Labor On The Move: Heintzman Succeeds George As ATU President

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Ronald J. Heintzman (r), executive vice president of the Amalgamated Transit Union for the past year, and a union vice president for seven years before that, took over as ATU’s international president on July 1. The union’s executive board appointed him to succeed Warren S. George, who retired. Heintzman, a former President of ATU Local 757 in Portland, Ore., is the eighth international president in ATU's 117-year history. He takes office as his union and the Transport Workers are in the midst of a major campaign about transit funding, pushing to allow use of U.S.-provided transit aid for operating subsidies in major metro areas. In the DC area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis-St. Paul, among other cities, federal transit dollars may be used only for capital improvements, such as buying new buses or subway cars, but not to pay people to run or maintain them. Heintzman came to the union headquarters after serving as Local 757 president in Portland from 1988-2002. While he was president, the local doubled in size, to more than 5,000 members covered by 23 contracts in Oregon and southwest Washington. To inject humor into bargaining drives -- and draw public attention and support -- he led Local 757 to create “a Disney-like character, Pepper the Greed Fighting Possum, who became a mainstay of union and community activities. The character is widely known and still used today for contract disputes, political events and the like,” said ATU.
- Mark Gruenberg, Press Associates Union News Service