By Phyllis Cox

In the male-dominated International Brotherhood of Teamsters, where she blazed a trail to a top leadership position, Sandy Pope was never mistaken for a guy, with one exception.

Many years ago, Pope applied to the A&P for a warehouse job as a food selector. The manager promised the job, even before the interview. “They called me in thinking I was a man, Alexander Pope and in fact I am Alexandra Pope. The guy dropped his teeth when he saw me and said, ‘Oh well, I guess I have to. I called you in, and I can’t tell you no now.’ So I went to work in the produce warehouse, the first woman they hired.”

Pope, five feet four inches tall, moved on to a succession of jobs traditionally held by men: orderly, warehouse worker and tractor trailer driver before becoming active with the teamsters. Today, as president of Local 805, a 1,200 member union headquartered in Long Island City, Queens, Pope is a front line organizer of immigrant workers in the wholesale and retail food industry.

Most days, Pope, 51, puts in at least 12 hours. Recently, she was on the streets leading a noisy demonstration outside the warehouse of gourmet food retailer Fresh Direct seeking to organize the workers after several of their colleagues had been fired.

She says that under current labor laws, management has the upper hand. “The laws are against us and it is very hard to negotiate good contracts,” she said. “We’ve got to change a lot of things in this country. We’ve got to get health care cost under control. We’ve got to get those CEO’s under control that are making three hundred and fifty times what their workers are making now.”

Strong words from the daughter of a New England stockbroker. Pope, born in the Boston area, the sixth of seven siblings, is the only one to have embraced unions and labor relations. She was raised in a traditional middle class setting. Her Panamanian mother insisted that Pope speak proper English, and today her voice no hint of her Boston roots.

She was on a path to college when she detoured to union activism, beginning with a stint as an orderly in a state hospital in North Hampton, Massachusetts. A strike at the hospital, her involvement with the union and their eventual win elicited an epiphany: she decided she wanted to help working through union activism.

It would be a hard sell for the young Pope, whose new-found vocation into the world of unions was tainted with the stench of mobsters, crime, and corruption, misappropriation of fund, malfeasance and sexism. She is the first to admit, that being a woman has garnered a lot of unwanted attention.

“It’s been a rough road,” she said. “I’m used to being the only woman on the job, so I took a lot of abuse doing that. The guys they respect me after they deal with me.”

Pope concedes that her job is made even more difficult but not totally insurmountable by the anti-union sentiment pervasive in the country.

“Unions are the ones that produce to help people go from laborers to become middle class, buy houses and send their kids college,” and so we have to keep them going, she said.

Pope is passionate not only about defending her members’ rights, but changing the perception of unions as being mob affiliated and using the member’s dues to fatten their pockets. As a staff person for Ron Carey, the president of the teamsters international from 1991 to 1998, Pope witnessed the reformer Carey become embroiled in a scandal that resulted on his indictment on perjury charges. Carey was deposed as president but fought . In October, 2001, a federal jury found him not guilty of all charges.

Those years in the Carey camp strengthened Pope’s resolve in adhering to the tenets of her members. She joined Portland, Oregon Local 206 Secretary Treasurer Tom Leedham ticket in 2006 vying for the office of national Secretary Treasurer against the team lead by incumbent James Hoffa Jr. The hotly fought campaign resulted with Hoffa and his team retaining their positions.

Unsure of whether she would seek office of secretary treasurer again in 2011 when elections will be held. Right now she wants to do everything to help keep the union strong and making it stronger.

“The unions are going to be there,” she said. “They are going to need to remake themselves and have better connections in the community so people learn to trust that we represent all workers not just the workers in the places we represent. We need to be advocates for all workers.”