Teamsters Local 237 Presidential Election: Floyd Faces Challenger Alshami

Teamsters Local 237 Presidential Election Underway

Voting is currently in progress to elect the next president of Teamsters Local 237, with the vote count scheduled for October 18. Gregory Floyd, the incumbent president, shared insights with AmNews regarding his efforts to keep the union relevant and effective.

Leading Local 237 since 2007, Floyd has prioritized enhancing union members' salaries, establishing longevity pay programs, and maintaining low medical co-pays for members. "We’ve managed over the last 30 years, including during my 17 years, to keep our prescription co-pays to our members at a minimum. While prescriptions have gone up, we’ve managed to maintain that cost. We’ve also managed to negotiate increased annuities for our members, which remains in a separate account for them, and they get interest on it so that when they leave work, they’re leaving with, I would say, tens of thousands of dollars each,” Floyd stated.

Local 237, the nation’s largest Teamsters local union, boasts over 24,000 members working in diverse roles such as public hospital police, elevator mechanics, school safety agents, and civil service attorneys. Floyd emphasizes the importance of negotiating with various entities to ensure the safety and efficiency of his members’ work environments.

Contract negotiations can be intricate, particularly in the public sector. Floyd explained, “I wouldn’t say it’s combative, but in the public sector, there are factors that are involved. What are the factors? We have to look at what is the pattern and how do we get close to the pattern. How do we structure a contract that is, I would say, conducive to the needs of our members? Those are the factors."

He highlighted the complexity of negotiating contracts for the City University of New York (CUNY), which involves reaching agreements with CUNY, New York City, and the state. "All three entities have to agree. That’s why CUNY is the most difficult contract to negotiate and the state pattern tends to be less than the city pattern, yet the city pattern has to be taken into account and so does the state’s. So that’s why it ends up as a blended rate, CUNY got less, a little less than the city employees, because of the state contract,” Floyd elaborated.

Floyd is contesting this year’s election against Mohamed Alshami, a CUNY peace officer. Floyd believes his experience and current role can continue to benefit the union members. He detailed his strategy for managing healthcare prescription co-pays: “When we go into negotiations, we offset a lot of the costs by negotiating with the city to get additional money for our benefits. The second thing is we invest the money we get and through investments, we’re able to extend the cost. We also look for subsidized discounts in our prescription plan that allow us to get rebates. So with all that combined, it allows us to keep the cost down for our members, and keeps it at the same price that we have had now for 30 years.”

Responding to Alshami’s claims of changing the union’s operations, Floyd remarked, “If he happened to win, he doesn’t have control of the executive board. So how would he accomplish any of the things that he says he wants to accomplish? The bylaws state, you can make recommendations, but you have to get the approval of the executive board, which he does not have.”

Floyd remains optimistic about the future contracts he and the board are negotiating, despite the unexpected challenge from Alshami, whom he has yet to meet in person.