Rank and bile: how the Teamsters try to silence dissenters.

• Author: Lynch, Michael W.
• Position: International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Steve Beard recalls clearly when he started to think that his union didn't always serve his interests. It was after Christmas in 1989, his first year working as a loader and unloader for United Parcel Service in Sunnyvale, California. UPS had made record profits and announced bonuses of $1,000 for each full-timer and half that for part-timers like Beard, who was making $9 an hour working the shift from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m.

"That was two weeks' pay," says Beard, who at the time was 19 and playing football for a local junior college. But his union, Teamster Local 287, didn't care. It opposed the bonuses. A union steward even asked Beard to protest the bonus by not cashing his check. (Beard reckons the union's aversion to bonuses was directly related to its dues structure. Since monthly dues were two hours' pay, the union didn't get a cut of non-hourly compensation.) "My attitude was, 'Screw you, I'm going to cash it,'" boasts Beard. And he did.

A decade later, Beard retains his "screw you" attitude toward the union. He complains of union opposition to profit sharing and stock options. "It's so hypocritical," he explains. "The union complains about the profit - why doesn't it want some of it?" And it has rubbed him raw over the years that the Teamsters won't allow UPS to negotiate airline benefits for its workers on the commercial carriers it uses to ship packages. Like the cash bonuses, such perquisites would be non-hourly compensation. "Federal Express negotiated airline benefits," he points out. And in August 1997, Beard was enraged when the "crazy zealots running the union sent us out to strike without a vote on the contract."

In September 1997, after the strike was settled, Beard stumbled upon Beck rights on the Internet. Under the Supreme Court decision by that name, he discovered, employees working under union contracts have the right to resign from the union without losing their jobs, continuing to pay only the portion of dues that covers contract negotiation and maintenance. He resigned from the union and kept his job. It was his final "screw you" - or so he thought.

The Teamsters are now attempting to screw Beard. On December 4, 1997, Local 287's internal court convicted him of calling "a group of drivers, television and newspaper reporters to undermine the Union on the United Parcel Service/Teamster contract." It fined him $10,000.

On July 9, 1997, Teamsters rank and file voted to authorize a strike against UPS, a tactic known as a...