By Tom Collins
Newsday, September 21, 1994
Whizzing city bike messengers ain't gonna take it anymore - and may not have to wheel so fast either - if unionizing can help them.
Union organizers hope to see up to 100 bike and foot messengers at a meeting in Manhattan tomorrow night as Teamsters Local 840 pushes its drive for representation elections in 20 messenger shops over the next few months.
"Messengers get no Christmas pay, no sick days, no medical insurance, no pension - we treat horses better in this town than we do messengers," Joel Lefevre, secretary-treasurer of Local 840 said yesterday.
The organizing drive meeting is at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow at union headquarters at 345 W. 44th St.
Educated guesses - and that is all that are available - estimate that there are as many as 10,000 bike, foot and clerical workers in the courier industry in the city, and none of them are union members. But that could change soon.
Local 840 has signed up the necessary two-thirds of the workers at CMS messenger service in Manhattan and a representation election is set for Oct. 7.
"CMS is the beginning, we anticipate 20 filings," Lefevre said.
Virtually all messengers in the city are paid piece work - getting maybe $2.50 or $3 for each job. This accounts for the speed demons - the faster they deliver, the more deliveries they can make, the more money they make.
While Local 840 understands the value of piece work incentive in some businesses, it is shooting for an hourly wage for messengers, along with a lot of other worker benefits.
"Piecework pay does cause people to take unnecessary risks," Lefevre said.
Local 840 kicked off its organizing drive in June, soon after a similar Teamster effort began in Washington, D.C.
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