Teamsters oust mobster leaders
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
In a stunning turnaround the corrupt and mafia-ridden leadership of the massive US Teamsters union has been a defeated in elections by a slate backed by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU).
The reform slate was led by Ron Carey who won the Union President's position. The Carey slate won 188,883 votes, as against 129,538 and 71,227 for two slates led by top union bureaucrats; there was a 28 per cent turnout.
Bill Urman of Minneapolis, newly-elected vice-president said: 'The rank and file want honest people running this union, and all the things that go with that; better representation, more responsive leadership, and contracts which aren't sellouts.'
Notorious
The Teamsters have been notorious since the war for being a corrupt, mafia-ridden union, delivering sweetheart deals to the bosses and organising scabbing operations.
Among the most notorious Teamster actions was the systematic scabbing on the 1970s strikes of Latino agricultural workers in California. The Teamsters provided scab labour to keep the farms going, and assisted the police in brutalising immigrant workers on the picket lines.
Teamsters for a Democratic Union is a 15-year old caucus, whose monthly journal Convoy Dispatch is distributed to 60,000 workers.
The Carey slate did best in the South and West, where the TDU has strong local branches. More than 35 percent of teamsters voted in the Southern Conference (region) and TDU won around 54 per cent of the vote. In Teamster branches in Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis the TDU-backed slate won by 2-1.
Landslide
A similar picture was repeated in the Western Conference, which the Carey slate sweeping California. In the north and east of the country the picture was more mixed, with many big branches linked to organised crime voting heavily against the reformers.
The reformers victory comes as a result of revulsion against both the mob links of the leadership and the large number of 'giveback' deals involving acceptance of wage cutting and loss of holidays.
No less than 171 full time officials each earned more than $1m a year under the old regime, through holding multiple posts.
As a result of these things union membership has fallen from 2,215,000 to 1,450,000. Teamster bosses have been facing government lawsuits, and the election was in part forced by government investigators.
There should be no illusions that the victory of the TDU-backed slate will make the Teamsters into a left-wing or class struggle trade union. The vote to oust the old bosses was as much a vote to clean up the union as to pursue militant policies.
But the encouraging thing about the election victory was that it was led by a rank-and-file campaign and not by a group of dissident bureaucrats.
For the first time there is a woman, Diana Kilmury from British Colombia, on the executive. But the prospects for keeping the union out of the hands of the mobster bureaucrats in future depend on the ability of TDU to strengthen its rank-and-file organisation.
The new model Teamsters face tough challenges in the current US recession. However the possibility is there for the Teamster revolution to spill over into a resurgent fightback in a series of industrial unions.