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Teamsters http://www.enotes.com/topic/Teamsters Teamsters International Brotherhood of Teamsters Founded 1903 Members 1,402,878 (2008)[1] Country United States and Canada Change to Win Federation and Canadian Affiliation Labour Congress Key people James P. Hoffa, General President Office Washington, D.C. location Website www.teamsters.org The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors. The union had approximately 1.4 million members in 2008.[1] Formerly known as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, the IBT is a member of the Change to Win Federation and Canadian Labour Congress. Contents 1 History o 1.1 Early history o 1.2 Organizing and growth during the Great Depression o 1.3 World War II and the post-war period o 1.4 The influence of organized crime o 1.5 The rise, fall and disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa o 1.6 Decentralization, deregulation and drift o 1.7 Internal and external challenges o 1.8 Recent history 2 Political donations 3 Strikes 4 Organization o 4.1 General President o 4.2 Membership o 4.3 Divisions 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links History Early history The American Federation of Labor (AFL) had helped form local unions of teamsters since 1887. In November 1898, the AFL organized the Team Drivers' International Union (TDIU).[2][3] In 1901, a group of Teamsters in Chicago, Illinois, broke from the TDIU and formed the Teamsters National Union.[2] The new union permitted only employees, teamster helpers, and owner-operators owning only a single team to join, unlike the TDIU (which permitted large employers to be members), and was more aggressive than the TDIU in advocating higher wages and shorter hours.[2] Claiming more than 28,000 members in 47 locals, its president, Albert Young, applied for membership in the AFL. The AFL asked the TDIU to merge with Young's union to form a new, AFL-affiliated union and the two groups did so in 1903, creating the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).[3] Cornelius Shea was elected the new union's first president.[2][3] Shea's election was a tumultuous one. Shea effectively controlled the convention because the Chicago locals—representing nearly half the IBT's membership[4]—were united in their support for his candidacy. Shea was opposed by John Sheridan, president of the Ice Drivers' Union of Chicago. Sheridan and George Innes, president of the TDIU, accused Shea of embezzlement in an attempt to prevent his election.[5] Shea won election on August 8, 1903, by a vote of 605 to 480. Edward L. Turley of Chicago was elected secretary-treasurer and Albert Young general organizer.[6][7] 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.[8][9][10] The Teamsters were vitally important to the labor movement, for a strike or sympathy strike by the Teamsters could paralyze the movement of goods throughout the city and bring a strike into nearly every neighborhood.[4] It also meant that Teamsters leaders were able to demand bribes in order to avoid strikes, and control of a Teamsters local could bring organized crime significant revenues. During Shea's presidency, the entire Teamsters union was notoriously corrupt.[11][12][13] Noted labor historian John R. Commons famously concluded that during this time, the Teamsters were less a union and more a criminal organization.[14] Several major strikes occupied the union in its first three years. In November 1903, Teamsters employed by the Chicago City Railway went out on strike. Shea attempted to stop sympathy strikes by other Teamster locals, but three locals walked out and eventually disaffiliated over the sympathy strike issue.[15] A sympathy strike in support of 18,000 striking meat cutters in Chicago in July 1904 led to riots before the extensive use of strikebreakers led Shea to force his members back to work (leading to the collapse of the meat cutters' strike).[11][16][17] In the midst of the strife in 1904, Shea was re-elected by acclamation on August 8, 1904, at the Teamsters convention in Cincinnati, Ohio.[17] Under his leadership, the union had expanded to nearly 50,000 members in 821 locals in 300 cities, making the Teamsters one of the largest unions in the United States.[11] In 1905, 10,000 Teamsters struck in support of locked out tailors at Montgomery Ward, and eventually more than 25,000 Teamsters were on the picket line.[18][19][20] But when local newspapers discovered that Shea was living in a local brothel, kept a 19-year-old waitress as a mistress, and had spent the strike hosting parties, public support for the strike collapsed and the strike ended on August 1, 1905.[18][20][21][22] Despite the revelations, Shea won re-election on August 12, 1905, by a vote of 129 to 121.[23] Shea was re-elected again in 1905 and 1906, although significant challenges to his presidency occurred each time.[24] Shea's first trial on charges stemming from the 1905 Montgomery Ward strike ended in a mistrial.[25] However, during the 1906 re-election Shea had promised that he would resign the presidency once his trial had ended.[26] But he did not, and most union members withdrew their support for him.[26] Daniel J. Tobin of Boston was elected Shea's successor by a vote of 104 to 94 in August 1907.[27] Organizing and growth during the Great Depression Tobin was president of the Teamsters from 1907 to 1952. Although he faced opposition in his re-election races in 1908, 1909 and 1910, he never faced opposition again until his retirement in 1952.[28] The Teamsters began to expand dramatically and mature organizationally under Tobin. He pushed for the development of "joint councils" to which all local unions were forced to affiliate. Varying in geographical and industrial jurisdiction, the joint councils became important incubators for up-and-coming leadership and negotiating master agreements which covered all employers in a given industry. Tobin also actively discouraged strikes in order to bring discipline to the union and encourage employers to sign contracts, and founded and edited the union magazine, the International Teamster.[8][9][10][29][30] Under Tobin, the Teamsters also first developed the "regional conference" system (developed by Dave Beck in Seattle), which provided stability, organizing strength, and leadership to the international union.[9] Tobin undertook long jurisdictional battles with many unions during this period. Fierce disputes occurred between the Teamsters and the Gasoline State Operators' National Council (an AFL federal union of gas station attendants), the International Longshoremen's Association, the Retail Clerks International Union, and the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks.[9][31] The most significant disagreement, however, was 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.[9][28][32][33] The raids and new member organizing in the 1930s led to significant membership increases. Teamster membership stood at just 82,000 in 1932. Tobin took advantage of the wave of pro-union sentiment engendered by the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, and by 1935 union membership had increased nearly 65 percent to 135,000. By 1941, Tobin had a dues-paying membership of 530,000—making the Teamsters the fastest-growing labor union in the United States.[9] One of the most significant events in union history occurred in 1934. A group of radicals in Local 574 in Minneapolis—led by Farrell Dobbs, Carl Skoglund, and the Dunne brothers (Ray, Miles and Grant), all members of the Trotskyite Communist League of America—began successfully organizing coal truck drivers in the winter of 1933.[34] Tobin, an ardent anti-communist,[35] opposed their efforts and refused to support their 1933 strike.[34] Local 574 struck again in 1934, leading to several riots over a nine-day period in May.[34] When the employers' association reneged on the agreement, Local 574 resumed the strike, although it ended again after nine days when martial law was declared by Governor Floyd B. Olson.[34] Although Local 574 won a contract recognizing the union and which broke the back of the anti-union Citizens Alliance in Minneapolis, Tobin expelled Local 574 from the Teamsters. Member outrage was extensive, and in August 1936 he was forced to recharter the local as 544.[9][31][34][36] Within a year the newly formed Local 544 had organized 250,000 truckers in the Midwest and formed the Central Conference of Teamsters.[9][31][34][36] Extensive organizing also occurred in the West. Harry Bridges, radical leader of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), was leading "the march inland"—an attempt to organize warehouse workers away from shipping ports.[9][37] Alarmed by Bridges' radical politics and worried that the ILWU would encroach on Teamster jurisdictions, Dave Beck formed a large regional organization (the Western Conference of Teamsters) to engage in fierce organizing battles and membership raids against the ILWU which led to the establishment of many new locals and the organization of tens of thousands of new members.[9][38] But corruption became even more widespread in the Teamsters during the Tobin administration.