Everything about Teamsters totally explained
The
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (
IBT), formerly known by the name
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, is one of the largest
labor unions in the
United States. The name and logo of the union reflect the origin of the union as a
craft union when founded in
1903. A
teamster was originally a person who drove a
team of
oxen, a
horse-drawn, a
mule-drawn wagon or a
mule train, but the word currently refers to professional
truck drivers.
Early History
The union, like most unions within the
American Federation of Labor (AFL) at the time, was largely decentralized, with a number of local unions that governed themselves autonomously and tended to look only after their own interests in the geographical jurisdiction in which they operated. Teamster locals, however, by virtue of their key position in transport, often exercised a good deal of influence at the local level within central labor councils, the citywide bodies established by AFL unions. For example, the Teamsters were at the center of the City Front Federation
strike of 1901, in which
San Francisco unions engaged in something like a
general strike.
While the San Francisco strike was largely successful, the union's strike against
Montgomery Ward in
1905, on the other hand, was not. The national union was unable to offer much effective assistance to local unions and was weakened by internal factions during its early years.
Daniel J. Tobin was president of the Teamsters from 1907 to 1952, having been president of Joint Council No. 10, based in
Boston, Massachusetts.
Tobin undertook a long
jurisdictional battle with the
United Brewery Workers over the right to represent beer wagon drivers. While the Teamsters lost this battle in
1913, when the AFL awarded jurisdiction to the Brewers, they won when the issue came before the AFL Executive Board again in
1933, when the Brewers were still recovering from their near-elimination during
Prohibition.
Organizing and growth during the Great Depression
Tobin was both cautious and conservative: he vigorously enforced the provisions of the union's constitution that barred strikes unless the union's membership approved strike action by a two-thirds vote, and imposed additional conditions, withholding strike benefits if the union hadn't made sufficient efforts to mediate the dispute before striking. A group of radicals within the union in the
Minneapolis area, however, circumvented Tobin in
1934, successfully organizing every major trucking outfit in the city, a major distribution center in the upper
Midwest, and the warehouse workers employed by those trucking companies in a series of strikes.
Those
strikes, which featured pitched battles in which hundreds of picketers fought police and members of the Citizens Alliance, followed by the declaration of
martial law by Governor
Floyd B. Olson, changed the history of the union. While Tobin distrusted the
Trotskyist leadership of Local 574, he was in no position to displace them. Tobin attempted to expel them from the union in
1935 and to establish a new local under friendlier leadership to replace them, but gave up the attempt in the face of opposition from the rank and file and other Teamster leaders in the area.
Under the leadership of
Farrell Dobbs of the
Communist League of America, the Minneapolis Teamsters then began to organize regionally. Using the prestige that their victory in Minneapolis had brought them, they worked with Teamsters in other cities on a plan to organize the over-the-road drivers, whom Tobin had written off as trash and unorganizable. Beginning in
Chicago, they used a combination of what were known as "quickie strikes" (short-term stoppages and disruptions) and
secondary boycotts to tie up goods of non-union carriers, using each newly organized carrier as a tool to organize others. The union extended this campaign to other major distribution centers in the Midwest:
Detroit,
Kansas City and other smaller cities. The newly organized unions formed what later became the Central Conference of Teamsters; one of their most tireless and effective organizers was a former loading dock worker from Detroit,
Jimmy Hoffa.
At the same time,
Dave Beck was organizing in a similar fashion on the
West Coast, using
Seattle,
Portland and San Francisco as bases to organize the drivers in those states. Beck used different tactics, on the other hand, to organize the independent owner-operators who hauled much of the agricultural produce from California farms; the union simply pulled the drivers out of their cabs and signed them up. Beck's politics also differed: he opposed radicalism of any sort, from the
Industrial Workers of the World, who were active in Seattle when he began as a labor organizer, to
communists who played a major role in labor in the
1930s and
1940s. He also took a dismissive attitude toward the rank and file of the union; as he once famously said, "I'm paid $25,000 a year to run this outfit. . . . Why should truck drivers and bottle washers be allowed to make decisions affecting policy? No corporation would allow it."
Tobin initially objected to these regional conferences, which represented a challenge to his authority, but supported Dobbs' organizing strategy and apparently developed a grudging respect for him. Tobin held no brief, however, for Dobbs' allies and, after Dobbs left the Teamsters to work for the
Socialist Workers Party, Tobin attacked the local leadership of the Minneapolis local in
1941, sending in Hoffa and Beck to impose an International
trusteeship on the local and to fight off attempts by the
Congress of Industrial Organizations to absorb the rebellious local's membership. The final blow was delivered by the
Roosevelt administration, which arrested and convicted Dobbs, much of the national leadership of the SWP and the former leaders of the Minneapolis local for violation of the
Smith Act.
In
Los Angeles,
Hollywood was booming as it offered Americans an escape from the depression and many workers lined up outside the
movie studios looking for the only job in town. Terrible conditions awaited those workers as the studios exploited the eager workforce with meager pay and the ever present threat of the hundreds of others waiting just outside the gates to take their place if they voiced any complaints. With no one else to turn to but themselves, 180 studio transportation drivers organized themselves under the banner of Teamsters
Local 399
under the leadership of Ralph Clare, Nate Saper and Joe Tuohy on
April 12,
1930. These 180 men paved the way for the over 4,000 members of Motion Picture & Theatrical Trade Division which serves several crafts from the
Animal Wranglers who represent some of the last horse-drawn wagon drivers in the union to the
Location Managers and the recently organized
Casting Directors.
The CIO also attempted to gain a foothold among Teamsters in Detroit, starting with the carhaul drivers on the theory that their employers could be leveraged into dealing with the CIO more readily. The campaign never got off the ground, however, as Hoffa, who had used violent methods to organize carhaulers and other employers in the 1930s, sent organizers to do battle with CIO organizers. At the same time, the CIO's arm, the United Construction Workers Organizing Committee run by
John L. Lewis' brother Denny, received little support from other CIO unions in the area, who were willing to reach informal understandings with Hoffa instead. John L. Lewis' resignation as President of the CIO that year effectively ended any chance that the campaign could succeed. While the union continued to fight jurisdictional battles with other unions, such as the Brewery Workers and the
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, these were on the fringes of the IBT's traditional jurisdiction and localized.
Expansion during and after World War II
The union's membership had grown tremendously during the
1930s, passing 500,000 in 1941. The union continued to grow tremendously, extending beyond its traditional boundaries to organize airline workers, manufacturing workers, florists, undertakers, coat-check girls, and farmers. By
1949, its membership had topped one million.
Hoffa used his base within the Central States to negotiate a single collective bargaining agreement covering all freight drivers in the region in the years after the war, then pushed to achieve similar results in other regions. Hoffa first expanded the agreement to cover
Ohio, overcoming the resistance of Teamster locals in the process.
He then moved South, where a number of unionized carriers had moved their operations in the hope of escaping unionization or obtaining lower wages, then expanded the agreement to cover city drivers who delivered the freight that over-the-road drivers hauled. The collective bargaining agreement provided nearly the same wages and benefits in the South that Teamsters were getting in the Midwest; it also made no distinction between black and white Teamsters, although employers often shunted
African-American drivers into lower-paying city driving jobs.
Organized crime's influence
Organized crime had been active in some Teamster locals, particularly in the garment industry in
New York City, as early as the
1920s.
Labor racketeers made inroads in other cities, such as
Chicago,
Cleveland,
Kansas City and
Detroit, in the 1930s. Hoffa and other Teamster leaders made strategic alliances with organized crime, in deals that benefited both the
Mafia and its associates, who obtained
sweetheart deals, and the union leaders, who received kickbacks and other forms of assistance.
In many cases organized crime played an even more direct role. Hoffa depended on the support of a number of "paper locals" from New York established by
Johnny Dioguardi, an associate of the
Lucchese crime family, in running for the presidency of the Teamsters in
1957. Other locals, such as local 507 in Cleveland, were likewise controlled by racketeers, which exploited them by skimming dues, creating "no-show jobs" for associates, and extorting employers and selling
sweetheart contracts. In some industries, such as garbage hauling in New York, the line between union and employer became blurred, as both sides might be controlled by the same crime family.
The reports of corruption, given nationwide publicity by the
McClellan Committee, led the
AFL-CIO to expel the Teamsters in
1957. Ironically, the McClellan Committee only served to strengthen the role of organized crime in the IBT by bringing about the conviction of Dave Beck, Tobin's successor as General President, for tax evasion and misuse of union funds. At the 1957 IBT convention held in
Miami Beach, Florida,
Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the union, which then had 1.5 million members. Another response by the union to its expulsion from the AFL-CIO was to raid other unions' jurisdictions, and expand by organizing manufacturing, service and public sector workers. At the same time, the AFL-CIO fought back by organizing some of its own unions as alternatives to the Teamsters' unions, for example, the
Laundry and Dry Cleaning International Union.
The rise, fall and disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
Hoffa achieved his goal of unifying all freight drivers under a single collective bargaining agreement, the National Master Freight Agreement, in
1964. Hoffa was a skillful strategist who used the grievance procedures of the agreement, which authorized selective strikes against particular employers, to police the agreement or, if Hoffa thought that it served the union's interest, to drive marginal employers out of the industry. The union won substantial gains for its members, fostering a nostalgic image of the Hoffa era as the golden age for Teamster drivers. Hoffa also succeeded where Tobin had failed, concentrating power at the International level, dominating the conferences which Beck and Dobbs had helped build.
In addition, Hoffa was instrumental in using the assets of the Teamsters'
pension plans, particularly the Central States plan, to support Mafia projects, such as the development of Las Vegas in the 1950s and
1960s. Hoffa was, moreover, defiantly unwilling to reform the union or limit his own power in response to the attacks from
Robert F. Kennedy, formerly chief counsel to the McClellan Committee, then
Attorney General. Kennedy's
Department of Justice tried to convict Hoffa for a variety of offenses over the
1960s, finally succeeding on a witness tampering charge in
1964. After exhausting his appeals, Hoffa entered prison in
1967.
Hoffa installed
Frank Fitzsimmons, an associate from his days in Local 299 in Detroit, to hold his place for him while he served time. Fitzsimmons, however, began to enjoy the exercise of power in Hoffa's absence; in addition, the organized crime figures around him found that he was more pliant than Hoffa had been. While President
Nixon's pardon barred Hoffa from resuming any role in the Teamsters until
1980, Hoffa challenged the legality of that condition and planned to run again for presidency of the union, but disappeared in 1975 under mysterious circumstances.
Battles with the Farm Workers
The Teamsters had represented some farm workers in California employed by Bud Antle, a
Salinas-area lettuce grower, in the 1960s. They had steered clear, however, of any open competition with the
United Farm Workers during the UFW's long grape boycott in the 1960s. That changed, however, in 1973, when the grape growers, after having been under contract with the UFW for three years, signed secret agreements with the Teamsters.
That led to warfare in the fields, as thousands of UFW members struck these employers, while other farmworkers crossed the picket lines. The strike and attendant violence led to the deaths of three UFW members, the passage of the
Agricultural Labor Relations Act in California in 1975, and lengthy
anti-trust litigation that ultimately led the Teamsters to abandon their claim to represent most of these agricultural workers.
Deregulation
In
1979 Congress passed legislation that deregulated the freight industry, removing the
Interstate Commerce Commission's power to impose detailed regulatory tariffs on interstate carriers. The union tried to fight deregulation by attempting to bribe Senator
Howard Cannon of
Nevada. That attempt not only failed, but resulted in the conviction in
1982 of
Roy Williams, the General President who had succeeded Fitzsimmons in
1981. Williams subsequently resigned in
1983 as a condition of remaining free on bail while his appeal proceeded.
Deregulation had catastrophic effects on the Teamsters, opening up the industry to competition from non-union companies who sought to cut costs by avoiding unionization and curbing wages. Nearly 200 unionized carriers went out of business in the first few years of deregulation, leaving thirty percent of Teamsters in the freight division unemployed. The remaining unionized carriers demanded concessions in wages, work rules, and hours.
Williams' successor,
Jackie Presser, was prepared to grant most of these concessions in the form of a special freight “relief rider” that would cut wages by up to 35 percent and establish two-tier wages.
Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which had grown out of efforts to reject the
1976 freight agreement, launched a successful national campaign to defeat the relief rider, which was defeated by a vote of 94,086 to 13,082.
The pressure on the freight industry and the national freight agreement continued, however. By the end of the
1990s the National Master Freight Agreement, which had covered 500,000 drivers in the late
1970s, dropped to less than 200,000, with numerous local riders weakening it further in some areas.
Challenges from within and without
The decline in working conditions in the freight industry, combined with long-simmering unhappiness among members employed by the
United Parcel Service, led to the development of two nationwide dissident groups within the union in the
1980s:
Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), an assemblage of a number of local efforts, and the Professional Drivers Council, better known as PROD, which began as a public interest group affiliated with
Ralph Nader that was concerned with worker safety. The two groups merged in 1979.
TDU was able to win some local offices within the union, although the International Union often attempted to make those victories meaningless by marginalizing the officer or the union. TDU acquired greater prominence, however, with the election reforms forced on the union by the consent decree it had entered into in
1989 on the eve of trial on a suit brought by the federal government under the
RICO act.
The decree required the direct election of International officers by the membership, as TDU had been demanding for years leading up to the decree, to replace the indirect election by delegates at the union's convention. While the delegates at the union's 1991 convention balked at amending the Constitution, they ultimately capitulated under pressure from the government.
That consent decree might not have been possible, however, if it hadn't been for the testimony of
Roy Williams, who described, in an affidavit he gave the government in return for a delay of his imprisonment, his own dealings with organized crime as the Secretary-Treasurer of a local union in Kansas City and as an officer of the International Union. The decree also gave the government the power to install an Independent Review Board with the power to expel any member of the union for "conduct unbecoming to the union", which the IRB proceeded to exercise far more aggressively than the Teamsters officials who had agreed to the decree had expected.
While the government was pursuing a civil case against the union as an entity it was also indicting Presser, who had succeeded Williams as General President, for embezzling from two different local unions in Cleveland prior to his election as President. Presser resigned in
1988, but died before his trial was scheduled to begin. He was succeeded by
William J. McCarthy, who came from the same local that Dan Tobin had led eighty years earlier.
Independent Review Board
The Independent Review Board (IRB) is a three-member panel established to investigate and take appropriate action with respect to "any allegations of corruption," "any allegations of domination or control or influence" of any part of the Union by organized crime, and any failure to cooperate fully with the IRB.
Recent history
Ron Carey won a surprising victory in the first direct election for General President in the union's history, defeating two "old guard" candidates, R.V. Durham and Walter Shea. Carey's slate, supported by TDU, also won nearly all of the seats on the International Executive Board.
Carey acquired a fair amount of influence within the AFL-CIO, which had readmitted the Teamsters in
1985. Carey was close with the new leadership elected in 1995, particularly
Richard Trumka of the
United Mine Workers of America, who became Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO under
John Sweeney. Carey had also swung the Teamsters support behind the
Democratic Party, a change from past administrations that had supported the
Republican Party. The new administration set out to break from the past in other ways, making energetic efforts to head off a vote to oust the union as representative of
Northwest Airlines' flight attendants, negotiating a breakthrough agreement covering carhaulers, and supporting local strikes, such as the one against Diamond Walnuts, to restore the union's strength.
The Carey administration did not, on the other hand, have much power in the lower reaches of the Teamster hierarchy: all of the large regional conferences were run by "old guard" officers, as were most of the locals. Disagreements between those two camps led the old guard to campaign against the Carey administration's proposed dues increase; the Carey administration retaliated by dissolving the regional conferences, calling them expensive redundancies and fiefdoms for old guard union officers. and rearranging the boundaries of some joint councils that had fought against the dues increase.
The opposition responded by uniting around a single candidate,
James P. Hoffa, son of James R. Hoffa, to run against Carey in
1996. Hoffa ran a strong campaign, trading on the mystique still attached to his late father's name and promising to restore those days of glory. Carey appeared, however, to have won a close election.
Shortly afterward in
1997, the union initiated a large and successful strike against
UPS. The parcel services department by that time had become the largest division in the union.
Carey was removed from the union's leadership by the IRB shortly thereafter, when evidence that individuals in his office had arranged for transfer of several thousand dollars to an outside contractor, which then arranged for another entity to make an equivalent contribution to the Carey campaign. Carey was indicted for lying to investigators about his campaign funding but was acquitted of all charges in a 2001 trial.
In the 1998
election to succeed Carey, James P. Hoffa was elected handily. He became president of the Teamsters on
March 19,
1999, and took the union in a more moderate direction, tempering the union's support for Democrats and attempting to come to terms with powerful Republicans in Congress.
The union has merged in recent years with a number of unions from other industries, including the Graphic Communications International Union, a printing industry union, and the
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes and
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, both from the railway industry.
On
July 25,
2005 General President James P. Hoffa announced that the Teamsters, along with the
Service Employees International Union, have disaffiliated themselves from the
AFL-CIO, opting to form the independent
Change to Win Federation.
Political donations
The Teamsters Union is one of the largest labor unions in the world, as well as the 11th largest campaign contributor in the United States. While they supported Republicans
Ronald Reagan and
George H.W. Bush for President in the 1980s, they've begun leaning largely toward the Democrats in recent years; they've donated 92% of their $24,418,589 in contributions since 1990 to the Democratic Party. Though the majority of their donations have gone to the Democrats, there has been a higher majority since President Bush took office. And though the union opposes Bush's agenda to open US highways to Mexican truckers, it largely supports Bush's platform for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Teamsters Union endorsed
Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic Nomination on Feb. 20, 2008.
Strikes
Following is a partial list of strikes which play a significant role in the history of the Teamsters union:
Organization
General President
1903 Cornelius Shea
1907 Daniel J. Tobin
1952 Dave Beck
1957 Jimmy Hoffa
1973 Frank Fitzsimmons
1981 George Mock (interim)
1981 Roy Williams
1983 Jackie Presser
1988 Weldon Mathis (interim)
1989 William J. McCarthy
1991 Ron Carey
1998 James P. Hoffa
Membership
1933 75K (depression era low)
1935 146K
1949 1M
1957 1.5M
1976 2M
1987 1M+
2003 1.7M
2004 1.4M
Divisions
Airline Division
Bakery and Laundry Conference
Brewery and Soft Drink Conference
Building Material and Construction Trade Division
Carhaul Division
Dairy Conference
Freight Division
Graphic Communications Conference
Industrial Trade Division
Motion Picture and Theatrical Trade Division
Newspaper, Magazine and Electronic Media Worker
Parcel and Small Package Division
Port Division
Public Services Trade Division
Rail Conference
Tankhaul Division
Trade Show and Convention Centers Division
Warehouse Division
Waste Division
References In Popular Culture
In the Simpsons episode Radioactive Man, Homer meets a group of Teamsters and says how he always wanted to be one because they were so lazy and surly. They then all try to outdo each other in being lazy.
In the 30 Rock episode Sandwiches, on sandwich day the Teamsters bring all of the employees sandwiches from a secret shop in Brooklyn.Further Information
Get more info on 'Teamsters'.
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