Ever since the McClellan Committee investigations of racketeering inthe 1950s, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) has occupieda lurid place in the American imagination. From Jimmy Hoffa to "TonyPro," from "Red" Dorfman to Jackie Presser, the Teamsters have beenknown as the id of the labor movement--a seething hotbed of greed,violence, and corruption. Recent Teamsters President Ron Carey and hisaides were accused of laundering money from the union treasury for usein Carey's 1996 re-election campaign. The election was overturned, andCarey was banned from the union. This January he was indicted for lyingto a grand jury about his role in the scandal. And when Hoffa's son,James P. Hoffa, ascended to the presidency of the union in 1999, itseemed at first as though nothing had changed since the bad old days.
But in the two years since Hoffa became president of theTeamsters--one of the largest labor unions in the United States, withmore than 1.4 million members--many progressive writers and thinkershave hailed the union's transformation. Hoffa's Teamsters have beenlauded for participating in the November 1999 demonstrations in Seattleagainst the World Trade Organization (WTO) and for making overtures toRalph Nader during the recent presidential campaign before finallybacking Al Gore (rather than immediately casting support to theDemocrats as did the rest of the AFL-CIO). As Marc Cooper wrote inThe Nation, the Teamsters are "making a bid to become key playersand allies in that progressive blue/green coalition that began to gelout of the gaseous clouds of the WTO protests... . "According toCooper," Hoffa has surprised many by showing himself to be a potentiallypowerful ally--rather than a roadblock--in the fight for a progressivenational politics."
Certainly, the union is no longer the ossified embarrassment to theAmerican labor movement that it was in the 1980s, the heyday of JackiePresser. Eleven years of government supervision have flushed the mob outof many locals. And once upon a time, the Teamsters would have endorsedGeorge W. Bush, not Al Gore. (The Teamsters are, however, the only laborunion represented on President Bush's Department of Labor transitionteam--along with the union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis Schintzlerand Krupman.)
Even so, the Teamsters remain an odd amalgamation of old and newlabor. Despite the union's tough-guy mystique, its real weaknesses arenot much different from those that plague the entire American labormovement: decentralization, parochialism, and an inability to organizenew workers locally. It's true that such structural problems aredifficult to address, but Hoffa does not even appear to be making aneffort to do so. The result is that under his leadership, the Teamstershave not yet carried out the aggressive organizing campaigns thatcharacterize the best and most progressive unions in John Sweeney'sAFL-CIO. While important, electoral politics and demonstrations likethose in Seattle ultimately matter far less than organizing, which iswhat actually gives workers power on the job and in politics. Hoffahasn't sent the union back to the Dark Ages. But can he make it into aviable political force?
When the election campaign of 2000 was in high gear, it seemed thatthe Teamsters had changed a lot since the days when they endorsedRepublican candidates for president. On a late afternoon last September,the parking lot outside the Teamsters Local 282 union hall in LakeSuccess, Long Island, was packed with men and women wearing trademarkblack-and-gold Teamster jackets. "I Shot the Sheriff"--Eric Clapton'sversion--blared over the loudspeakers. When Hoffa appeared on stage, thecrowd exploded in cheers. He introduced Senate candidate HillaryClinton. Presented with a white Local 282 jacket, Clinton put it on andtwirled for the crowd.
Not everyone in attendance was in cheerleader mode. Scattered hereand there were Teamsters wearing "No to PNTR" T-shirts, relics of lastspring's World Bank rally where Hoffa had gathered the Teamsters toprotest free trade and listen to Pat Buchanan. Some in the crowd alsocouldn't forgive the Democrats their support of former TeamstersPresident Ron Carey, who trusteed their local. "Fellows that I workedwith for 20 years, they said they were gangsters," said Robert Kelly, aretired Teamster. "Do I look like a mobster? I'm a working stiff." Otherunions support the Democrats, but truck drivers are forced to competewith low-wage Mexican workers because of policies like the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement, passed by a Democratic Congress andsigned by Bill Clinton. "AFSCME [the American Federation of State,County and Municipal Employees] and the other unions won't be the onestaking the $5-an-hour jobs," Kelly said. When I told him he was beinginterviewed for an article to be published by a magazine based inBoston, he grumbled about the Kennedys.
But Teamsters like Kelly don't run the show anymore. Today, theunion is willing to combine forces with the New Democrats (after shakingits fist at the party over free trade throughout the campaign season),even as it joins with pink-haired anarchists and the larger left toprotest international financial power and the liberalization of trade.This suggests how much the union's leadership has changed its style. Butat the same time, the strength of a union doesn't come from its positionpapers. It comes from organizing.
Decentralized and Disorganized
There are some systemic barriers to organizing in the IBT. Mostimportant is that the union is extremely decentralized; it consists of586 locals, each with its own distinct culture and organization. Onlyabout one-fourth of the Teamsters work under national contracts, thoughmany more are employed at national companies. The international receivesthe smallest proportion of dues of any union in the United States, andabout 80 percent of that money stays on the local level. While mostinternationals levy per capita dues ranging from $8 to $18 a month, theTeamsters international receives less than $4. And while the ServiceEmployees International Union (SEIU) recently set a special "resourceincrease" to pay for new organizing, local leaders in the Teamsters,despite a dramatic membership decline, have shown little desire orability to devote sufficient resources to organizing.
This problem is far from unique to the Teamsters. But under theleadership of John Sweeney at the AFL-CIO, the labor movement hasstarted, once again, to focus on organizing workers--especially thosehistorically excluded from unions, like immigrants and women. This hasmeant strengthening the international unions relative to the locals,since the internationals can jump-start organizing campaigns and carrythem out in a concerted, unified way. Unions like John W. Wilhelm'sHotel Employees and Restaurant Employees and Andrew L. Stern's SEIU havetargeted moribund locals and used international organizers to reshapethem so that members are genuinely in control. They have alsospearheaded national organizing campaigns, like the SEIU's Justice forJanitors crusade. Neither union has been magically transformedovernight. Pockets of corruption and local bloat remain. But in bothcases, the internationals have supported local movements to reform theunions and organize new workers.
For a few years in the early 1990s, it looked as if Ron Carey andTeamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) were starting to remake the IBTin a similar way. The international initiated many of the dynamicorganizing campaigns of the Carey years. Perhaps the most important wasat Overnite Transportation, the largest nonunion trucking company in thecountry. Though the firm had been a target of the Teamsters for manyyears, the arduous work of organizing its individual terminals beganafter Carey came into office. Forty-five percent of the workers at thefiercely anti-union company joined the Teamsters between 1994 and 1996.At Northwest Airlines and United Parcel Service, the union engaged inintense grass-roots mobilizing efforts to win better contracts; localorganizers at Northwest implemented an extensive phone tree called theContract Action Team (CAT), which involved thousands of Teamsters in theaffairs of the union. The IBT also tried to expand into unorganizedindustries, such as apple processing in Oregon and Washington, andconcentrated on building member-driven organizations that would be ablenot only to win representation elections but to exercise sufficientpower within the industry to win good first contracts.
In addition to starting organizing campaigns, the Careyadministration sought to centralize the union, moving power from localleaders to the international. Carey abolished the area conferences, amiddle layer of Teamsters bureaucracy that contributed little to theunion but did pay about 60 multiple salaries for union officials. He putmany corrupt locals into trusteeship. Also, he tried to change the duesstructure by diverting more money to the international. His bid for adues change lost badly, however, and the international fell intoeconomic hardship.
Carey won the 1996 election for the presidency by a narrow margin.But after government officials discovered that members of the Careyadministration had used Teamster money to run the re-election campaign,Carey was removed from office. Running on the platform "Restore LocalAutonomy," Hoffa won the next union election. One of the first things hedid after assuming power was to cut back sharply on expenses related toorganizing. The budget of the organizing department was decreased byabout one-third. According to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB),the number of successful private-sector organizing drives in the UnitedStates fell from 400 in 1997 to 297 in 1999, the same year that theAFL-CIO reversed its membership decline for the first time in decades.
Many of the national campaigns started under Carey were quicklydownscaled. Before the start of the 15-month strike at Overnite, whichis still in progress, the number of organizers working on the campaignwent from approximately 35 to 13. The Contract Action Team at Northwestwas dismantled after the workers voted down a contract that Hoffasupporters had bargained. ("The CAT's taking a nap" was the phrase usedaround the local.) Organizers who worked on the apple-processing drivewere fired.
Across the country, primary responsibility for organizing has goneback to the local level. But many locals have only one or two full-timeorganizers; and others have little interest in organizing at all. Eventhe best local can organize only small plants. Campaigns at largefacilities require resources greater than any union local can musteralone.
The Overnite strike, one of the strangest in American labor history,shows the consequences of cutting back international resources devotedto organizing. Overnite has waged a nasty battle against the Teamsters.Since the organizing campaign began in 1994, the union has charged thecompany with more than 1,000 unfair labor practices. When Teamsterofficials compare organizing at Overnite to life before the NationalLabor Relations Act, they aren't exaggerating. The employer hasthreatened to close terminals, cut pension benefits, and worsen workingconditions if workers vote to be represented by the Teamsters, and ithas systematically fired workers for union activism; but the NLRB hasbarely responded.
The international called the strike in November 1999 to protest laborlaw violations by Overnite and pressure the company into negotiating anational contract. But unlike most strikes, the one at Overnite has notentailed shutting the company down. Instead, workers drive around behindthe company's trucks, stop when deliveries are made, and set up picketlines outside the warehouses. For the hour that the Overnite truck isthere, union trucking companies will not deliver goods. But then theOvernite truck drives off and the picketers follow it. Only about 1,800of the 8,200 workers employed by Overnite ever went out on strike. Fewerthan that are still on the line--and most of those who are have foundother jobs.
There is no clear end in sight, and Hoffa's Teamsters have noapparent strategy for countering Overnite's resistance. John Murphy, theunion's director of organizing, strains to be optimistic: "When you arefacing an opponent that has more technology and more resources than youdo, what you are going to rely upon is your ability to outlast them.That ability to outlast the employer is predicated upon never, everaccepting anything other than outlasting them."
Local Autonomy at What Price?
What are the long-term organizing goals of Hoffa's Teamsters? His topaides emphasize a very high degree of local control. "My dream is thatthe organizing department here in this building should be a desk and atelephone," says Murphy. "Our goal is to completely change the way thisunion organizes, to make it grass-roots driven, completelydecentralized." Murphy would like to set up organizing and trainingprograms all over the country. Organizers would go through theseprograms and then stay with their local unions. The vision has manyappealing aspects. It's true that staff-heavy organizing campaigns,which bring professional organizers into town to run the campaign,sometimes have trouble developing leadership structures among workersthat will endure once the representation election is over. But it hardlyseems like an accident that Murphy's system would not disturb localprerogatives at all.
Some of Hoffa's advisers downplay the importance of organizing ingeneral. Greg Tarpinian, one of his outside consultants and the directorof Labor Research Associates, says that the TDU platform for itscandidate Tom Leedham is dead because "they just keep talking aboutmobilizing the membership, and frankly, the membership doesn't give afuck about being mobilized." Such sentiments aside, Tarpinian--likeHoffa himself, one may imagine--knows well that the Teamsters mustdevote more resources to organizing. Yet there appears to be noconsensus about what, if anything, needs to be done to strengthen theinternational's financial base. Tarpinian concedes that it will beextremely difficult to increase the resources available to theinternational: "The real challenge will be to convince people--you haveto convince them, you can't dictate to them--that the future of thelabor movement depends on structural change."
Local leaders like Jack Cipriani--who is a vice president for theinternational as well as president of Local 391 in North Carolina--aredead against a dues increase. "I think we can organize within ourbudget," he says. "The way the Teamsters are structured--and always havebeen--the local unions are the engine, and the local unions are the onesthat really initiate those campaigns." Some organizers within theTeamsters have a different point of view. Scott Chismar, amiddle-of-the-road organizer at Hoffa-supporting Local 264 in Buffalo,New York, says he misses the organizing seminars the international usedto run under Carey; he admires the United Food and Commercial Workersfor raising dues to pay for expanded organizing programs by theinternational. Yet Murphy is adamant that a dues increase would alwaysbe a "last resort."
Many of the Teamsters' leaders who believe most fervently in localautonomy justify their faith in populist terms, arguing that the unionmust be run by blue-collar workers and not by Washington bureaucrats orprofessional staffers. George Geller, a longtime Hoffa supporter andTeamsters lawyer, says that "when a union is run exclusively from itsnational center, influence passes to people who could otherwise bewriting for The American Prospect. A local union is run by someonewho comes out of our crafts. Democratic purposes are better served bythe second example." Or as Murphy--who was president of a Boston localfor 30 years before being tapped to be director of organizing--puts it:"I'm an anti-Washington bureaucrat. No, I'm an anti-Washingtonanti-bureaucrat." This anti-elitist image has great attraction for, atleast, people in Hoffa's inner circle.
But like the Teamsters' long flirtation with Buchanan and Naderduring the recent presidential election campaign, such language is purebluff. Strong unions, run by leaders democratically accountable to theworkers they represent--not by people who are supposed to representworkers by dint of organic identity--are what American workers need tobe full and equal American citizens who are able to exercise theirrights in the workplace and take part in what Herbert Croly called the"promise of American life."
The ability of the Teamsters to organize new workers and to representexisting members effectively is what really matters for the future ofthe union--more than financial scandals, Mafia or garden-varietycorruption, or even political endorsements. For the political might ofthe labor movement ultimately rests, after all, on its capacity toexercise power in the workplace. And the Hoffa administration is not, atthis point, focusing its resources on organizing in the way that it mustif it wants the union to be an influential political force in futureyears.