I am honored to sit on the Teamster Local 399 Location Manager Steering Committee, responsible for advising the union of member issues and developments occurring on the job, to guide the membership in progress and changes in the industry, and most importantly, to sit in during the triennial negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers regarding our collective bargaining agreement and advise our leadership on strategic points and matters of contention with the producers.

Both the Teamster Driver Steering Committee and the Location Manager Committee have recently completed our latest negotiations and presented the terms of our new agreements to the membership this past Saturday, in which included significant gains in compensation, and addressed some important pension issues to better prepare our membership for their eventual retirement several years from now. I can truly say that we are lucky to have the agreements we have today, with important provisions we have negotiated over the years to promote the longterm sustainability of our own pension and health plans, and our future not only as a bargaining unit, but for the industry as a whole.

It is with these provisions that I wholeheartedly endorse this agreement and call on my Teamster location manager brothers and sisters to look for their ballots in the mail and vote “Yes” to ratify the agreements, and return to the local by Wednesday, 15 July, 2015.