1934 Teamsters strikes: example for workers today (feature article)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7335/733550.html

Vol. 73/No. 35 September 14, 2009

1934 Teamsters strikes:
example for workers today
How working people transformed union
into fighting tool of social struggle
(feature article)

Printed here is an excerpt from Teamster Rebellion, the story of the strikes and union organizing drive by the men and women of Teamsters Local 574 carried out in Minnesota in 1934, one of the richest chapters in the history of the U.S. labor movement. This August marks the 75th anniversary of the union’s first strike victory.

The book is written by Farrell Dobbs, a coal-yard worker at the time of Local 574’s first victory, who became one of the central leaders of the strikes and subsequent organizing drive to expand union power throughout the Midwest.

The successful struggle against the trucking bosses, their big-business allies, and the local and federal governments, paved the way for the continent-wide rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a fighting social movement in the United States.

The book, one of a four-part series, illustrates the revolutionary potential of the working class and records invaluable lessons for workers—who may hail from any corner of the globe—engaged in struggles within the borders of the United States and beyond. Dobbs dedicates his account “to the men and women who gave me unshakable confidence in the working class, the rank and file of General Drivers Local 574.”

Among the book’s most valuable lessons as illustrated by Dobbs is the indispensable role of a revolutionary party organizing to emulate the course laid out by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Dobbs himself was won to the communist movement in the preliminary stages of the Minneapolis struggle, becoming a central leader of the Communist League of America and its successor, the Socialist Workers Party.

In the first chapter of the book, Dobbs wrote, “A key aspect of the local situation was, of course, common to industry as a whole, namely, radicalization of the working class under the impact of severe economic depression. The main difference lay in the presence locally of revolutionary socialist cadres who proved highly capable of fusing with the mass of rebellious workers and adding vital know-how in the struggle against the capitalist ruling class.”

FULL story at link.

[brewens]

1. We have a lot of union Republicans here in my town.

I know very few of them have any real knowledge of the labor movement. I'm thinking mostly of the guys I know that work at our local pulp and paper mill. They think they make good money because they are all working class heroes. No clue whatsoever of what they owe everything they have to.
Some of them work there and don't even join the union. There is a strict policy that no one does anything to them for not joining or they are fired.
I'm surprised that the company doesn't cut wages drastically. There is absolutely nothing they could do about it. Almost none of those guys could make it through a strike of any length. They'd have no choice but to bend over and take it. Only the union could be keeping that from happening.