LaborHistory, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2000 Local Rank and FileMilitancy: The B attle for TeamsterReform in Philadelphia inthe Early 1960s DAVIDWITWER* It wasa warm night onAugust 15th, 1962 in Philadelphia. AtSpring Gardenand Front Streets,the of® ce building ofTeamsters Local 107 was® lled with unionof® cers, shop stewardsand their supportersholding adinnermeeting torally supportfor theunion ’s incumbentleadership. Suddenly,around 8 PM,an angry crowdof union dissidents andtheir neighborhood supporters,numbering somewherebetween 300 and 500 people,boiled upout of the streets of the nearby working-classcommunity ofFrankford. The dissidentscharged towardthe union hall. Asthe crowd came upthehill, thefrightened of®cers inside the local hall barricaded their doorsshut. For thenext hour thedemonstrators fought toget insideand grapple with their of®cers. Over 100 police arrived toseparate thecontending forces, but the dissidents and their supportersdid not leave until Fire Department water cannonsdrove them from the area. The ®ghting onSpring GardenStreet came about after along string ofacts of intimidation against dissidentTeamsters in Local 107. Rank and® le Teamstersand their supportersmarched onAugust 15th toexpress their outrage over abeating recently receivedby oneof their members.Symbolically andliterally, thedissidents werestanding up to people they had always feared.The march occurredduring the high tideof Teamster reform effortsin Philadelphia during theearly 1960s. Reformers soughtto oust both their local leadership andto escape the control ofthe national unionpresident, Jimmy Hoffa. 1 The scenethat night in Philadelphia contradictsmany commonassumptions about theTeamsters Union in theage ofHoffa. The mostpopular accountshave always *Anearlier version of this articlewas deliveredat the 17th Annual North AmericanLabor History Conference,ª Community and Culturein WorkingClass Historyº(October 1995). I would liketo thank the participants ofthat conference,particularly KarenMiller and KevinBoyle, fortheir very helpful comments and suggestions.Others who have offeredmany usefulsuggestions on succeedingdrafts of the paper include:Lucy Barber, CatherineRios, MelvynDubofsky, Richard Morris,and an anonymous reader for LaborHistory .Toeachof them Ioffermy heartfeltappreciation. 1David Witwer,ª Secessionin the Ageof Hoffa,º chapt. 8in ªCorruption and Reformin the Teamsters Union, 1898±1991º (unpublished PhD dissertation, Brown Univ., 1994).Among those who have written on the Teamstersand includedbrief descriptions of the insurgentmovement in Philadelphia includethe following: Ralph and EstelleJames, Hoffaand the Teamsters:A Study ofUnion Power (New York: Van Nostrand, 1965),204± 209; Dan E.Moldea, The HoffaWars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians, andthe Mob (New York: Paddington Press,1978), 113± 114 and 146;Walter Sheridan, The Fall andRise ofJimmy Hoffa (NewYork: TheSaturday ReviewPress, 1972), 188± 190 and 238,262, 274, 278, 281; Arthur A. Sloane, Hoffa (Cambridge, MA: TheMIT Press, 1991), 269± 270. ISSN0023-656X print/ISSN1469-9702 online/00/030263±16 Ó 2000 Taylor &Francis Ltd on behalf of The Tamiment Institute 264 D. Witwer portrayed themembership thenas either apathetic about their unionor committed to agroup ofleaders who might have beencorrupt, but who continued to win good pay andcontracts for themembers. 2 TheNew YorkTimes assertedin 1961, ªMostTeamsters seem perfectly contentto ride along with Mr.Hoffa in his cynical convictionthat anything goesso long ashe keeps delivering higher wagesand fatter bene®ts to his members.º 3 Arecentbiography ofHoffa, by Arthur Sloane,assures readersthat nosigni® cantopposition to Hoffa, in factno signi® cantrank and® le dissent,existed in theunion by the1960s. Sloanewrites of Hoffa, ª Whenhe was almost anyplace within thedomain ofthe 1.6 million-member labor organization, he wasamong rabid partisans.º 4 This picture ofa quietand contented membership clasheswith newhistories of reform groups,such as the Teamsters for aDemocratic Union,which formedduring the1970s and1980s. While theseanalyses have broadenedour understanding of the unionduring thosedecades they mistakenly conveyedthe idea that thereformers ofthe 1970s arosein aunionwith nostrong tradition ofdissent. 5 Along andcomplex history ofstruggle by Teamster members tosecure their rights in theearly 1960s andbefore has beenoverlooked. Dissidentsin Philadelphia andelsewhere mounted a powerfulchallenge to theleadership ofthe Teamsters in theearly 1960s. They createda neighborhood- basedorganization andpushed for secessionfrom thenational union.By moving towardssecession, the dissidents in Philadelphia, andelsewhere, drew on earlier traditions ofdissent within theTeamsters. After the passage ofthe Wagner Actin 1935, this tactic gained theadded advantage ofallowing dissidentsto draw the federal government into their electioncontests. Secession campaigns in theearly 1960s threatenedTeamster leadersat thelocal andthe national level. Anexamination ofthe struggle in Philadelphia, placed within its historical context,highlights theissues that motivated reformers in this era. Sucha studyalso reveals thetactics they used andthe dif® cultiesthat thesereformers facedin mounting effectiveopposition. In theend, the changing natureof Teamster contractsdoomed the viability ofthe reformers’ strategy ofsecession. The generation ofdissidents who followed the rebels in Philadelphia learnedfrom this defeatand adopted a newset of tacticsand organiza- tional forms. * * * * * * 2Seefor instance Steven Brill, The Teamsters (NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1978),397± 399. 3The New YorkTimes ,July 8, 1961,18. 4Sloane, 316.Other accounts at the time which emphasized the complacencyof rank and ®leTeamsters includePaul Jacobs, The State ofthe Unions (New York: Atheneum, 1963),3; A.H. Raskin, ªWhy They Cheerfor Hoffa,º The New YorkTimes Magazine ,Nov. 9,1958,15, 77± 79; Raskin, ª `Hoffa’ll Take Care of Hoffa,’ º The New YorkTimes Magazine ,Mar.26, 1961, 9, 93±95; Philip Taft, ªTheResponses of the Bakers, Longshoremenand Teamstersto Public Exposure,º Quarterly Journal ofEconomics , 74 (1960), 395;James, 194±209. 5For example, in his excellenthistory ofTeamsters for a DemocraticUnion, Dan LaBotztakes just 10 linesto describeall Teamsterdissident movements before1967. He dismisses the dissidentsin Philadelphia and elsewhereas ªsel®shº and assertsthat theirefforts were purely locally oriented.Dan LaBotz, Rank andFile Rebellion: Teamstersfor a Democratic Union (NewYork: Verso,1990), 23 and 26. For otherdiscussions of reformers in the Teamsterssince the 1970s,see Moldea; Samuel R.Friedman, Teamster Rank andFile: Power,B ureaucracy, andRebellion at Workin aUnion (NewYork: Columbia UniversityPress, 1982); Kenneth C. Crowe, Collision: How the Rank andFile took Back the Teamsters (New York: Charles Scribner ’sSons, 1993);Aaron Brenner,ª Teamstersfor a DemocraticUnion and the Rank and File Upsurge,1967± 1975,º paper presentedat the AmericanPolitical ScienceAssociation Annual Meeting,Sept. 1, 1990,San Francisco,CA. TeamsterReform in Philadelphia 265 The rank and® le insurgentsin Philadelphia belongedto a long tradition ofdissent within theInternational Brotherhood ofTeamsters (IBT). In 1905, twoyears after the unioncame intoexistence, a factionof delegates at theunion ’sconventionsought to unseatthe incumbent ® rst President,Cornelius Shea. As has beenthe case for mostof the union’shistory, national of®cers were elected by avoteof the delegates assembled at thenational convention.Though hewas the target ofallegations involving bribery andextortion, Shea managed towin a closereelection contest at theconvention, but his opponentscharged that theelection had beenfraudulent. 6 Whenthe defeated delegatesreturned to their local unionssome mounted a campaign toconvince the IBT toadopt proceduresfor areferendumand the direct election of the national of®cers. To forcethe hand of the national leadership, dissidentdelegates encouraged local unions tosecede at least temporarily from thenational organization. 7 While this secessionmovement petered out in afewmonths, a year later amuch more successfuleffort began following another stormy IBT convention. 8 Shea and his allies had disquali® edenoughof the opposition delegatesin 1906 toassure a comfort- able reelection.This time his opponentsacted during theconvention; on the third day ofthegathering thedissident faction, now quite large, exited thehall enmasse and set uparival unionacross town. They called their breakaway group theUnited Teamsters ofAmerica (UTA). 9 Eventually, theUTA represented some 8500 teamstersÐabout one-®fth ofthe total IBT membershipÐ basedin locals that stretchedfrom St.Louis to New York.10 Whenthe IBT met for its annual conventionin 1907, theembattled Shea again faced strong oppositionfrom within theunion. With thethreat oflosing therest of his union tothe breakaway UTA,Shea andhis supporterschose not to disqualify their oppo- nents.The electioncontest progressed smoothly andby all accountsfairly. Shea was defeatedby adelegate from Bostonnamed Dan Tobin whowent on to lead theIBT until 1952.11 Though criticized ascantankerous and conservative by some,Tobin ’s 6VictorE. Soares, ªReforminga Labor Union,º The WorldTo-Day ,10(Jan. 1906),92± 97; Chicago Daily Tribune,Aug. 6,1906,2, Aug. 8, 1905,2, Aug. 9, 1905,4, Aug. 10,1905, 2, Aug. 11,1905, 1, Aug. 12, 1905,1, Aug. 13,1905, 1; PhiladelphiaInquirer ,Aug. 8, 1905,1, Aug. 11, 1905,14, Aug. 12, 1905,2, Aug. 13,1905, 2, Aug. 15, 1905,14, Aug. 16,1905, 2. 7Chicago Record-Herald ,Sept.