James Wright serves as president and principal officer of Local 822 in Norfolk, Virginia, representing over 3,000 members. He joins the O’Brien-Zuckerman 2021 Slate as a candidate for IBT Vice President At-Large, because “we as a Union must not become complacent or dormant. This movement is not about me, it is about the Union at large, it is about the members and giving them the representation that they deserve.”

Wright joined the Teamsters when he started work at UPS in 1991, where he was a steward. He holds a number of leadership positions, including Vice President of Joint Council 83, Chairman of the UPS Air Committee and Trustee of JC 83 Health, Welfare and Pension Committee. Wright has overseen a period of growth in one of the oldest Right-to-Work state in the country, success he attributes to diversification and continued organizing. He plans to “transfer the momentum that we have gained here [in Virginia] to the Union at large.”

Wright’s top three priorities if elected to IBT Vice President At-Large are to increase diversity so that the IBT better reflected the diversity of our membership; the elimination of the two-thirds rule; and to reinvigorate the International Union that has become stagnate.