In this episode, the conversation turns to Randy Korgan’s Teamsters Advantage program, an experiment in how organized labor can actively reshape local economies through partnership with small businesses. Rather than the familiar posture of opposition, the discussion lingers on cooperation, discounts, and community trust as practical instruments of economic resilience. Korgan describes a network of more than 1,000 Inland Empire businesses tied to union members through savings and shared promotion. The effect, he argues, is less transactional than relational: a modest reimagining of what unions can do beyond bargaining tables. Listeners will hear how everyday purchasing choices become political acts, and how small businesses gain visibility without corporate intermediaries. The episode resists slogans, favoring instead the granular details of implementation, from discounts to community events and educational workshops that bind members more closely to place and purpose. In the end, the program emerges as both pragmatic and quietly ambitious model.

Takeaways:

• Randy Korgan's Teamsters Advantage program successfully connects union members with over 1,000 local businesses, enhancing community resilience.
• Members enjoy discounts of up to 30% at participating vendors, directly benefiting their purchasing power.
• The initiative promotes financial education and workshops, empowering union members and strengthening community ties.
• By facilitating partnerships between unions and small businesses, Teamsters Advantage redefines the role of unions as economic allies rather than mere negotiators.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Teamsters Local 1932
• Teamster Advantage

Mentioned in this episode:

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Riverside Rank and FIle Show Promo [Q3 2026]

This is Riverside rank and file and I'm Steve Matthews, your host.

We're going to specifically focus on where Randy has is breaking ground in the past few years on building unity between small business and the needs of his members and what's called Teamster Advantage.

Randy, welcome.

Thanks for having me on the show again.

You're most welcome.

And we're going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is, which is the Teamster Advantage program.

That's what we're going to talk about.

So you're on.

Can you tell people what Teams to Advantage is and why other unions would be well served to also have an Advantage program for their members if they were forward thinking?

Yeah, I, I think every union should have a program like this.

Clearly I'm a little biased, but the reality is, is, is what Teams for Vantage program does is it's built a relationship within the small business community for us with, with more than 1,000 small businesses.

Wow.

Within the Inland Empire and started off small one city.

And we just slowly worked our way through it.

But that's also led us into being inland, partnering with almost 30 chambers of commerce in the region, including being on the board of directors at multiple chambers and being the president.

Not me, but our staff.

Someone on the staff being the president of multiple chambers of commerce.

When do you ever hear of a union official being in that space?

Well, you hear it here because that relationship that we built with the small business community where we advertise for them for free, we promote their small business, we have an app, we have our website, we put out push notifications, we let them come on our radio show, we let them do little sound snippets to go out, you know, maybe 15 seconds, that, that will go on the radio show so they can get free advertisement.

We don't charge them for any of this stuff.

And we do it because what we want to do is we want our members to understand how valuable the small business community is.

Number one and two, we want to figure out how to take the community, the small business community, our members, and kind of get them all in the same space where they can help each other out.

Because corporate America obviously has so much control.

They're the ones that get all the tax breaks.

They're the ones that, that are really, you know, sucking dry, you know, Main street and preventing Main street from operating.

And small business owners really need as much help as they can get.

So I will say I'VE never heard of a union becoming part of a chamber of commerce ever.

So this is something that is breaking ground from what I've seen.

I may, may be missing something, but I've never seen where Union had the 4 site.

And most of the people in these, in these chamber of commerce are small businesses, right?

Yeah.

And it's interesting because what it's done in the, in the chamber side of things is it's put us in a space where, where the union bus stops and then the, the misinformation about union stops because the small business community sometimes doesn't realize how much they actually depend on the union community.

Because typically union workers make more than everybody else and they're more likely to use their services or buy their goods and participate in the small business community versus trying to find the cheapest thing you can over at the big box store.

Right.

And so at the end of the day, it's about connecting those dots and getting them to understand it.

And what the small business community has done is recognized in these places that we're at that, you know, corporate America is not necessarily on their side all the time.

As a matter of fact, sometimes corporate America is trying to put them out.

Of business and have.

And put them out of business.

So what you're doing is getting people to go and buy from them.

Those members, your members get 5, 10, up to 20%.

Yeah, we had one yesterday.

30%.

He upped it right on the show.

He went from 20 to 30% when he came on the show.

So I'll do my public service announcement here for this program is when I worked with Randy Fur for a period of time, I also got Teamster Advantage.

I bought a truck, and at the end of getting my best price, I, I got the Teamster Advantage discount.

I got $2,000 more off of my truck because of Teamster Advantage.

So I can.

I'm a true believer that this works for the members and works for people that are part of the program.

Yeah.

And it's also a reminder to shop the small business community.

It's also a reminder to connect to that, that, that, that business in the area that's really, really dependent upon that connection and that foot traffic or, you know, that patronage, you know, whether it's a restaurant or a dealer or a.

To get your tires replaced.

We're really proud of the fact that we've been able to push thousands upon thousands of our members into that space.

It's connected to more than 30,000 union households.

So that's over 100,000 lives.

That are connected to the network.

We get so much pride and pleasure out of seeing our member come back and saying, oh, I got a truck for two grand offer.

I went over to this place and I went into this restaurant or I went to the movies or I went to this ice cream shop.

And when you go to the app, you open up the app and you look at it, every type of business is there flowers for, for, for Mother's Day or, or for Valentine's Day or for just, you know, just, you know, getting yourself out of trouble.

I guess you're trying to play, you know, do, do some of the good things or, you know, to any other.

You can almost, you know, your taxes.

It's tax season actually.

At the end of last year, we had one of the, the guys from our tax place, a tax place, James Henry, he came on and he did it.

He, we, we actually let him run for like an hour, hour and 15 minutes.

He talked about tax code that are happening right now because there is, there are a lot of changes.

I got so many, like text messages from members saying, hey, really appreciate that.

They ended up reaching out and saying, I should have went to that guy years ago.

So it helps a small business, it helps your members.

And the other kind of the, the hidden part of this, if you would, is it keeps money in the community.

I think one of the first things I ever heard you say is there's a huge outflow of money from the inland area out to other states and other places and out from being able to be used for resources here in our communities.

Yeah.

If you were to go to a big box retailer that's anchored in, let's say, Arkansas, the amount of money when you go there and you spend money, the amount of money that's being pulled out of the local community and landing in another part of the country is very different than the amount of money if you go to the bike shop down the street.

If you go to the small business owner and you buy those goods and services down the street, you know, at the local shop.

And some people say, oh, I need to find the cheapest price.

Well, at what expense?

Like at what cost?

And so the way we've offset this is we've asked those small business owners, hey, just add in whatever discount you can.

We're not looking to, we're not going to charge you for this network.

We'll do the advertising for you.

Just when our member comes in, when somebody who's participating in the Teams for Advantage program, how do they connect it?

And then it's an education level.

It's education for the member, for the worker, and for anybody else in the community that's participating in it.

So they're able to get more foot traffic, if you would, into their business without having to advertise themselves and come out of pocket.

Yeah, and the other thing it does, you know, I've been actually.

It's kind of crazy as a.

As a union leader in the area.

I've had chamber presidents or individuals that run chambers, executive directors ask us and me specifically to come speak at their events.

Like, they'll have their big event where they've got a few hundred people in the room and they're like, randy, we want you to come and talk.

Like, you know, you kind of scratch your head and go.

This is kind of normally a weird, you know, scenario.

But I'll usually use humor to start it off.

I'll, you know, use a joke about, you know, oh, I'm supposedly the mob.

And I'll work, work through all that and everybody will.

They'll laugh about the way I handle it because clearly I'm not the mob.

Anyway, the point is, is that.

That it's really shifted the dynamic because we're present and, and, and when we're at these fundraisers or we're at these events, what we can do is we can make sure that the right thing's actually being said in the room, too, and that corporate America is not controlling the narrative.

That is actually, in a lot of ways, hurting that small business community.

And, and we're sitting in the room basically for free, providing these services, saying, we're here for you.

With these big box stores, there's a euphemism that they use.

It's called home office expense.

So when they're sending the profit they make in our communities back to Bensonville, Arkansas or other places, they call it home office expense.

What it is, is profit taken at our expense.

So this is a way to take some of that and make sure it stays in our community.

So it's helping your members, helping these businesses.

And there's money here for programs and things that people need.

And there's an interesting part about the tax code that a lot of people don't realize is what you'll see in a lot of these big box stores is that they actually get 50% of their sales tax revenue credited back to them by the entity in which.

Where they're sitting.

And the small business owner doesn't get that.

They don't get that.

Yeah, but the, but these big corporations, through these Developers have been arguing these things.

And so there's another layer of why you need to go to that small business community.

Because that money is going to stay in the community.

Those tax dollars are going to stay in the community.

The example I always give people is when they go to Victoria Gardens and let's say they go to any place there and they see this tax at the very end of whatever receipt, they see that and they say, oh, there's 12 bucks in taxes that I'm paying for this transaction.

Right.

Well, the reality is half of that money at Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga actually goes back to the developer and goes back to other people and doesn't actually stay in the community, doesn't stay in the area for community needs, it goes away.

But if you were to go to a small business owner, if you were to go to a facility or, you know, Main street and that, and, and participate in one of the places in which are on our plan and in our program, 100% of those tax dollars stay in the community.

And on top of it, the money that's profited stays in the community and doesn't go like you just described.

Exactly.

So you were, when you had the concept of this program before it got started, you hired a full time person, you had that jump of faith that you could make it work.

Yeah, we, we, we did.

And, and we rolled the concept out to our members.

We made it work for a little while and in a sense that we were just testing in some smaller areas.

It went so well that, that everybody was committed to ratcheting it up, elevating it up.

And now we actually have two staff members that do it.

I'm not full time.

One staff member does it full time, the other staff member does it about half time.

And quite frankly, everybody within the local union is always kind of, you know, kind of in this space encouraging it along and trying to make sure that there's more partners in the system because it's tough to manage that many of them and you know, a lot of ups and downs that come with it.

But at the end of the day, the spirit of it is true and genuine.

And yeah, the commitment of our members back to the community is real because we have staff and time dedicated to doing it.

So you started it in certain areas and now it's in a wider area.

Right.

You kind of built it into more areas over time.

The area that we were most successful in the very beginning was Redlands.

And then from that point on it really started to expand out pretty quickly and now, now it's throughout the entire Inland Empire.

We got stuff in LA County, Orange county, not quite as much out that far.

We don't focus that much.

But.

But within the Inland Empire, it's pretty robust.

So for other unions and for.

For the Labor Council and others, this is something that it's in their interest to do the same thing.

There's nothing stopping them.

They can do the same thing.

You're willing to share the model with people.

It will help workers through the area,.

But we'll take it a step further.

Not only will we share the model with you, we'll let you use our platforms.

I find it funny, a lot of times within labor, what happens is somebody wants to replicate someone and then repeat it all over again.

No need to.

I mean, I would love to have other parks, other organizations that then we anchor in another city or in another area, and then the.

The entire program becomes larger and wider and bigger because you're sticking to one program versus having duplicate programs all over the place.

So, absolutely, not only are we willing to share our knowledge and explain how we built this incredible program, but we also are encouraging participation and we'd be willing to partner up in the right way where, you know, if we share the right resources, you can make it happen, too.

I certainly hope other unions have the foresight to listen to what you're saying to connect with this program.

As I say, you don't need to do all these other little programs.

You can do an integrated program that keeps money here for everything that people need instead of it flowing out to the rest of the country.

Absolutely.

We have enough with stuff flowing through our area.

We need to make sure that the resources stay here.

That's correct.

I want to thank you very much for coming on to Riverside Rank and File and for sharing your knowledge and your great track record of making this Teams to Advantage program work.

Anytime, Steve, really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

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