“Because of the Bush administration’s direct frontal assault on union membership, more and more jobs are leaving this country every day,” President Carl Haynes pointed out last month. “Union members must realize that they have it in their power to help stop this financial decline through their vote.”

To stem this job loss, the Local 237 President announced the institution of a massive voter registration program among the union members to ensure that everyone in Local 237 is properly registered to vote in next year’s important presidential election.

“It is vital that our members — as public employees and as Teamsters — realize the importance of public policy on their lives and what they can do to influence that policy,” Haynes insisted.

During the various visits they make to members’ worksites, Haynes and other members of the Local’s executive board discuss the need for members to be registered so as to be able to exercise their voting privilege. They seek to impress on the members that they control their own destinies through the power of their vote.

To emphasize the importance attached to their ballots, the Local has initiated a program to get all members registered to vote.

“Business agents in both the Citywide and Housing Divisions, armed with lists of unregistered voters, have been visiting members’ worksites with New York State voter registration forms to sign up new voters,” Haynes said.

The Local 237 voter registration drive coincides with similar campaigns being carried out by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the AFL-CIO as part of the political mobilization plan of action endorsed by the AFL-CIO Executive Council last February.

The Executive Council, on which IBT General President James P. Hoffa and Haynes sit as the two Teamster representatives, agreed that Labor needed to engage in the action plan to educate and prepare members for voting in the 2004 Presidential election.

Hoffa announced the voter registration drive shortly after the Teamsters endorsed Senator Richard Gephardt of Missouri for the Democratic nomination for President.

To determine the union’s nominee, questionnaires were sent to all Teamster locals in the nation seeking their positions on a variety of issues. The endorsement came only after 90 percent of the 500 Teamsters local unions called for support of the Gephardt candidacy.

The decision was made by the union’s 24-member General Executive Board, which unanimously voted to endorse Gephardt. “Dick Gephardt has proven by word and deed that he is by far the best candidate to represent the interests of America’s working families,” Hoffa asserted. “In his 27 years in Congress he has always led the fight on our behalf.”

The IBT president said union representatives will be sent to states where early primaries are conducted — New Hampshire, Iowa, Michigan and South Carolina — to turn out union voters. He added that there also will be a fundraising effort among the rank-and-file members to obtain financial support for the Gephardt candidacy.

President Haynes noted that Local 237, as the largest Teamster Local in the nation, can play an important part in the selection not only of the next president and congressional members, but also the next governor, mayor, and state and city legislators.

“Public officials recognize the strength of a union not by mere membership, but by the number of those members who cast their ballots,” Haynes contended. “When I stand for my members, whether in Washington, Albany, or at City Hall, officials will know that I stand with nearly 25,000 registered and united Teamsters.

“Come this time next year, this union will not only be the biggest Teamster local in the country, we will also be the most politically powerful.”