More than 1,500 Teamster Women – including several BMWED Sisters and members of the Diversity Committee – gathered in Nashville in late August for the annual Teamster Women’s Conference. The annual conference is an opportunity to learn and strategize to strengthen and grow the union in sisterhood and solidarity.

Attendees were welcomed by Teamster General President Sean O’Brien and General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman and heard from several other speakers over the course of the conference, including Women’s Conference Director and Local 856 President Ashley Alvarado, International Vice Presidents Lindsay Dougherty and Joan Corey, workers, and organizers.

A variety workshops were held on issues such as just cause, heat injury and illness prevention, harassment in the workplace, conflict resolution, contract data, collective bargaining and more.

On August 29th the Women’s Conference held a massive rally outside of failed trucking company Yellow’s corporate headquarters in Nashville to call for bankruptcy reform.  The rally came weeks after Yellow’s closure left 22,000 union members without work despite Teamsters at Yellow giving back more than $5 billion in wages and benefits to keep the company afloat since 2009 and $700 billion from the federal government.

As is tradition, every year BMWED Sister Jennifer Ross hand stiches a commemorative Women’s Conference quilt to raffle off to attendees and guests. Proceeds from the raffle are used to help fund a new BMWED Sister to attend the Teamster Women’s Conference the following year.