Teamsters Leadership Academy on Collective Bargaining Held in Chicago

Forty officers and business agents from across the United States and Canada participated in a Teamsters Leadership Academy on Collective Bargaining, July 25-28, 2011. The seminar was hosted by Teamsters Joint Council 25 and held at the Teamsters City complex in Chicago.

The four-day class featured collective bargaining course work covering a variety of subjects including the legal framework for bargaining, internal organizing, pension and health care trends, today’s economic climate, writing strong contract language, contract costing, negotiation strategies and tactics, impasse avoidance, and contract ratification.

“As a new business agent, I found the training program to be very informative and insightful,” said Local 362 Representative Ryan Adams of Calgary, Alberta. “The program provided me with new skills and new ways of looking at collective bargaining issues.”

Ten states and provinces were represented by delegates at this training, seventeen of whom were from Local 743 in Chicago.

“We felt it was important to make sure that a majority of our new staff attend and participate in this very important collective bargaining program. By doing so, we ensure that our membership will benefit from the full power and leverage of the Teamsters with each of our employers,” said Donnie Von Moore, Local 743 President.

The IBT Training and Development Department worked closely with the Joint Council staff and other IBT Departments to develop a meaningful program, relevant to what local union representatives are facing on a day-to-day basis. 

Kevin Giegoldt of Local 781 in Chicago was very satisfied with both the facility and the “hands on and face to face exercises.”  He was especially pleased with the mock bargaining exercise that ran the throughout the course’s four-day program, Giegoldt noted that the program had “hit a home run.”