A year and a half after the Teamsters signed a contract with the car hauling industry, the union announced a nationwide organizing drive of non-union car haulers.

Eastern Area Auto Transport Chairman Paul "Buzzy" Houck will coordinate the campaign with the local unions.
"After we negotiated our contract with the National Automobile Transporters Association in 1999, the big four auto companies tried to undercut the agreement by subcontracting out a lot of that work to nonunion companies," says Teamsters spokesman Per Bernstein. "We are trying to organize those companies in order to protect our agreement."
For instance, General Motors this week awarded its car-hauling contract in the Twin Cities to a non-union trucking firm, reports the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Until Dec. 29, Georgia-based Allied Holdings transported GM cars from a Cottage Grove rail terminal to local auto dealerships. But GM is now using Sierra Mountain Express, a non-union carrier out of Carson City, Nev., that uses owner-operators. About 80 Allied drivers represented were laid off and have been picketing the Cottage Grove terminal.
The union's 15,000 car haul members are being called upon in what organizers are calling a grassroots effort, coordinated by the union locals. "We're going to depend on our car haul members to talk face to face with nonunion employees and talk to them about the benefits of working under a union contract," Bernstein says. "Basically the nonunion employees make 60 percent of the wages and 20 percent of the benefits a union employee does."