-willed guy. He's smart. He has good people with him. Tom Keegle, our general secretary- treasurer, is very intelligent.
I have all the confidence in the world in Jim Hoffa and Tom Keegle and the slate, the executive board they have with them. On that executive board are the rank-and-file leaders, Teamsters and leaders who have worked their way up the ladder. They have experience and have representation from all these different industries.
It's not that Jim Hoffa is a dictator. I mean, he's a strong leader, but they have genuine disagreements on this executive board and that's good; that's healthy. It's not a rubber stamp board by any means.
Again, when Ron Carey was running the show. I did not dislike Ron Carey. He had come up through the ranks. But he appointed people to positions of authority who had no business being there. Then he brought people in from outside of the Teamsters movement, which was a huge mistake. They didn't have any loyalty to the organization and they didn't really know how it operated from the bottom up.
Ultimately, he (Carey) ended up getting thrown out. I guess he was exonerated from wrongdoings. People underneath him were convicted.
Hoffa runs a clean ship. His reputation and Keegle's reputation is they're tight with the dues dollars, and they should be. We like to think our local runs the same way. Our local has a good treasury, which you need when you're negotiating contracts, and we also have a healthy strike fund, which is important.
TH: When Hoffa came in, your finances on the international level were pretty much in shambles.
Baker: Yes. He (Hoffa) immediately turned things around and had us operating in the black after one year. After seven years of serious decline. Carey was just - he was rewarding friends with jobs and we couldn't understand it, but that's what it was. Hoffa and Keegle are running a good, tight ship. There's a different feeling now, even with the members.
Part of it is because of his father's legend and persona. When he comes around - if he comes to a membership rally or meeting - afterwards, it's usually an hour, hour-and-a-half, people wanting an autograph. He's more like a celebrity, even though he's a down-to-earth guy.
When we walk in to a meeting that has other unions, such as AFL-CIO or building trades, and General President Hoffa walks in, he gets more attention than anybody else. That name is part of it, but the organization is part of it, too. We're the biggest. In the past we've been known as the biggest and the baddest. I say that in an affectionate way. In other words, tough.
We're tough. We stand behind our members. Does that mean that we're always right? No. Does that mean our members are always right? No. Common sense has to fit in there, and I think it does.
Locally, I have good relationships with probably 99 percent of the people that we have contracts with. Maybe one or two - I'm not going to mention any names - that just don't want to get along. But I think if you went and talked with most, they'd probably at least tell you our word is good. We might not always agree, but when we say something, we stand behind it. We don't backtrack on it.
Bob Bennett was the federal mediator here for many years. When I just started, he basically said, "Kid, in this arena, you bring your word as your only tool, and if you lose that tool, if your word's not good anymore, you're out of business." I found that to be true.
TH: You're talking about relations with employers. You had a role in the Labor-Management Council. That's probably an organization that one wouldn't have dreamed of having in Dubuque, Iowa, 50 years ago. Talk a bit about the efforts that you see going on through councils such as these.
Baker: Well, the Dubuque Area Labor-Management Council, actually the idea came around 1986 when we had a big strike at the Pack (FDL Foods) and a big strike at Deere's. You had a large segment of our economy on strike.
I think some community leaders approached some labor leaders and said, "Hey, you know, getting in a pissing match just isn't working. What can we do to open the lines of communication?" Through the efforts of federal mediation, they started the Dubuque Area Labor-Management Council.
One of the things that really stands out for me with that organization, when I was new with the organization, I was meeting some of the management people, some that I had contracts with and others that we didn't. I found it to be just as important to get to know who the players are in the community.
At that time, Mike Stohlmeyer from John Deere was the industrial relations guy. He wasn't well liked by the union members and by some of the local people. But I got to know Mike and I found that he was a pretty decent guy with a tough job. I think a lot of people look at what I do the same way.
There are some of the employers that would probably rather not have to deal with me. With our members, if a member comes in and says, "You know, they're doing this and I don't think it's right," and I'll obviously do my homework, but if I don't think they're right, I'll come and tell them, "You're not right and here's why." A lot of people don't like to hear that, but that's the straight dope. There's a certain percentage of probably my own members who think I'm too bold or that I should try to pacify and I don't do that.
Anyway, Mike Stohlmeyer and I were at one of the Dubuque Nights in Des Moines, we were sipping on a beer and he said, "You know, at least one thing this organization has done: If we're going to sit across the table and call each other son of a bitches, at least we know who we're calling a son of a bitch." I don't say that's all we've done, but we've opened the lines of communication.
Jointly now, we've started a scholarship program and we just handed out 14 $1,000 scholarships, not based on income, based on students who are going to work in the tri-state area in an occupation that they need in this area. That's been a huge success. We've basically gotten to know each other. We've talked about issues. We've tried to tackle this health care thing.
I think that the Labor-Management Council has been a success. One of the rules we have is we don't bring collective bargaining into our meetings. We're there to improve communication between labor and management. That's basically our mission and I think we've been successful in doing that.
TH: What are some of the bigger contracts that you have coming up in the next six to 12 months?
Baker: Obviously, the UPS contract, which we've talked about, is being voted right now. So that's huge. Locally, we're in negotiations with Swiss Valley Farms Dairy right now. (That contract was scheduled to expire Aug. 31).
We also have, next year, March 31st, when our National Master Freight agreement expires. We're starting on that in October.
There are lots of other local contracts that will be up for negotiation. John Rosenthal (business agent) has just finished up negotiations with the Julien Care Facility. We'll be starting negotiations with Jackson County; we represent the secondary roads employees. Next spring, I've got Riverside Tractor-Trailer and Mathews Distributing. It goes on and on.
I actually enjoy negotiation. Not enjoyment from a fun standpoint, but I enjoy the challenge. I feel good about negotiating a good, fair contract. I take great pride in negotiating good contracts for my members and also I think it's important and I feel good that when we see an employer that we've negotiated with doing well.
I don't think there's anything wrong with an employer doing well under a union contract. I hope that's what happens and, in most cases, that is what happens. They're getting better, more productive people. They're paying, in most cases, a premium for that, but they're making profit and being successful. We've got contracts here that go back 50, 60, 70 years. Those companies are still operating, still in business, under a union contract.
TH: What one thing would you like to change about your job if you could?
Baker: That's an easy one. The amount of paperwork and mail that I get. For example, grievances.
If you have an arbitration, your file will be (one foot) thick. You have to keep on top of that. I would say the toughest part about the job - I don't want to say I don't like it, I don't know anybody that likes shuffling papers - but I would say it would be the timelines, monitoring timelines for grievances.
And then for negotiations, probably the worst part would be dotting Is and crossing Ts after the negotiation is pretty well done.
I would rather be out in the field, visiting member work sites and negotiating contracts than being in the office doing a paper shuffle. Some of both is necessary, but if I could do more field work, I'd rather do that.
TH: On the eve of Labor Day 2002, what do you think is most important for people - whether they're in the labor movement or if they're not in a union - to know about the labor movement?
Baker: Some of the nay-sayers out there like to say that unions aren't good and don't serve a purpose. What they say is, "Back in '30s and '40s, they needed unions." Well, today, in the year 2002, we still need unions.
Workers still need to organize, to band together, to have their voices heard. I think that's still our grassroots - having people pull together and have their voice heard.
Now, that carries over, obviously, into a lot of different arenas. Political arenas. If Dave Baker speaks on behalf of 1,500 members, plus their families plus their extended families, that gets some attention. Whereas if just an individual worker, for example, from a non-union workplace, goes up and talks to a politician or a leader, I think it carries a different feel to it. I believe it carries more weight when we're speaking for the numbers.
I think that Dubuque is a union town. I think Dubuque will always be a union town. What we've done and have done for years has been involved in the community. Labor is part of this community and there may be those that don't like that, but we're here. We're here to stay.
There will be those people who will step up. People like myself, like Dan Hammel back in 1980, '85, we were probably relatively unknown in the labor movement. Now that Dan Hammel is president of the Building Trades, business manager for IBEW 704, he's on Greater Dubuque Development, he's on several boards and commissions. In other areas, some of those boards and commission openings aren't there for labor people. In Dubuque they are; and not because Dan Hammel is well liked - any more well liked that anybody else or Dave Baker or Dan White (United Auto Workers Local 94). It's because the people who have come before us have been active and have been a part of the community.
There are always workers that need someone to advocate for them. Again, whether it's by race, color or creed or occupation or industry, there's going to be workers that need an organization to help them achieve a better standard of living.
That's what the unions are all about. In the overall big picture, we are trying to make our country a better place for working people, working families. That's the bottom line.
Copyright: Copyright 2002 Telegraph Herald
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