Teamsters deliver petitions telling UPS to drop ALEC membership

Teamsters deliver petitions to UPS this morning in Washington.

The Teamsters have for some time been calling for UPS to drop its membership in the anti-worker American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). But today, it showed the union's largest employer it is not alone in its stance.

In separate events in Washington and Atlanta, Teamster representatives led delegations that included environmental and community activists in delivering thousands of signed petitions to company offices in both cities. In all, some 75,000 signed petitions collected call on UPS to drop its ALEC membership.

Ken Hall, Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer and Package Division Director, said:

There is absolutely no good reason why UPS should continue its membership in ALEC. ALEC is an organization that is committed to destroying every protection and gain middle class working families have fought so hard to secure. 

Representatives from Local 639 in Washington and Local 728 in Atlanta led the delegations. The Teamsters Union represents more than 250,000 members at UPS and UPS Freight. UPS continues as an active member of ALEC despite the state legislative group's anti-worker and anti-union agenda.

The signatures were collected during a massive petition drive led by the Teamsters, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Stand UP to ALEC, Jobs with Justice and the American Postal Workers Union.

Randy Brown, President of Local 728 and a former UPS driver, led the delegation that delivered the petitions to UPS world headquarters. He expressed his disappointment in the package delivery giant's refusal to leave ALEC:

UPS' membership in ALEC is distributing to me on a personal level. How can a company with the largest unionized workforce in the country participate in an organization that attacks the very workers that makes UPS so successful? It's time for UPS to do the right thing and leave ALEC.

Today's action is just the latest in the fight to get UPS to quit ALEC. In July, hundreds of Teamsters demonstrated outside ALEC's annual meeting in San Diego and called on the company to drop its affiliation with the group.

ALEC has served as a legislative clearinghouse which authors model bills that are often brought to state capitals by lawmakers and introduced as-is. The group also acts to connect lawmakers with corporate big-wigs. It is funded, in part, by billionaire industrialists the Koch Brothers.