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The International Brotherhood of Teamsters was formed in 1903 by a merger between the Team Drivers’ International Union and a dissident Chicago group from the TDIU, the Teamsters National Union. The TNU had split in 1901, but the AF of L pushed the two groups to merge in order to be accepted into the Federation. By the time of this picture, shortly after World War I (1919), the IBT probably had about 20,000 members.
Dan Tobin, (left in 1919 and with FDR @1940) was the president of the IBT from 1907-1952, virtually unopposed. Tobin clashed with IBT militants in the 1930s, however, including radicals in many locals who, in fact, helped energize the American labor movement.
MILITANT LABOR MOBILIZES, 1933-1934 I. "Second generation" immigrants by the 1930s, born in the U. S. II. Mass production factories, weakening of craft/unskilled differences III. "We can't afford to look for a better job—we'll make this job better IV. "The President wants you to join a union" V. A wave of militant strikes----national textile strike, truckers & warehousemen's strike in Minneapolis, cannery and farm workers' strikes in California, longshoremen's strike on the West Coast
In 1934, as part of a wave of mass working-class mobilization in American cities, Teamsters Local 574 in Minneapolis called a strike of coal truck drivers. Local 574 had successfully organized the drivers in 1933, and called the strike when the Minneapolis Employers Association violated terms of the 1933 agreement. The association, along with the Citizens Alliance of Minneapolis, was determined to break the strike and the union.
←← Governor Floyd B. Olsen upset many of his supporters in labor when he declared martial law to end the strike, which Local 574 was winning in the streets. The local, however, did win a new contract and, instead of being broken by the Alliance, broke the Alliance. IBT president Tobin had not endorsed Local 574’s strike, because the local leadership (Farrell Dobbs, Carl Skoglund, and the Dunne brothers [Ray, Miles, and Grant]) were members of the Communist League of America, one of several U. S. Communist groups. Communists and non-communist leftist radicals were quite common in the 1930s labor movement, and gave the movement much of its energy. Tobin expelled 574 but rebellion in the rank-and-file forced him to re-charter the local (as 544) in 1936. By 1937, aided by the new NLRA and the energy of Dobbs and other organizers, Local 544 had organized 250,000 Midwest truckers.
It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection. Findings and Declaration of Policy, National Labor Relations Act, 1935
On October 31,1936, just a couple of days before his re-election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to a Democratic rally in Madison SquareGarden. . . . .We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. . . .
From the mid-1930s,throughout WWII, and into the 1950s, organized labor grew and created the American middle-class. Labor’s political enemies, however, moved to slow and reverse workers’ power shortly after WWII with passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. The weakening of the NLRA, the political manipulation of the NLRB system, and the rise of the “union avoidance” industry were made possible by Taft-Hartley. Jimmy Hoffa joined the IBT in 1933 and became president in 1958. Hoffa and his predecessor, Dave Beck, oversaw the growth of the IBT into the nation’s largest union, with 1.5 million members by the early 1970s.
In 1991, in an election overseen by the U. S. Justice Department,. During his tenure, the IBT re-energized labor with its successful strike against UPS in 1997. Carey was removed from office following revelations about the misuse of IBT funds for his 1996 re-election. Carey had authorized professional political consultants to run the campaign but insisted he knew nothing about the misuse of funds. Carey was tried for perjury and acquitted, but forbidden from union activity by a federal oversight committee.
The IBT recently endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. OCCUPY LOUISVILLE!!!!
You may call me an anarchist, a socialist or a communist, I care not, but I hold to the theory that if one man has not enough to eat three times a day and another man has $25,000,000, that last man has something that belongs to the first. Mary Elizabeth Lease, late-19th century Populist leader We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Louis Brandeis, USSC Justice 1916-1939 Everything is produced by the workers, and the minute they try to get something by their unions they meet all the opposition that can be mustered by those who now get what they produce. Harry Bridges, ILWU leader , 1901-1990, helped build the New Deal –era labor movement and social contract
There is an elementary aspiration which undergirds the humane impulse in our history and our culture and binds us together as political activists. This is a simple, irreducible, indisputable aspiration. It is the ‘dream of justice' for a beloved community, in which the level of terror in people's lives is sharply reduced or maybe eliminated. It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.“ Wellstone speaking to the Minnesota Nurses Association, October 23, 1985 I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party" Wellstone during his 2000 presidential exploratory campaign Paul Wellstone, 1944-2002----academic, labor activist, U. S. Senator from Minnesota
