All right, welcome, Choppa listeners, Amber here, and we are joined today by a very special guest and audience favorite Matt Manie, a teamster of local 251 in Providence, Rhode Island.

So welcome back, Matt. Thank you for coming again.

So the elections are coming up, the teamster elections. We're going to talk a lot about that, but you're a huge audience favorite.

So people have spoken and they'd loved to hear about your experience in your local, how you became a teamster, what your workplace experience was like and how it's changed and what's been like organizing in your local.

So I started out in the teams, this is in 1993. I was all over the place until I made the seniority list at UPS. From there, I got introduced to Socialist politics, which brought me into union activity through the ISO at the time.

And from there, myself and Mr. Tavy, we engaged in union activity, ran for Stuart, became Stuart of my shift, organized companies that involved with organizing started salting companies.

That's where you go in with the intent to apply for a non-union job with the intent to organize them. I did a few of those. I've been on picket lines. I've been arrested and it just went from there on and on and on and on and eventually became a union rep.

Elected by the rank of file in 2013 took office in 2014 and Ben here ever since.

And it's been a long journey, but it's been a great journey where we've had a lot of ups and downs, but we're happy now.

Our slate teams is united with Matthew Tavy's on is about ballots are out the mail now and he's about to get he's about to be elected vice president of the international for the east and from there are our saga continues.

Yeah, I think right could record file power building socialist agenda of building rank and file committees that build real true union, true union activity that bring record files and empower them because that's the base of our union that is our engine.

That's what makes us float. That's what makes this boat work and taking off fight all the way to the street. If need be our big campaign coming up as UPS.

That contracts about to spot expire and will will embark on that after this election and we're going to get ready to rumble awesome.

So I assume that when you started your local, it wasn't easy getting everyone on board with the rank and file movement. I'm guessing that was a little bit of an uphill battle.

Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Sure. So for many years, it was myself, Mr. Tavy and other gentlemen named Jimmy, you are James Jim, Jim Jacobs, who's not retired.

But for many, many years, it was just us outside telling social worker at union meetings, trying to attend those meetings and basically network rank and file members who would want to get involved in our politics.

And for many, many years, we were the outcast. Many, many years, nobody really wanted us around. They would kind of red bash us, but we hung tough and stick to it through TDU, which was a big part of that, which gave us a voice and educated us.

And got us down the right road to becoming union officials. Yeah, I think a lot of people sort of start out salting with this idea that they're going to like they're like, well, I know how this stuff works.

And all I have to do is tell everyone and they'll be like, yeah, totally. And they'll jump in. Right. So TDU teams just for Democratic union. We'll talk a little more about them later. They really gave you a leg up. How did you hook up with them?

I hooked up with them through the ISO with Mr. Tavy, where we had our first meetings as small rank and file groups. They would have what they call educational seminars where they would travel around small groups, maybe six people.

And we, that's how I first introduced the TDU. I instantly fell in love with the process of TDU, which is teams for Democratic union. It's transparency. It's rank and file power. It's empowering rank and filers to run for office and educate them on how this works and the process of which it means to be a union rep.

Because the easiest part is winning the election. The hard part is after that. That's what they really teach you how to run a local and change the dynamics away you came from. We came from a very corrupt local Providence, Rhode Island had 45 years of the same regime that was mobbed up.

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