Edgar Esquivel reports on the continuing crisis of Sean O’Brien’s leadership of the Teamsters and comments on current events within IBT Local 952 in Orange, California.
Just over two-and-a-half years ago, the Left media and organizations incorrectly celebrated the new head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Sean O’Brien, as the 21st Century face of union “militancy” in the US. Even the mainstream liberal media promoted him as a progressive figure. But over the past year, O’Brien has come to be seen by many who supported him as the most incompetent, intolerant, and toxic Teamster leader since Frank Fitzsimmons took over the union in 1967 following the disgraceful fall of the corrupt and notorious mafia puppet – Jimmy Hoffa.
In the last month, Boeing and Longshoremen rank-and-file workers, who organized to defy their own union bureaucracies, have reignited the radical and militant spirit introduced by the often-forgotten: the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) during the first two decades of the 20th Century and the militant Trotskyists in the 1930s.
But the railroad and UPS corporate victories over O’Brien’s Teamsters in 2022 and 2023, to name the most significant national losses for the union, only worked to sow confusion among the Teamster ranks. The humiliating loss by the IBT at Molson Coors in April 2024 further worked to rubber stamp O’Brien’s overhyped and weak record. However, the next big challenge for the Teamsters to redeem themselves after nearly three years of defeats, will be at Local 952 in Orange County CA against the health and cosmetics conglomerate–CVS. Can the Teamsters deliver a much needed win or will the growing crisis of O’Brien’s leadership stifle the chance for victory?
A Review of the 2020 CVS Agreement and Other Comparisons
In 2020, Teamsters Local 952 in Orange CA, led by the freshman executive board of Secretary-Treasurer Eric Jimenez and President John Green, agreed to a multi-tiered structured five-year agreement for approximately 1,000 CVS members at their La Habra Distribution Center (DC). The agreement of 13% gave the majority of CVS warehouse workers $3.35 in general wage increases (GWI) over the life of the agreement and truck drivers $4.15. Today there is no doubt the raises for warehouse workers have left those members far behind following the greatest inflation crisis in forty years. The contract also included a mediocre 60 cents in pension raises over the five-years, raising their hourly pension contribution from $6.05 to $6.65.
During the last year of the agreement, the top rate for CVS drivers surpassed $34 per hour; while forklift operators in the warehouse topped out at over $27, and order selectors exceeded the $25 range. There are also separate agreements for clerical, garage mechanics, and maintenance workers at different wages. Clerical workers, who are the lowest paid CVS Teamsters, reached just over $23, for a job that requires great responsibility.
Several months after Local 952 reached a deal with CVS, the Teamsters Southern California Grocery Agreement (SCGA) covering 8,000 warehouse workers and truck drivers for chains owned by Kroger and Albertsons, and who perform identical work to CVS workers, landed $4 in GWI and $2.27 in pension. The agreement was front-loaded with $2 in the first year as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded. The GWI and pension increases were in fact the largest ever for the region’s grocery agreement after decades of sweetheart contracts negotiated by disgraced old-guard hofficers: Jim Santangelo, Paul Kenny, and Rick Middleton. Top rate for Local 952 Albertsons workers at two DCs in Orange County will reach approximately $33 per hour and $7 in pension. The SoCal agreement covers several locals in the Inland Empire and both Los Angeles and Orange counties.
Despite the 2020 grocery agreement being the richest in history, the mediocre gains were gobbled-up by skyrocketing inflation that followed in 2021 and 2022. “We’ve seen record inflation over the past three years,” said Albertsons steward Mike Holguin to Teamsters Voice. “We need to win COLA [Cost-of-Living Adjustment] raises in the next contract to make sure we’re protected if inflation keeps rising.” In those two years, UPS Teamsters received COLA raises of 33 and 82 cents for a total of $1.15 over two-years.
Overall, the top rate for package car drivers at UPS in Orange County represented by Local 952 reached $45.83, and their hourly pension contribution is at $13.46 per hour. Clearly a large wage and pension disparity among the three Teamster crafts living in one of the most expensive geographic locations in the US. Today, the Teamster-CVS bargaining agreement is one of the poorest of all Local 952 crafts.
Hence, the Jimenez-Green administration gloated over the current CVS agreement fixing the bad language the previous administration had failed to address and correct. They also promised members that in the coming 2025 contract they would deliver historic GWIs. But the CVS warehouse located in Patterson (Northern California) that agreed to a substandard $3.50 in GWI over three years in August 2023 with Teamsters Local 386 is a sign of the greedy conglomerate Local 952 is up against. Worse yet, CVS workers at the Patterson DC who joined the Teamsters in 2011 are still not participants of the Western Conference of Teamsters (WCT) pension plan. More evidence of the conservative brand of the pro-business unionism of Sean O’Brien’s Teamsters today.
Also, after working on an expired contract since June 30th, negotiations between 7,000 United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) members and CVS reached a stalemate in California at the end of August. The union finally announced members working in stores as clerks and pharmacists would be voting throughout September to authorize a strike against the retailer. The UFCW, who welcomed labor-unfriendly federal mediators to the bargaining table, finally revealed to the Guardian that they are seeking $3.60 over three-years, while CVS countered with $1.90. Even after members authorized a strike, they will remain on the job as negotiations are scheduled to resume next week. That would mark three-and-a-half months working without a contract. Hence, the average store associate makes under $20 per hour and CVS is proposing not to exceed that.
That some CVS Teamster members have glorified O’Brien, Jimenez, and Green for their self-proclaimed “militancy” reveals their naivete. These members in the warehouse division who blindly follow the administration have great expectations and believe in the possibility of striking CVS. But members need to apply pressure on Local 952 now and avoid the path of the UFCW. With six months to go before the expiration of their contract, CVS members need to demand a strike authorization early, avoid federal mediators, and refuse any extensions granted past expiration as they only work to benefit employers.
More importantly, CVS Teamsters need to know the economics of what Local 952 is demanding from the get-go and prevent the implementation of any non-disclosure agreements or gag-orders as they only work to divide, deceive, weaken and confuse the membership.
The Crisis at Local 952
The thuggery, not union militancy, displayed by the current Jimenez-Green administration over the past five years has been an embarrassing one for the union. Over their past five years in office, they have removed democratically elected shop-stewards and replaced them with their own unpopular supporters. All while intimidating, harassing and attacking outspoken members who disagree with their failed record, concessionary contracts, lavish spending, and financial illiteracy—instead of fighting management.
After winning reelection in 2022, Local 952 was caught in a financial jam over a defamation lawsuit filed by the previous administration’s bookkeeper. The Covid-19 pandemic, which shut down the country, delayed the lawsuit that was filed in early 2020. As 2023 unfolded, Jimenez began putting assets previous Local 952 administrations had built up for sale. Interestingly, when the local was stripped from Ed Mireles in 1999 by the Independent Review Board (IRB) for bringing reproach on the union, there was a possibility of trusteeship. Rumors also circulated of the possible dissolvement of the entire local and dividing its large membership by craft into neighboring locals. However, due to the local’s flawless finances and rental properties that made it the wealthiest Teamsters local in the nation out of more than 400 total, that idea was scrapped by the international union. Instead, the Local 952 executive board voted to leave the leadership under the direction of Patrick Kelly.
Although the assets of Local 952 did not grow under the twenty-year leadership of Kelly, they were not sold off. Besides placing properties up for sale to square away the local’s finances drained by legal fees; lavish spending and other unnecessary expenditures, in 2023 Jimenez and Green also attempted to advance the creation of a Local 952 strike fund. Such money could have been used for other union purposes such as organizing and covering legal matters. However, the idea of them intending to create a strike fund that would have cost members $75 in initiation fees and $10 per month on top of their union dues did not suit well with the majority of the membership. Attempting to ram it through, Jimenez refused to allow the members to vote via mail and instead opted for in-person voting in the hopes of a low turnout and his minions carrying him over the top.
To the surprise of all, 18% of the membership made the effort over four-days to go out of their way, drive down to the union hall, and vote. In doing so, they delivered the Jimenez-Green administration a crushing blow when over 63% of the 1,550 members that voted opted to reject the creation of the strike fund. The strike fund rejection showed that Jimenez-Green’s popularity as leaders of Local 952 was quickly waning. Many of their former supporters from the 2019 and 2022 local election also expressed discontent with their lavish spending, purchase of gas-guzzling high-end pick-up trucks, sale of assets, and overall thuggish, drunk, and toxic behavior at other Teamster functions. By the end of 2023, at least two properties had been sold by the administration. In conversation with retiree Mike Deszcz, who has studied Local 952s LM-2s thoroughly over the past fifteen years, when the lawsuit against the former bookkeeper was settled in 2023, it came at the cost of over $450,000 in legal fees and settlement for the plaintiff.
Jimenez and Green further showed their intolerance when they opted to remove Vivian Acuna as shop-steward for exercising her democratic right to support an opposition slate running against them in the 2022 local election. After her removal she was brought up on trumped-up charges and suspended for five years from her Teamsters membership. After filing an appeal, Teamsters Joint Council (JC) 42 made the motion thirteen months later to overturn Jimenez’s witch-hunt against Acuna and clear her name of all wrong. JC 42s decision to overturn Jimenez’s purge of Acuna was not only a blow to him, but a sign of how fed up the Teamsters bureaucracy has become of his unhinged childish tantrums.
Prior to Acuna being cleared, Jimenez attempted to open up a bogus investigation against this author for my critical articles on O’Brien’s pro-business friendly unionism and my 952 Teamsters United Facebook page where I exposed Jimenez and other union bureaucrats’ failures and petulant behavior. When I replied with a detailed letter on the prerequisites needed for my participation in his kangaroo court, he failed to reply. Following in the footsteps of the general president O’Brien, this is the type of intolerant bully Jimenez has also become as head of Local 952.
However, CVS members need to carefully study O’Brien’s record in striking over the past two-and-a-half years and his reluctance to exhaust the Teamsters strike fund which has been the actual reality of his administration. It was best displayed after he refused to defy Washington’s imposition of the Teamsters railroad agreement in the Fall of 2022 and at UPS where his “practice pickets” only worked to sow confusion among the ranks in 2023. The agreement fell short for 78% of UPSers who were betrayed and punished with half of the $5 in Health and Welfare (H&W) the other 22% of UPSers in the New England, Central, and Southern supplements were rewarded with. Not surprising, O’Brien and Fred Zuckerman’s members received the full $5 in H&W.
Eric Jimenez Sides with O’Brien & Betrays 40,000 Southwest UPSers in Pension Fiasco!
In sum, the H&W disparities negotiated by O’Brien himself punished 78% of UPSers with a $10 package and rewarded 22% of them with a $12.50 package. A colossal blunder by the GP that Jimenez, as co-chair of the Southwest Rider committee, was either too incompetent to understand due to his financial illiteracy or suckered into accepting along with countless other spineless old-guard hofficers in exchange of a $24,247 stipend from the IBT. His Local 952 and IBT salaries combined totaled $200,625 in 2023. For the first time, Jimenez made T-Union Link’s $200,000 Club report of 160 total officers. The few rank-and-file favorites who were also invited to the negotiating committee, such as Local 63 feeder veteran Dean Doss, simply sat back like apologetic mutes and observed as O’Brien orchestrated the pillage and plunder of 78% of their so-called Teamster siblings and their futures.
Hypocritically, in 2013, Jimenez, then a rank-and-file member, opposed the Southwest concessions that granted the then Western Package Chair, Andy Marshall, the right to divert $1.25 of pension increases during the first three years of the agreement for the creation of an inferior Taft-Hartley healthcare plan. Over the last two years of the agreement another 39 cents were also diverted due to the rising cost of healthcare. At the conclusion of the five-year agreement, Southwest members only received 86 cents out of the $2.50 they were originally owed in pension–setting them further behind in hourly pension contributions from the rest of UPSers in the WCT.
According to WCT chair Chuck Mack, not receiving $2.50 in pension over the life of the current contract at 1.20% accrual rate would result in the loss of approximately $750 in retirement per month. At the 1.60% accrual rate scheduled for 2023 and extended for years 2024 and 2025 will result in easily over $1,000 less per month at an end of a Southwest UPSers career. For such massive losses, 40,000 Southwest members can thank Western Package Chair Mark Davison, Southwest Chair Victor Mineros, and his co-chair Eric Jimenez who allowed O’Brien to sucker them into such a sellout.
For Southwest members, the 2018 agreement with UPS was 35 cents better than the current agreement as they gained a total of $4.15 in GWI, $1.15 in COLA and $5.05 in H&W for a total of $10.35. But Jimenez’s claim that this is the best contract in UPS Teamsters history, is a blatant lie!
The IBTs Molson Coors Betrayal
Then at the end of April, after being on strike for two months, O’Brien placed Local 997 in Fort Worth TX into trusteeship after the local’s leadership defied him in accepting Molson Coors’ insulting second offer. The local leadership instead recommended a No vote on the second offer and after it was rightfully rejected by a united workforce, O’Brien claimed that the trusteeship was due to their “incompetence” and that they were destroying “morale” among the ranks. But the reality was that O’Brien had grown frustrated that over 400 members were exhausting “his” Teamsters strike fund at $1,000 a week per worker.
Three weeks after the trusteeship of Local 997, the international union announced that the membership had ratified a new contract, bringing the Molson Coors strike to an end. The IBT did not release any information about the terms of the agreement nor the tally of the vote. When it was learned that O’Brien’s Teamsters had agreed to a humiliating $1.27 over three years with the beer giant, workers responded to the announcement on social media by denouncing the contract as a sellout. The Teamsters bureaucracy removed all references to the strike from their Facebook and Twitter/X pages. The press release celebrating the rotten deal on the IBT website as a victory, was also removed.
John Green – For Whom the Booze Tolls
Furthermore, current concerns from CVS shop-stewards in the truck driving sector indicate that Local 952 leaders are toning down their aggressive rhetoric. At the end of August, it was shared by stewards that John Green – who represents the drivers, did indicate that because inflation is flattening out, unemployment has risen and there’s a pool of available drivers willing to do the job for less, it’s going to hurt them in negotiations. Green’s total compensation reached $154,692 in 2023. With such a lucrative salary, he should be as optimistic about delivering a strong contract as he is on finding his next alcoholic beverage.
Frustrated drivers and shop-stewards with Green’s out-of-control drinking have added that warehouse members need to come to terms with the reality of the Local 952 leadership. CVS has also informed the union that they intend to install automation, just like the Albertsons DC in Irvine represented by the same local has done so. As reported by Supply Chain in February, the introduction of automation at UPS has resulted in massive layoffs since the year started and more are underway.
After O’Brien’s betrayal of Molson Coors Teamsters in Texas, CVS members have to realize that he doesn’t have their best interest at heart. The idea of 1,000 members hitting the picket lines to the tune of $1 million per week is a frightening one for him. Especially with the contract of 8,000 more members in the Southern California Grocery Agreement due to expire four months later. Overall, O’Brien has made a name for himself as a pro-business unionist unwilling to disturb the foundations of corporate power and capital in the US.
With splits coming from within Local 952s executive board, DUI charges against Green, who is being chauffeured around in a new fully-loaded and union issued Chevy Silverado Z71 edition by a business agent, and an ongoing investigation on the possible misappropriation of union funds being conducted by the Independent Investigations Officer (IIO) mentioned on the 13th footnote of the 2023 LM-2 report, it leaves CVS Teamsters in limbo. Will the Jimenez-Green administration survive the IIO’s investigation or will the local be placed into trusteeship before the expiration of the CVS agreement next April?
Blaming Patrick Kelly for the current administration’s shortcomings and walking around shops emulating La Cosa Nostra in a Martin Scorsese mafia film has also taken its toll after more than five years at the helm. One thing is for certain, their administration is walking on a slippery slope and if they manage to survive the IIO investigation; their failure to deliver a strong contract for such a large account such as CVS, and perhaps their last remaining stronghold, would more than certainly seal their fate in the next local election scheduled for the Fall 2025.
Conclusion
In totality, O’Brien’s record over the past two-and-a-half years as head of the most bureaucratized and corrupt union in North America is clear evidence that he nor the Teamsters are a militant union. In fact, the union paying homage to the most reactionary, fascistic, and xenophobic elements of the US’ political far-right speaks to their lack of union militancy. Jimenez, who has also failed to denounce O’Brien on this matter, has also exposed his poor judgment and surrender of Local 952s sovereignty to him.
That two known opposition groups are already forming against the Jimenez-Green administration shows it is clear that Local 952 is ripe for new leadership. With both groups ardently committed to opposing O’Brien’s reelection bid in 2026, now is the time to set Teamster egos aside; these groups should meet and unite their best candidates in an effort to capitalize on a golden opportunity to topple its rotten and toxic leadership. Fortunately for both groups and 8,000 affected members, the opportunity to throw-out Sean O’Brien’s overpaid puppets in Orange County and send Eric Jimenez and John Green back to the truck has arrived!
