Teamsters Local 667
Memphis Strong — carrying the legacy of 1968
Powering · Labor Education
Benny Overton
Former President of UAW Local 737 — the Nashville glass workers — who negotiated 70+ self-directed work groups on his own shop floor, then took worker power further: co-founding the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development, teaching cooperative entrepreneurship at TSU, and financing worker-owned businesses across Tennessee through the New Economy of Tennessee Fund.
Most union leaders fight for a bigger share of the pie. Benny Overton fights for workers to own the bakery. His path — glass worker, local president, co-op builder, professor, lender — is a complete blueprint for worker power: organize the job you have, democratize the work you do, then build the businesses workers own outright. That's why his story is part of our curriculum.
self-directed work groups negotiated at the Nashville glass plant
Under Overton's leadership, UAW Local 737 and management agreed to hand day-to-day operational decisions to empowered teams of the workers themselves — proof that democracy doesn't have to stop at the plant gate. Workers who understand the fight run the fight.
- The Shop FloorNashville Glass — Ford, Visteon, CarlexBenny Overton's story starts where every real labor story starts: on the line. At the historic Nashville glass plant on Centennial Boulevard — Ford Glass, then Visteon, now Carlex Glass of America — he learned the work, the workers, and the fight.
- June 2011President, UAW Local 737Elected to lead the Nashville local. For nearly a decade he was the voice of the glass workers — and he used that seat to do something almost no local president in the South had done.
- The Big Idea70+ self-directed work groupsOverton negotiated with management to implement self-directed work groups across the plant — decentralizing operational decision-making to more than 70 empowered worker groups. Workers running the work: a national model for what shop-floor democracy can look like inside a union contract.
- 2013 – 2020Movement leadership across TennesseeSecond Vice President & Executive Board member of the Nashville–Middle Tennessee Central Labor Council. Vice President of the Tennessee AFL-CIO. President of the Dickson County NAACP. Wherever Tennessee workers organized, Overton had a hand in it.
- 2014 – 2019Vice Chairman, NOAHHelped lead Nashville Organized for Action & Hope — a coalition of 44 congregations and 16 community and labor organizations — and launched its Economic Equity co-op initiative, the seed that grew into a cooperative development center for the whole Southeast.
- 2019Vanderbilt Divinity SchoolPresented “Building Economic Equality Through Co-ops” — laying out the case that worker ownership is the next chapter of the labor movement, especially for people of color, returning citizens, and immigrant workers.
- NowSEC4CD & the New Economy of Tennessee FundCo-Executive Director of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development. Teaches cooperative entrepreneurship classes at Tennessee State University (where he earned his MBA and served as adjunct professor). Co-directs the New Economy of Tennessee Fund — a loan fund that financed a home healthcare worker co-op in Dyersburg and is expanding to Memphis.
Overton holds an MBA from Tennessee State University, served as an adjunct professor in TSU's College of Business, and today teaches cooperative entrepreneurship classes for union members, retirees, and students. He believes what we believe: an educated worker is an unstoppable worker. And with the New Economy of Tennessee Fund expanding to Memphis, his work and ours are headed for the same streets.
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